RuSHA Trial, Nuremberg, Germany, 1947-1948

The RuSHA trial (officially, United States of America vs. Ulrich Greifelt, et al) was a trial against 14 SS officials charged with implementing Nazi racial policies. It was the eighth of the twelve trials held in Nuremberg by the U.S. authorities for Nazi war crimes after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts in their occupation zone in Germany, not before the International Military Tribunal, although they took place in the same rooms, at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). Only four of the fourteen defendants were members of the RuSHA (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, the "Race and Settlement Main Office"). Others belonged to the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (Reichskommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums, RKFDV; a post held by Heinrich Himmler); the Repatriation Office for Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, VoMi); and the Lebensborn society. The charges centered on their racial cleansing and resettlement activities. The judges in this case, heard before Military Tribunal I, were Lee B. Wyatt (presiding judge), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia; Daniel T. O'Connell of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, and Johnson T. Crawford from Oklahoma. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor. The indictment was served on July 7, 1947; the trial lasted from October 20, 1947 until March 10, 1948.