The 1945 Hadamar Trial
was the first mass atrocity trial in the
U.S. zone of Germany following World
War II.
In the first months of occupation,
American trials had focused solely on classical
violations of international law, principally
upon the murders of captured Allied service
personnel which had occurred in the last
months of the war. Yet, the discovery in
late March 1945 of the “euthanasia” facility
Hadamar near Limburg on the Lahn in west
central Germany riveted American attention
back home, and galvanized U.S. military authorities
to undertake their first efforts to adjudicate
crimes associated with the systematic persecutory
policies of Nazi
Germany.
Hadamar had been a “euthanasia” facility
since 1941.
Between January and August of that year,
some 10,000 institutionalized mentally and
physically disabled persons had been gassed
there under the auspices of Operation
T4. This murderous operation was temporarily
halted in August 1941. When it was reinstated
in the following summer of 1942, Hadamar
medical personnel again began to murder disabled
patients. From 1942 until
the end of war in May 1945,
the facility claimed the lives of an additional
4,400 victims by lethal overdoses of medication.
American authorities were
initially eager to try Hadamar physicians,
nurses, and bureaucratic staff in their custody
for the murders of the nearly 15,000 German
patients killed at the institution, but quickly
discovered that they had no jurisdiction
to do so under international law. Before
the December 1945 promulgation of Allied
Control Council Law No. 10, which allowed
the elastic charge of “crimes against
humanity,” introduced in the indictment
of the International
Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg
, U.S. military officials could not try German
nationals for murdering their fellow citizens.
Before Nuremberg , international law restricted
them to prosecute crimes committed against
their own service personnel and civilian
nationals, and those of their allies, in
the territories that they held. American
prosecutors, however, found a loophole. Among
the Hadamar victims were 476 Soviet and Polish
forced laborers, who, suffering from tuberculosis,
had been sent to their deaths at the facility
in the last months of the war. As these civilian
forced laborers were citizens of countries
allied to the United States , American prosecutors
were able to open proceedings against seven
Hadamar defendants associated with the murders
of the “Eastern workers.” On
October 15, 1945, chief prosecutor Leon Jaworski,
who would gain fame in the 1970s as Watergate
Special Prosecutor, won convictions for all
the accused. The six-man U.S. military tribunal
prescribed death by hanging for Hadamar chief
administrator Alfons Klein, and two male
nurses, Heinrich Ruoff and Karl Willig. Because
of his advanced age, chief physician Adolf
Wahlmann, received a life sentence, which
was eventually commuted. Two Hadamar administrative
staff received sentences of 35 and 30 years,
respectively, while the only female defendant, Irmgard
Huber, received the lightest sentence,
that of 25 years’ imprisonment. On
March 14, 1946, Klein, Ruoff, and Willig
went to the gallows.
As “euthanasia” crimes
were transferred in early 1946 to newly reconstructed
German courts, a German tribunal in Frankfurt
in early 1947 tried 25 Hadamar personnel,
including Dr. Wahlmann and Nurse Huber for
the deaths of some 15,000 German patients
killed at the facility.
A group of ex-officials
of the Hadamar mental
asylum, were convicted in Case No.4 (The "Hadamar" Trial),
before a U.S. court in Wiesbaden, from October
8, 1945 to October 15, 1945. All were found
guilty and three sentenced to death by hanging,
later commutted to death by shooting, the
remainder were sentenced to various terms
of imprisonment.
Alfons Klein: The Death
Sentence (Executed on the 15th October 1946)
Dr Adolf Wahlmann: Life Imprisonment
Heinrich Ruoff: The Death Sentence (Executed on
the 15th October 1946)
Adolf Merkle: 35 Years Imprisonment
Irmgard
Huber: 25 Years Imprisonment (released
from prison in 1952)
Philipp Blum: 30 Years Imprisonment
Karl Willig: The Death Sentence (Executed on the
15th October 1946)