In mid-1944, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NAZI) SS established the Mühldorf camp complex in Bavaria as a satellite system of the Dachau concentration camp to provide labor for an underground installation for the production of the Messerschmitt 262 (Me-262), a jet fighter designed to challenge Allied air superiority over Germany. It was composed of four subcamps: Waldlager V and Waldlager VI (two camps adjacent to'each other and counted as one camp, also referred to as the Forest Camp), Mittergars Lager (also known as Cone Lager), Thalheim Lager, and Gendorf Lager.

Most of the prisoners were Hungarian Jews, but there were also Jews from Greece, France, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, and The Netherlands.

In late April, as the U.S. Army approached the camps, the Third Reich SS guards evacuated some 3,600 prisoners from the camp on death marches.

The U.S. Army War Crimes Investigating Team #6827 reported that beatings, overwork, unsanitary living conditions, exposure to the elements without adequate clothing and shelter, a starvation diet, and a patent disregard for medical needs resulted in the death of about 1,800 inmates. The team pathologist stated that overwork combined with a starvation diet was the chief cause of death at these camps.

A U.S. Military Tribunal was convened and fourteen defendants were charged with war crimes. Two of the defendants were German civilians: Dr. Erika Flocken, Dr., OT civilian employee: chief physician and responsible for all medical matters, and Otto Sperling, civilian employee: supervisor of cement mixing at main construction site.

On May 13, 1947, the court acquitted Bachmann and Ostermann. Auer, Flocken, Jergas, Spaeth, and Sperling were found guilty and were sentenced to death by hanging. Engelhardt and Giesler received life imprisonment. Gickeleiter, Griesinger, and Schmidberger were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, Gottschling to 15 years, and Bayha to 10 years. Those sentenced to serve time did so at War Criminal Prison No. 1, Landsberg, Germany, including Auer, who was executed there on November 26, 1948. The death sentences of defendants Flocken, Jergas, Spaeth, and Sperling were commuted to life imprisonment and eventually, their sentences were reduced further.