‘Enfer des femmes’: Britain and the Ravensbrück-Hamburg Trials

Between December 1946 and June 1948 a series of seven Trials were conducted by a British Military Court. Known as the Ravensbrück-Hamburg Trials (RHTs), the defendants were former guards, doctors, nurses and prisoner functionaries (Kapos) from Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. These Trials are part of a number of forgotten trials concerning Nazi war crimes. Ravenbrück’s status as the largest women’s Camp during the Second World War means that evidence from the Trials sheds an important light on the experiences of women in concentration camps, as prisoners and perpetrators.

This thesis has two aims; firstly to produce a history of the RHTs, unveiling political decisions made by Britain and the Allied powers leading up to and during the Trials. These include decisions that were influenced by the growing Cold War, such as Britain’s refusal to hand Ravesbrück defendant’s to Warsaw in 1946, and the reasons behind the Trials fading from public memory. The second aim is to utilize evidence from the Trials to evaluate the role of Ravensbrück within the wider history of concentration camps, exposing the atrocities that took place therein and sharing the experiences of female prisoners.