Execution of Nazi War Criminal Franz Strasser
Execution of Nazi War Criminal Franz Strasser On this date in 1946, former Nazi Kreisleiter Franz Strasser was hanged at Landsberg Prison for war crimes. Strasser was condemned for shooting five downed American airmen in Czechoslovakia in December 1944, an American tribunal dismissing the defense: “There is not a scintilla of evidence to support STRASSER’s contention that he shot the prisoners to prevent their escape.” (A pdf scan of the entire verdict is here.) On 9 December 1944, in Kaplice in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (present-day Czech Republic), 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 Karl Lindemeyer, the chief of police of the city. During Strasser's...