After the war ended in Europe in May 1945, Rüsselsheim was occupied by the U.S. Army. The killings were reported and the bodies were located on 28 June 1945. Eleven residents of Rüsselsheim, including Josef Hartgen, were arrested and put on trial in late July 1945 in Darmstadt, a town that was destroyed in a British night attack in September 1944. The trials would be the first war crime tribunals in Germany prior to the Nuremberg trials in 1946.