Franz Xaver Strasser (10 September 1899 – 10 December 1945) was an Austrian-German

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 ...

Kreisleiter ''Kreisleiter'' (; "District Leader") was a Nazi Party political rank and title which existed as a political rank between 1930 and 1945 and as a Nazi Party title from as early as 1928. The position of ''Kreisleiter'' was first formed to provide ...

'' (district leader) and war criminal. Strasser was the first war criminal to be judged at the Dachau trials.

Action

On 9 December 1944, in Kaplice in the

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; cs, Protektorát Čechy a Morava; its territory was called by the Nazis ("the rest of Czechia"). was a partially annexed territory of Nazi Germany established on 16 March 1939 following the German oc ...

(present-day

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. Th ...

), Franz Strasser killed two American airmen of the USAAF by shooting them with a

Thompson submachine gun The Thompson submachine gun (also known as the "Tommy Gun", "Chicago Typewriter", "Chicago Piano", “Trench Sweeper” or "Trench Broom") is a blowback-operated, air-cooled, magazine-fed selective-fire submachine gun, invented by United S ...

. They were members of a group of five airmen of the

20th Bomb Squadron The 20th Bomb Squadron is a unit of the 2d Operations Group of the United States Air Force located at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The 20th is equipped with the Boeing B-52H Stratofortress. Formed in May 1917 as the 20th Aero Squadron, t ...

who stayed with pilot Woodruff Warren when he landed their plane in a field. They had voluntarily surrendered and were taken away in a truck, accompanied by Strasser and

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

Karl Lindemeyer, the chief of police of the city. During Strasser's trial, evidence showed that Lindemeyer had killed three or four of the airmen, and the verdict suggested the murders were originally Lindemeyer's idea. The five men killed: * Woodruff J. Warren of Maryland * Donald L. Hart of Massachusetts * Frank Pinto Jr. of Texas * George D. Mayott of New York * Joseph Cox of Alabama

Arrest, trial, and execution

After Germany's surrender, U.S. Army officials sought four men for their involvement in the shootings: Strasser and Lindemeyer, and Hermann Nelböck and Walter Wolf, both of whom had accompanied Strasser on the drive to where the airmen were shot. Strasser was arrested in June 1945. Neither Nelböck nor Wolf were ever apprehended, albeit the court in Strasser's trial concluded they had no involvements in the actual murders. Lindemeyer could not be tried since he killed himself on 8 May 1945. On 24 August 1945, Strasser was tried by a U.S. military court in

Dachau , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

, which provided a translator for him during the trial. He was found guilty of committing war crimes and was sentenced to death by hanging. On 10 December 1945, Strasser was hanged at

Landsberg Prison Landsberg Prison is a penal facility 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, a ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Strasser, Franz 1899 births 1945 deaths Dachau trials executions Executed Austrian mass murderers Executed Austrian Nazis Austrian people of German descent Kreisleiter Massacres in 1944 Nazi war crimes in Czechoslovakia Perpetrators of World War II prisoner of war massacres