Otto Förschner (4 November 1902 – 28 May 1946) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It beg ...

'' (SS) officer and a

Nazi concentration camp From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...

commander. After serving with the ''

Waffen-SS The (; ) was the military branch, combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscr ...

'' on the Eastern Front, Förschner worked as a senior official at the

Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Nazi Germany, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (pre-1938 ...

(1942–1943) and later served as the

commandant Commandant ( or ; ) is a title often given to the officer in charge of a military (or other uniformed service) training establishment or academy. This usage is common in English-speaking nations. In some countries it may be a military or police ...

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 ...

(1943–1945) and Kaufering (1945). Following the German defeat, he was convicted of war crimes by US occupation authorities at the

Dachau trials The Dachau trials, also known as the Dachau Military Tribunal, handled the prosecution of almost every war criminal captured in the U.S. military zones in Allied-occupied Germany and in Allied-occupied Austria, and the prosecutions of military ...

and was 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 was ...

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

on 4 November 1902, and was raised on a farm owned by his family. In 1922, he enlisted in the ''

Reichswehr ''Reichswehr'' (; ) was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first two years of Nazi Germany. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army () was dissolved in order to be reshaped ...

'', 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-VT, ) 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 (order police) nor the , but military-trained men at the disposal of the . In time of wa ...

'', the organization that would eventually become the ''

''.

Tom Segev Tom Segev (; born March 1, 1945) is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's New Historians, a group critical of many of the country's traditional narratives. Biography Segev was born on March 1, 1945 in Jeru ...

, ''Soldiers of Evil'',

Berkley Books Berkley Books is an American imprint founded in 1955 by Charles Byrne and Frederic Klein owned by the Penguin Group unit of Penguin Random House. History Berkley Books began as an independent company in 1955. It was founded as "Chic News Compa ...

, 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 ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

in 1937. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he served as an officer with the ''

5th SS Panzer Division Wiking The 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking () or SS Division Wiking was an infantry and later an armoured division among the thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions of Nazi Germany. During World War II, the division served on the Eastern Front. It surrendere ...

''. After being wounded in action and declared medically unfit for combat duty, Förschner was transferred to the ''

SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; or 'SS Death's Head Battalions') was a major branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary (SS) organisation. It was responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps and extermination camps of Nazi Germany ...

'', taking over as '' Schutzhaftlagerführer'' (Preventative Detention Camp Leader) of the

in the spring of 1942. In September 1943, Förschner was given command over the newly built concentration camp of

, 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 V-weapons, known in original German as (, German: "retaliatory weapons", "reprisal weapons"), were a particular set of long-range artillery weapons designed for strategic bombing during World War II, particularly strategic bombing and Aerial ...

production facility of

Mittelwerk Mittelwerk (; German for "Central Works") was a German World War II factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flyin ...

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

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, 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 F ...

) 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, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

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, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

commandant Richard Baer. After being relieved of command at Mittelbau-Dora, Förschner was transferred to Dachau, 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 The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...

. He was a defendant in the Dachau concentration camp trial, in which he was indicted for

war crimes A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hos ...

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 Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...

. He was convicted by a US

military tribunal Military justice (or military law) is the body of laws and procedures governing members of the armed forces. Many nation-states have separate and distinct bodies of law that govern the conduct of members of their armed forces. Some states us ...

and sentenced to death, along with 35 other co-defendants, on 13 December 1945. He was hanged at

Landsberg Prison Landsberg Prison is a prison in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west-southwest of Munich and south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler was held in 1924, after the ...

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 Buchenwald concentration camp personnel Dachau concentration camp personnel Dachau trials executions Executed German mass murderers Executed Nazi concentration camp commandants Executed people from Bavaria Holocaust perpetrators in Germany Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp personnel People from Nördlingen People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Reichswehr personnel SS-Sturmbannführer Waffen-SS personnel