Franz Strasser an Austrian-German former NSDAP Kreisleiter and convicted murderer of Allied pilots.
Franz Strasser, born in 1899 – 10 December 1945) was an Austrian-German former NSDAP Kreisleiter and convicted murderer.
In December 1944, in Kaplitz in Czechoslovakia, 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 who stayed with pilot Warren Woodruff when he landed their plane in a field. They had voluntarily surrendered and were taken away in a truck. A Captain Lindemeyer, who later committed suicide, reportedly killed the other three, and the court verdict suggests that the killings were originally Lindemeyer’s idea.
On 24 August 1945, Strasser was tried in an Allied military court, which had provided a translator for him during the trial.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.” He was found guilty and was sentenced to execution by hanging at Landsberg prison. On 10 December in 1945, age 46, Strasser was hanged by the U.S hangman John Chris Woods 
and died as German Catholic priest and long-time hospital chaplain Karl Morgenschweis 
prayed for the convicted murderer. Strasser id buried at the Spöttinger prison cemetery. 
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