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

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 ...

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

Action

On 9 December 1944, in Kaplice in the

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a partially-annexation, annexed territory of Nazi Germany that was established on 16 March 1939 after the Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945), German occupation of the Czech lands. The protector ...

(present-day

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

), Franz Strasser killed two American airmen of the USAAF by shooting them with a Thompson submachine gun. They were members of a group of five airmen of the 20th Bomb Squadron 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 or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

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, 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 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 ...

References

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