Why Were Female Concentration Guards Executed?

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[00:00:00]At the end of World War II, when the Allies liberated many concentration camps, they discovered something they never expected to see.

[00:00:08]They found many female guards who had fearsome reputations and brutal streaks.

[00:00:14]Many of these women began the Second World War as ordinary civilians who had jobs like nurses, hairdressers, and even models. But as the influence of the Nazi Party increased, many women sought jobs inside of the concentration camps.

[00:00:28]Here they could delve into their darker sides and wield immense power over helpless and suffering people.

[00:00:36]Women such as Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, Irma Grese, and Elisabeth Volkenrath turned into beasts within the camps. And at the end of the conflict, they were brought to trials and the courtroom were disgusted to hear about their crimes.

[00:00:49]These women had sent thousands to their deaths inside the gas chambers, had taken lives with their bare hands, and even encouraged their dogs to maul prisoners.

[00:00:59]For these reasons, it might seem simple and straightforward why female concentration camp guards were executed at the end of World War II. But why else did this happen?

[00:01:09]The situation was actually much more complex than you've probably ever thought.

[00:01:14]As the Nazis increased their stranglehold over Germany, the head of the paramilitary organization, the SS, Heinrich Himmler, ordered the construction of a specific women's concentration camp.

[00:01:25]These expanded and many people had found themselves arrested and prisoners of the Nazis for opposing them and holding different political views. And women all over Germany were being arrested for voicing their discontent.

[00:01:39]The largest all-female camp of Ravensbrück opened in May 1939, and this served as a central camp for female prisoners. To staff these sites, the SS wanted mainly women to serve as guards, and some were conscripted into working there.

[00:01:56]Others volunteered and were lured into the idea of working within these brutal sites by the promise of consistently good pay, the possibility of promotion, and the option to serve their Reich and dictator.

[00:02:08]Many women who became camp guards moved from the BDM, the League of German Maidens, the youth group for teenage girls that was set up, and this continued the brainwashing the young women were receiving.

[00:02:20]This group turned young skeptical women into ardent Nazis.

[00:02:25]But as the Second World War turned against the Germans, many guards who worked inside of the expanded concentration camps were sent to fight on the front lines to repel the Allied advancements, and women were drafted in to help out.

[00:02:38]Many received short training stints, but they were then, during this, schooled in how to become monsters.

[00:02:44]They were taught how to keep the inmates in submission, and how to terrorize them.

[00:02:49]Inside the camps, women were responsible for overseeing the women's barracks, and they often shot and tortured prisoners, and also carried out public executions in roll call yards.

[00:03:00]But what specifically was the gallows or an execution sought for female guards at the end of World War II?

[00:03:06]At the end of the conflict, Allied investigators found a huge amount of evidence showing that certain female guards had taken part in beatings, torture, starvation policies, abuses of prisoners, and also selections of inmates who were then sent to the gas chambers.

[00:03:22]Much of this evidence came directly from survivors of the camps, and because of this, some women were arrested and were put on trial for war crimes.

[00:03:31]One of the main reasons these women were then executed was because witnesses and evidence directly linked them to acts of murder and violence.

[00:03:40]Survivors described guards whipping prisoners, kicking inmates to death, setting dogs on people, and helping send inmates to the gas chambers.

[00:03:50]Liberated prisoners gave testimony to Allied investigators almost immediately after the camps were freed.

[00:03:57]In many cases, multiple witnesses independently described the same female guard committing acts of cruelty.

[00:04:04]Prosecutors also used camp records, photographs, medical reports, and physical evidence gathered from the camps. Some guards became especially notorious because survivors remembered them so clearly years later.

[00:04:18]Their behavior inside of these sites made them very feared figures amongst the prisoners.

[00:04:24]The involvement of women in the concentration camps did shock many after the war.

[00:04:29]In the 1940s, many societies still viewed women primarily as caregivers or mothers, and this was what the Nazis wanted from women inside of Germany.

[00:04:38]They wanted them to have as many children as possible for Hitler and the Reich, but as labor shortages came to a head, women entered the camps to work in large numbers. The idea inside Allied nations that women could willingly participate in mass murder horrified the public. Because of this, female guards like Irma Grese often attracted enormous media attention during post-war trials.

[00:05:02]Newspapers frequently described them as sadistic and monstrous. Female guards sometimes became infamous symbols of Nazi cruelty because people found it difficult to reconcile traditional views of women with the brutality which was uncovered inside the camps.

[00:05:17]The fact they were women also did not excuse them execution and death. They were tried as criminals regardless of their gender, and this was why they were not given more lenient treatment.

[00:05:29]One of the most famous post-war trials was the Belsen trials, which was held by the British military in 1945.

[00:05:36]The trial focused on staff from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and those who had worked at Auschwitz. The best known female defendant was Irma Grese. She was only in her early 20s, but already had developed a reputation for extreme cruelty.

[00:05:51]Survivors accused her of beating prisoners, carrying a whip, shooting inmates, and participating in selections for the gas chambers.

[00:05:59]Grese, despite her age, too, was found guilty and was executed by hanging in December 1945 alongside other female guards, Johanna Bormann and Elisabeth Volkenrath.

[00:06:10]Grese's execution was a key moment in legal history, as she was condemned as a female war criminal, something which was incredibly rare. But it was equally justified because of her actions.

[00:06:22]Female guards were also prosecuted in trials connected to the Stutthof concentration camp.

[00:06:27]Several women were sentenced to death and were publicly executed in front of a crowd of 20,000 people in Poland after being convicted of crimes against prisoners.

[00:06:37]These executions were carried out publicly because the authorities wanted to demonstrate that those responsible for camp atrocities were being punished.

[00:06:46]Large crowds attended some of the executions due to the intense anger felt after the war. But the legal basis for these executions was that guards had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

[00:06:59]Prosecutors argued that concentration camps were part of a massive system of persecution, forced labor, torture, and murder.

[00:07:08]If guards knowingly participated in that system, especially through direct abuse or murder, they should be held criminally responsible.

[00:07:16]In some cases, prosecutors argued that simply working willingly in the camps showed participation in mass murder because the purpose of the camp was widely understood by staff.

[00:07:27]When Allied troops liberated sites such as Belsen, they discovered horrific scenes. Thousands of bodies lay unburied, survivors were starving, and disease spread throughout the camps.

[00:07:38]Photographs and newsreel footage shocked the world. There was enormous pressure on governments and military authorities to punish those responsible quickly.

[00:07:47]Female guards captured directly in the camps became highly visible targets of public anger because they'd been part of the very system that ordinary people were now seeing for the first time.

[00:07:58]As mentioned, many were actually beaten to death by prisoners and also Allied soldiers who encompass this anger.

[00:08:04]Although some female guards were executed, mostly through hanging, most of them were not.

[00:08:10]Thousands of women who had worked in the concentration camp systems but only a relatively small number received the death sentence.

[00:08:17]Many were given prison sentences instead and others were released after relatively short periods.

[00:08:23]Some escaped punishment completely, especially during the later decades of the Cold War, when interest in prosecuting lower-ranking personnel declined. Courts also varied in how they judged responsibility.

[00:08:36]Some trials in the immediate post-war years were very severe, but later courts often demanded more precise evidence directly linking individuals to murder.

[00:08:45]The trials of the female concentration camp guards helped establish the principle that women could be held equally responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

[00:08:55]Gender did not protect individuals from prosecution if evidence showed that they had taken part in atrocities.

[00:09:03]For survivors of the camps, these trials and executions represented an attempt to achieve justice after years of suffering.

[00:09:11]Even so, many people believed that numerous perpetrators, both male and female, were never fully punished for their role inside the Nazi concentration camps.

[00:09:22]Thank you for watching.

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