concentration camp complex - National Archives and Records ...

I.4 The volume and diversity of the National Archives and Records
Administration’s (NARA) holdings reflect American involvement in the
liberation of Mauthausen and bringing to trial perpetrators of war crimes.
Wartime intelligence (textual records, drawings, and aerial photographs)
includes information on camp locations, conditions, and the use of forced
labor for German war industries. Planning for liberation required assess­
ments of this intelligence as well as practical preparations for emergency
relief measures. A number of international and American agencies partic­
ipated in successful secret negotiations with high­level German SS lead­
ers for prisoner exchanges and other early releases of selected camp inmates
in the spring of 1945. Liberation itself entailed the rapid deployment of
field and evacuation hospitals, typhus treatment centers, and mechanisms
for identification and repatriation of survivors. Investigating teams has­
tened to camp sites to secure evidence and interrogate survivors. The
apprehension of war crimes suspects, development of evidence, and pros­
ecution of crimes committed within its occupation zone fell to the U.S.
Armed Forces in Europe. Under the jurisdiction of the Army’s Deputy
Judge Advocate General for War Crimes, U.S. Army military courts tried
a total of 1,672 defendants in 489 cases from 1945 to 1949. Sixty­one of
these cases, involving over 300 defendants, pertain to Mauthausen and its
sub­camps. Evidence from Mauthausen also featured in the trials of major
war criminals at Nuremberg and in the notorious “Doctors’ Trial,” U.S. v.
Karl Brandt et al.
About the Records
I.5 Original Mauthausen records, such as entry and death registers, and other
captured German records introduced as evidence into war crimes proceedings
date to 1938–45, the operational lifespan of the camp complex. Records pro­
duced by U.S. Government agencies date from the combat phase of the war,
1941–45, to the late 1950s when the last convicted war criminals were paroled.
A very small amount of correspondence dealing with individual case files dates
to the early 1960s.
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