Talk:Dachau trials

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was already moved to Dachau Trials. If anyone is unhappy with the move by Barliner, please create a new request. Dekimasuよ! 03:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

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I suggest the page is renamed Dachau Military Tribunal. This is more accurate,as the beginning of the article notes the tribunal was not International but controlled only by the US. This naming error is repeated in the Trench language stub but does not appear in the German language version. Barliner 11:46, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

Dachau International Military Tribunal→ Dachau Military Tribunal — {{{2}}} —Barliner 12:44, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support: It appears that the official name for the trials at the time didn't involve "Military Tribunal" with or without "International". See transcripts at War Crimes Office (1948). "Case Number 6-24 (US vs. Valentin Bersin et al)". U.S. Army Trial Reviews and Recommendations. United States Department of War. Retrieved 2006-12-18., where the court is called "Military Commission" or "General Military Government Court at Dachau, Germany". Thus I don't think either the present Wikipedia title or the proposed one without "International" will make a big difference for readers. Present Wikipedia articles link to existing and proposed titles (through a redirect). If the change is made, there certainly should be a redirect from the old name to the new one. --Jdlh | Talk 18:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support: But perhaps Dachau camp Trials is more in keeping with other wikipedia entries eg Mathausen 82.22.139.25 19:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support: The report of the US Senate Committee on the Malmedy Massacre Trial also uses the wording "General Military Government Court" and never speaks about a "International military Tribunal". --Lebob-BE 10:38, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

• This document (one of the cited documents used in the article) uses the term American Military Tribunal. "Heinz DETMERS: Deputy commandant of Dachau camp. Sentenced to be hanged by an American Military Tribunal 18.1.47. p.537" Also used in the same document is U.S. military court at Dachau.
• The cited source for the trial of Otto Skorzeny and others uses the term General Military Government court of the U.S. zone of Germany
• Trial of Ulrich Greifelt and others TRIAL OF ULRICH GREIFELT AND OTHERS United States Military Tribunal, Nurbmberg.(sic)
• The Dachau concentration camp trial General Military Government court of the United States Zone, Dachau, Germany

--Philip Baird Shearer 13:21, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Not Trials--These Were Tribunals

And the accused were not called Defendants but Accused. Under Eisenhower, all German POWs were resdesignated as disarmed enemy combatants, including the accused, to get around the Geneva and Hague conventions regarding the proper treatments of POWs. These tribunals resulted from a program initiated by German-speaking European Jews living in the US, formalized in early 1942 as soon as the US entered the war, and which was subsequently known as the United Nations War Crimes Commission UNWCC (no connection to the later UN, but a generic term referring to Allies). This group defined 'war crimes,' and its charter included prosecution for 'massacres,' which is why certain events were so defined later even though no 'massacre' had occurred, and why accused didn't have to have done it but merely ordered it, which is why commanders could be prosecuted and 'orders' implied, even if non-existent. Its members were the primary force in identifying, prosecuting, and sentencing the accused, which conflict of interest thus became highly controversial. This group made up its own rules, and the tribunals bore no resemblance to US (or German) military court martials or rules/procedures for US criminal proceedings, including use of torture (however defined) to extract false confessions, disregard of rules of evidence, and that the accused were deemed guilty in advance simply by being accused. Thus the heavily publicized (with hundreds of press releases, newsreels and photographs) were viewed as 'victors' justice' and publicity shows. William Denson was one of many who took a prosecutorial role but was in fact responsible for only a specific portion of these tribunals. It is interesting that the falsity of terms such as 'trials' and 'defendants' persists, and that the Dachau proceedings are always identified as 'American.' Actually, most investigators were Polish and Austrian Jews, and many participants had been hastily granted temporary US citizenship so as to be granted temporary US Army commissions so as to be able to appear in US Army uniforms. Plus Dachau itself--nothing 'notorious' here. The facility opened in 1933 and was considered by visiting specialists in prisons internationally as a 'model' facility for its factories and workshops, hospital, libraries, canteens, fruit and vegetable plots, mail and package delivery, barracks the same as Germany military, private apartments (for such problem cases as pedophile priests, communist agitators, convicted traitors such as Adm. Canaris etc.) But post-war Dachau was the only one camp Eisenhower had in his fiefdom and thus was also heavily publicized as 'symbolic', and not having been destroyed by bombing as was most of Germany, was selected as a venue for the tribunals as a PR stunt. The murders of the wrong 'guards' by US forces and inmates (quite healthy) when US forces took over Dachau at the end of the war was not so publicized, nor the fact that some detainees didn't want to leave to make room for the 'war criminal' accused. This article is biased, misleading, contains numerous factual errors, and should not be relied upon by students or lazy journalists. Contributions/71.185.120.220 (talk) 14:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Auschwitz Trial which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:23, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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Adding Some Extra Content

As part of the Wiki Educational project at ABTech and Western NC's 3rd Annual Holocaust preservation Edit-A-Thon (https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/westernncs3rdannualholocaustpreservationeditathon/overview), I am adding some additional content to this page. Any improvements, revisions or suggestions are welcome! Rhyleyso1011 (talk) 16:16, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Found an interesting US Army intelligence report on Commons

US Army intelligence report from 1945 on liberated KZ Dachau

I recently found the adjacent 72-page PDF in completely uncategorized and quite poor condition (no description at all) while browsing on Commons. It was uploaded last year by a bot from the web, there it arrived somehow from a US Holocaust archive. I put some work into the file description page. Quote:

This is a 72 page internal intelligence report written by members of different (military) intelligence branches and agencies, lead by the G-2 section (cf. bottom of fourth page of pdf) of the 7th US Army which liberated the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Germany, during the last days of World War II in Europe. It is a detailed account on nearly all aspects of the concentration camp Dachau and was written with assistance by former inmates, namely, e.g., members of the "International Prisoners' Committee", the names of which are listed on p. 67.

I would suspect that this document was used in some form in the Nuremberg Trials or others. It is probably one of the few investigation reports that was created by US professionals (four different US intelligence departments) pretty much immediately after a major KZ was liberated. I just wanted to make this more public than it is on Commons, in case that this is (as I assume) of some significance for the WP or for the research in general. Greetings, Pittigrilli (talk) 21:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)