RuSHA Trial

The RuSHA Trial (or, officially, The United States of America vs. Ulrich Greifelt, et al.) was the eighth of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but 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).

In the RuSHA Trial, the 14 defendants were all officials of various SS organizations responsible for the implementation of the Nazi "pure race" programme: the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA), the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germanism (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 these 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.