Execution of Hans Möser
- Bestial Nazi Guard at Mittelbau Dora & Auschwitz Concentration Camps -WW2

11 June 2022

Category: Male Nazi Guards

Hans Möser was born on the 7th of April 1906 and in October 1929 he Joined the Nazi Party and in July 1931 he joined the SS. Möser had been posted to the various concentration camps such as Hinzert, Neuengamme and Auschwitz before he was sent to Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in May 1944 where ho committed his worst crimes. The slave-laborers from Mittelbau-Dora were used not only for production of V-weapons such as the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rockets which were aimed primarily at London, but also to extend the nearby tunnels in Kohnstein which is a hill which served as a natural protection against the Allied bombing for the underground factory named Mittelwerk in which the V-weapons were produced.

In early April 1945, as the American 3rd Armored Division was advancing towards the Mittelbau-Dora, Hans Möser was a transport leader during the evacuation of prisoners from the camp. The Nazi regime needed the prisoners as slave labor and the Nazis wanted to remove all the evidence of the horrors and brutality the poor inmates had experienced. The main objective of this particular death march was to transport the prisoners to other camps such as Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, or Neuengamme by train or by foot. Those who could no longer walk, were killed.

Prisoners burned alive, suffocated, or shot

The largest atrocity of this death march occurred on the 13th of April, 1945 in the area of town called Gardelegen. Out of 4,000 prisoners who arrived here, more than 1,000 were too weak or sick to continue marching any further. After they were forcibly taken into a large barn, the SS guards barricaded the walls and set fire to gasoline-soaked straw. 1,016 inmates were burned alive, suffocated, or shot by the SS as they tried in desperation to escape by digging under barn’s walls. This inhuman tragedy became known as Gardelegen massacre.

In the end, justice finally caught up with Möser when he was arrested by the allies and tried at the Dora Trial which was a part of the Dachau trials. On the 30th of December, 1947 the US military tribunal found Hans Möser guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging. He was 42 years old when he was executed on the 26th of November 1948.

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