Dachau concentration camp Dachau administration registered 12,596 deaths from typhus at the camp over the same period. Dachau was the third concentration camp to be liberated by British or American Allied forces. After the takeover of Bavaria on 9 March 1933, Heinrich Himmler, then Chief of Police in Munich, began to speak with the administration of an unused gunpowder and munitions factory. He toured the site to see if it could be used for quartering protective-custody prisoners. The Concentration Camp at Dachau was opened 22 March 1933, with the arrival of about 200 prisoners from Stadelheim Prison in Munich and the Landsberg fortress
Dachau trials Dachau trials The Dachau trials were held for all war criminals caught in the United States zones in occupied Germany and Austria, as well as for those individuals accused of committing war crimes against American citizens and its military personnel. The trials, which were held within the walls of the former Dachau concentration camp, were conducted entirely by American military personnel whose legal authority had been conferred by the Judge Advocate General's Department within the U.S. Third Army. The Dachau Military Tribunal's chief prosecutor was 32 year-old William Denson, a U.S. Army lawyer. The chief defence counsel was Lieutenant Colonel