Otto Förschner was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Schutzstaffel

Schutzstaffel

The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

 officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.

Brought up on his parents farm in Dürrenzimmern

Nördlingen

Nördlingen is a town in the Donau-Ries district, in Bavaria, Germany, with a population of 20,000. It is located in the middle of a complex meteorite crater, called the Nördlinger Ries. The town was also the place of two battles during the Thirty Years' War...

, Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

, he enlisted in the army in 1922 and remained a soldier until 1934. The day he left the army Förschner enlisted in the Militarised Formations of the SS, which formed the basis of the Waffen-SS

Waffen-SS

The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...

.

Following the outbreak of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he was transferred to the SS-Totenkopfverbände

SS-Totenkopfverbände

SS-Totenkopfverbände , meaning "Death's-Head Units", was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich....

. His initial concentration camp service was as a guard at Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...

 in 1941. From there he rose to become commandant of Dora concentration camp although in this role he was described as "too soft" with his subordinates, a fact that delayed promotions throughout his SS career. By the end of the war he held the rank of Sturmbannführer

Sturmbannführer

Sturmbannführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party equivalent to major, used both in the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel...

. He was moved to a post at Dachau concentration camp in 1945 with Richard Baer

Richard Baer

Richard Baer was a German Nazi official with the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer and commander of the Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to February 1945. He was a member of N.S.D.A.P...

 taking command of Dora.

After the war he was captured and tried by the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 military court for cruelty to prisoners, including beating one to death with an iron bar, as part of the Dachau Trials. He was hanged on 28 May 1946 at Landsberg Prison

Landsberg Prison

Landsberg Prison is a penal facility located in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west of Munich and south of Augsburg....

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