Otto Förschner (4 November 1902 – 28 May 1946) was a German SS commander and a Nazi concentration camp official. He served as commandant of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and the Kaufering concentration camp in the Dachau camp system. He was indicted for his crimes, found guilty, and hanged in May 1946.

Early life

Förschner was born in the town of Dürrenzimmern (today part of

Nördlingen Nördlingen (; Swabian: ''Nearle'' or ''Nearleng'') is a town in the Donau-Ries district, in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, with a population of approximately 20,674. It is located approximately east of Stuttgart, and northwest of Munich. It wa ...

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total l ...

on 4 November 1902, and was raised on a farm owned by his family. In 1922, he enlisted in the '' Reichsheer'', and would remain a soldier for the next twelve years. Following his departure from the army in 1934, he became a member of the SS, and was assigned to its military-wing, the ''

SS-Verfügungstruppe ''SS-Verfügungstruppe'' (SS-VT or V-Truppe) (lit. "SS Dispositional Troops") was formed in 1934 as combat troops for the Nazi Party (NSDAP). On 17 August 1938 Adolf Hitler decreed that the SS-VT was neither a part of the ''Ordnungspolizei'' ( ...

'', the organization that would eventually become the '' Waffen-SS''. Tom Segev, ''Soldiers of Evil'', Berkley Books, 1991, p. 70

SS career

Between April 1934 and December 1936, Förschner attended the SS training camp at Bad Tölz, and became a member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

in 1937. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he served as an officer with the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking. After being wounded in action and declared medically unfit for combat duty, Förschner was transferred to the SS-Totenkopfverbände, taking over as Schutzhaftlagerführer of the Buchenwald concentration camp in the spring of 1942. In September 1943, Förschner was given command over the newly built concentration camp of

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 f ...

, which at this time functioned as a sub-camp of the much larger Buchenwald. The purpose of Mittelbau-Dora was to provide slave-laborers from among its inmate population to the nearby V-weapons production facility of Mittelwerk. In addition to his position as commandant at Dora, Förschner was also technically the managing director of Mittelwerk GmbH, the front company created by the German government for V-weapons production. He would hold this post until April 1944, when he was replaced by

Georg Rickhey Georg Johannes Rickhey (25 August 1898, Hildesheim – 1966) was a German engineer and the general director of Mittelwerk GmbH in Dora-Mittelbau. Rickhey, a doctor of engineering, joined the Nazi Party in October 1931 as member number 664,050 ...

. Förschner had a contentious relationship with the various Nazi security services (the SD and the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

) that operated in and around Mittelbau-Dora. His leadership was regularly criticized by them as being too "soft" on both the camp's prisoners and personnel. Of particular concern for them was Förschner's practice of selecting prisoner functionaries almost exclusively from among the camp's German-Communist inmates. NordhausenApril1945

Förschner's reputation in the Nazi party was badly damaged in November 1944, when many of the prisoner functionaries he had appointed were rounded up by the Gestapo and revealed to have been involved in resistance activities inside the camp, most notably the

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...

of V-weapons during the production process. After it was revealed that Förschner had failed to report a bonus payment of he had received from Mittelwerk GmbH, he was dismissed as commander of Mittelbau-Dora in February 1945, and replaced by former

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...

commandant Richard Baer. After being relieved of command at Mittelbau-Dora, Förschner was transferred to

Dachau Dachau () was the first concentration camp built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents which consisted of: communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is lo ...

, where he served briefly as commandant of the sub-camp of Kaufering.

Trial and conviction

In April 1945, Förschner was taken prisoner by the US Army. He was a defendant in the Dachau concentration camp trial, in which he was indicted for war crimes stemming from his tenure at Kaufering. Namely, Förschner was charged with responsibility for the brutal conditions which prevailed in the camp and his role in the management of prisoner executions. He was convicted by a US military tribunal and sentenced to death, along with 35 other co-defendants, on 13 December 1945. He was hanged at Landsberg Prison on 28 May 1946.Ernst Klee: ''Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945.'' Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 158

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Forschner, Otto 1902 births 1946 deaths People from Nördlingen People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Executed people from Bavaria Holocaust perpetrators in Germany Buchenwald concentration camp personnel Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp personnel Dachau concentration camp personnel SS-Sturmbannführer Dachau trials executions Reichswehr personnel Waffen-SS personnel Executed Nazi concentration camp commandants Executed mass murderers