Erwin Julius Busta (April 12, 1905 – December 27, 1982) was an Austrian SS-'' Hauptscharführer'' and concentration camp functionary. During World War II Busta was also closely associated with the German V-weapons program; serving on the SS staff at the Peenemünde Army Research Center and the V-2 rocket production facility at Mittelwerk. He was convicted of war crimes by a West German court in 1970.

Early life and Nazi involvement

Erwin Busta was born in the city of Leoben, Austria (then part of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

) on April 12, 1905, and originally worked as a

mason Mason may refer to: Occupations * Mason, brick mason, or bricklayer, a craftsman who lays bricks to construct brickwork, or who lays any combination of stones, bricks, cinder blocks, or similar pieces * Stone mason, a craftsman in the stone-cut ...

and

carpenter Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, Shipbuilding, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. ...

. He joined both the Austrian Nazi Party and the ''

Sturmabteilung The (; SA; literally "Storm Detachment") was the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi ral ...

'' (SA) in 1928 and became a member of the '' Schutzstaffel'' (SS) in 1930. In July, 1933 the Nazi Party was officially banned in Austria by the government of Engelbert Dollfuss. Busta moved to Augsburg, Germany shortly afterward where he became a member of the

Austrian Legion The Austrian Legion (''Österreichische Legion'') was a Nazi paramilitary group founded in 1933 from expatriate Austrian Nazis. Its members, mostly ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA), were trained in military camps in Bavaria, then armed in preparation for a ...

, a

paramilitary A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...

group composed of pro-Nazi Austrian expatriates. He underwent military and police-training and, in 1934, was recruited into the newly established ''

SS-Totenkopfverbände ''SS-Totenkopfverbände'' (SS-TV; ) was the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany, among similar duties. While the ''Totenkopf'' was the univer ...

''.André Sellier: Forced labor in rocket tunnel - History of the Dora camp, Lüneburg 2000, pp. 173f Busta initially served as a guard at the Esterwegen concentration camp and would later go on to work in various capacities at

Dachau , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

and Sachsenhausen.Sellier, Andre. ''A History of the Dora Camp''. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. 2003. In the summer of 1943 Busta was transferred to the Peenemünde Army Research Center, the main research and testing site for Germany's V-weapons program. This location was also home to a small concentration camp whose inmates (mostly Soviet and Polish POWs) were employed as slave-laborers. During his time at Peenemünde, Busta worked as a ''

Lagerführer ''Lagerführer'' (Camp Leader) was a paramilitary title of the SS, specific to the '' Totenkopfverbände'' (Concentration Camp Service). A ''Lagerführer'' was the head SS officer assigned to a particular concentration camp Internment is t ...

'' (camp leader) of the camp's central warehouse; supervising the prisoner-laborers as they performed various tasks ranging from construction work to the actual production of V-2 ballistic missiles.

Mittelbau-Dora

Following the bombing of Peenemünde by the RAF in August, 1943 the entire V-weapons program was relocated by the German government to the Nordhausen-area of central Germany. This transition included much of the former staff of Peenemünde, Busta among them.Jens-Christian Wagner, ''Production of Death: The Mittelbau-Dora'', Göttingen, 2001 S. 666th. Production of the V-2's was reestablished at Mittelwerk, a massive armaments facility housed in an elaborate tunnel system in the

Kohnstein The Kohnstein is a hill in Thuringia, Germany, 2 kilometres southwest of the village of Niedersachswerfen and 3 kilometres northwest of the centre of the town of Nordhausen. Gypsum mining created tunnels in the hill that were later used as a fu ...

. Here again, slave-labor was utilized to assemble the rockets. The tunnels at Mittelwerk were staffed by thousands of prisoner-laborers drawn from the inmate population of the nearby

Mittelbau-Dora Mittelbau-Dora (also Dora-Mittelbau and Nordhausen-Dora) was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour ...

concentration camp. Their work was overseen by both German civilian contractors and the SS. Beginning in the autumn of 1943 Busta was employed in both areas of the camp; working as a ''

Blockführer ''Blockführer'' (Block Leader) was a paramilitary title specific to the SS-Death's Head Units in Concentration Camp Service. An SS-Block Leader was typically in charge of a prisoner barracks ranging from two hundred to three hundred concentra ...

'' (block leader) in Dora while also serving as the chief SS warden at Mittelwerk. Busta was a much-feared figure among the prisoner-laborers in the tunnels and developed a reputation for harshness and brutality. Busta was known to have inmates suspected of sabotage shot or hanged by the SS on a regular basis. In March, 1945 Busta oversaw the mass-hanging of several dozen Russian prisoners who had attempted to escape. When Dora and Mittelwerk were evacuated in April, 1945 Busta commanded a transport of hundreds of prisoners to the Ebensee concentration camp in his native Austria.

Post-war

After the end of World War II in May, 1945 Busta lived under an alias and moved regularly between Germany and Austria. He was thus able to avoid appearing as a defendant at the 1947 Dora war crimes trial. He settled permanently in West Germany in 1952 and resumed using his real name. In November 1967, he was one of three former SS staff members of

indicted for war crimes by the district court of

Essen Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and D ...

. Busta entered a plea of not guilty to the charges that he had mistreated and murdered prisoners during his time at Mittelwerk. Busta was found guilty and sentenced to 8 years and a half years in prison on May 8, 1970. However, he never served his sentence owing to reasons of ill-health. Busta died in Munich on 27. December 1982.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Busta, Erwin 1905 births 1982 deaths SS non-commissioned officers Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp personnel Dachau concentration camp personnel Sachsenhausen concentration camp personnel Austrian Nazis convicted of war crimes Austrian expatriates in Germany People from Leoben People from the Duchy of Styria Sturmabteilung personnel V-weapons people