German War Criminals Research Articles

The Tehran discussions, formal and informal

A comparative study of memoirs and documentary sources pertaining to the Tehran Conference allows the author to challenge and correct some of the prevalent positions held within both historiography and popular literature on the subject. In contrast with the pervasive assumption regarding the stance of the “Big Three” on the matter of the Second Front (Stalin and Roosevelt were proponents of an expeditious invasion of Normandy, in contrast to Churchill’s ‘Mediterranean-Balkan’ strategy), he demonstrates that the US President, ostensibly under the influence of his military advisers, was initially amenable to supporting British plans. It was only through the persistent efforts of Soviet diplomacy that the American leader was persuaded to join Stalin in prioritising Operation Overlord. The real breakthrough on the Second Front issue occurred during and after an informal dinner hosted by Roosevelt after the first session of the conference on 28 November 1943, which was earlier than had previously been asserted. In the course of these informal discussions, which have been largely overlooked in previous historiography, the Soviets proposed several important projects for a post-war settlement in Europe. These proposals were largely agreed upon by Western representatives. A consensus was reached on the issue of changing the Soviet-Polish and Polish-German borders, which was subsequently updated and ratified at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Additionally, the article addresses other matters pertaining to the Tehran Conference, including discussions on German war criminals, the role of interpreters, and other pertinent topics.

ПРЕСТУПЛЕНИЯ НАЦИСТОВ ПРОТИВ ДЕТСТВА НА НОВГОРОДСКОМ СУДЕБНОМ ПРОЦЕССЕ (7 ДЕКАБРЯ - 18 ДЕКАБРЯ 1947 Г.)

Children of Leningrad region were victims of many Nazi crimes: forced labor, beatings, forced donation, deportation, punitive actions, etc. The focus of this article is on crimes against children investigated at the Novgorod trial of German war criminals in 1947. Based on a wide range of sources, some of which are being introduced into the scientific circulation for the first time, the course of evidence collection and the order of court deliberations are analyzed. Although a significant number of child victims were connected with the mass extermination of Jewish and Roma families on the basis of their ethnicity (these crimes in Leningrad region were committed in 1941 by the Einsatzgruppe A), but it was not possible to bring the perpetrators to justice, so at the Novgorod trial these crimes were heard only in a general context. Therefore, the topic of crimes against children was presented at the Novgorod trial as part of the investigation of anti-partisan actions and deportations. Because of the haste in its organization, many crimes against children of Leningrad region, especially during the first period of occupation, remained anonymous.

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE PROBLEM RELATED TO THE LEGAL AND MATERIAL SITUATION OF WAR PRISONERS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The article is dedicated to the 105th anniversary of the end of the First World War, which causes, along with the special military operation being conducted in the Ukraine and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, close attention of the world community to the problems of war captivity. Colossal geopolitical changes in the international arena are forcing the world community to look more seriously and from a different angle at the aspects of this complex issue, which threatens a humanitarian catastrophe in the conditions of current high-tech ruthless war.
 
 The purpose of the study is to make an analytical review of Soviet, Russian, regional and foreign historiography of the problem related to the legal and material situation of war prisoners during the First World War, which makes it possible to conclude about the degree of knowledge covering the problem in general and the issue of downbedding and using war prisoners during the First World War in the territory of Chuvashia in particular.
 
 Materials and methods. The aspects of the issue are investigated on the basis of the method of analyzing scientific publications of domestic and foreign historiography, information materials of the thematic collection of documents of the State Historical Archive of the Chuvash Republic dated 2014. The historical science contains the historiographical analysis of the experience in studying this topic in Russia and abroad which made it possible to clarify the chronological and geographical framework of the problem of war prisoners during the World War. A comprehensive historiographical assessment helped to establish the level of knowledge of the topic, which affects formulation of tasks, and also highlights those aspects of the issue under study that need additional study. The historical method, which refers to the methods of the theoretical level, made it possible to study the emergence and development of the object of research – the problems of war prisoners – in chronological sequence both abroad and in Russia, and at different stages of its historical development in particular and in a regional context. The general scientific method of generalization enabled us to express the main results in the general position, to draw conclusions on the problem we are studying.
 
 The scientific novelty of this work is complete absence of fundamental research works on the topic under study at the regional level. This article is based on scientific publications of domestic and foreign historiography, information materials of the thematic collection of documents kept in the State Historical Archive of the Chuvash Republic dated 2014.
 
 Study results. The author considers the urgency of the topic which is dedicated to the 105th anniversary of the First World War’s end, and which is due to colossal geopolitical changes in the international arena. The Soviet historiography was studied, which paid very little attention to the problem of the war prisoners arrival to the territory of the Russian Empire during the World War, examining the issue only in the context of statistics of military losses. The article covers the aspects of the research work carried out by Russian and regional scientists, whose works closed many gaps in the scientific problem related to the legal and material situation of prisoners of war. The article pays attention to the degree of covering the issue in foreign historiography, the main aspects of the study in which were: firstly, psychological practices of mass experience by soldiers and officers behind the barbed wire; secondly, the humanitarian component of military captivity, associated primarily with the exchange of disabled people between warring countries; thirdly, the study of themes related to criminal prosecution and trials against German war criminals who had committed criminal acts against British and French was prisoners; fourth, the topic of social experience of war prisoners in Russia, as well as charitable activities and diplomatic settlement of maintaining war prisoners as the key moments of international politics during the World War.
 
 Conclusions. Despite the extent of previous research of the problems related to military captivity in Russian and foreign historiography, many issues at the regional level were not covered, including the aspects considered in this work. Therefore, it is necessary to continue fruitful research work in this direction.

Transitional Injustice at Leipzig: Negotiating Sovereignty and International Humanitarian Law in Germany after the First World War

AbstractThe article analyzes Allied attempts to try German war criminals after the First World War and the ensuing Leipzig trials. Historians of international law commonly describe these as the first (failed) attempt to break principles of national sovereignty by implementing principles of international humanitarian law, which were later realized at Nuremberg and The Hague. The article brackets the question of the Leipzig trials’ alleged success or failure by situating them not so much within the long-term history of international justice but, rather, within the political and intellectual culture of Weimar Germany. The article shows how the German government tried to use its limited domestic sovereignty in order to enhance its international sovereignty. By asking how German sovereignty was contested, negotiated, and reaffirmed, the article historicizes the Leipzig trials and also addresses the more general question of which conditions facilitate international war crimes trials. Drawing on the literature on transitional justice, this article suggests that contestations over German domestic and international sovereignty after the Versailles Treaty offer a more productive frame to understand the trials than measuring success according to international humanitarian law.

German-Greek Relations 1940–1960 and the Merten Affair by Heinz A. Richter

Reviewed by: German-Greek Relations 1940–1960 and the Merten Affair by Heinz A. Richter Mogens Pelt (bio) Heinz A. Richter, German-Greek Relations 1940–1960 and the Merten Affair. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz Verlag, 2019. Pp. 106. Cloth €30.00. This book takes up the so-called Merten Affair. Max Merten was a military administration counsellor who served with the Germans in Salonica during the Axis occupation of Greece from 1942–1944. He was arrested during a visit to Greece in 1957, and in 1959 he was convicted by a Greek military court for war crimes. Merten was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, but did not serve any time as he was released soon after the conviction. Upon his return to West Germany, he was arrested again on the same charges—but released only a few days later. Proceedings in West Germany dragged on for another nine years until the case was finally dropped due to lack of evidence. [End Page 476] Merten is one of the very few Germans ever brought to trial for crimes committed in Greece and the only one tried for crimes against Greek Jews. The Merten Affair garnered tremendous attention in both Greece and Germany and led to mutual recriminations. In Greece, the main accusation was that West Germany had demonstrated a total lack of interest in prosecuting war criminals for acts committed in Greece. Conversely, Greece was accused by West Germany of wanting to blackmail Bonn by using Merten as a proxy. The essence of these recriminations is that the West German authorities never took action against any individuals suspected of war crimes in Greece, while Greece had proposed an amnesty for German war criminals in exchange for reparations from Germany. The most sensitive issue was a confidential annex to the economic agreement of 13 November 1958—which paved the way for a DM 200 million state-to-state loan. Seemingly in response, Prime Minister Konstantine Karamanlis promised that Greece would suspend all charges against Merten and hand him over to Germany (Spiliotis 2000, 297), which only added fuel to the controversy. Merten himself exacerbated the situation; once he returned to West Germany, he launched a series of accusations against German and Greek political officials, including the claim that Karamanlis had profited from a stolen Jewish estate during the occupation and had collaborated with the German Security Service. These accusations were rebuffed by the German authorities and caused great consternation in Athens. The main argument of Richter's book is that Max Merten was innocent of war crimes and was used as a bargaining chip by the Greek state to extort money from West Germany. None of these claims is new, but they do reflect how Merten's defence proceeded in the West German media during the late 1950s (cf. e.g. Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung, 19 April 2015). However, Richter's claim that Merten was innocent runs counter to the conclusions reached by scholars during the last decades. Recent scholarship has convincingly demonstrated that Merten was deeply involved in the procedures that formed a part of Holocaust or resulted in other war crimes (Spiliotis 2000; Hagen Fleischer 1999, 2006). The book is divided into six chapters discussing in a chronological order Merten's career before and during and after the war. The first two chapters discuss Merten's role in Germany's deportation of the Jews of Salonica, the expropriation of the Jewish cemetery, the confiscation of Jewish property and the shooting of hostages and executions. Together the two chapters cover 29 pages of a total of 88 pages. The following two chapters discuss the relationship between Greece's perennial need for loans and foreign economic assistance to deal with its economic problems and the unfolding of the case against Merten covering 42 pages of a total of 88. The last two chapters focus on Merten's fight [End Page 477] for rehabilitation and the alleged existence of treasures belonging to Merten covering 11 pages of a total of 88. Richter bases his defence of Merten on later evidence given by witnesses to the German crimes against the Jews in Salonica, Merten's own accounts published in the daily newspaper Hamburger Echo and...

Ленинградский процесс над немецкими военными преступниками 1945–1946 гг.: Политические функции и медиатизация

Ленинградский процесс над немецкими военными преступниками 1945–1946 гг.: Политические функции и медиатизация

The Heidelberg Circle of Jurists and Its Struggle against Allied Jurisdiction: Amnesty-Lobbyism and Impunity-Demands for National Socialist War Criminals (1949–1955)

Abstract After the Second World War, the Allies began a program of legal prosecution of war criminals who were to be sentenced in fair and public processes. However, these processes soon evoked vivid criticism, and by no means simply from former National Socialists. The Heidelberg Circle of Jurists (‘Heidelberger Juristenkreis’) is an example of a heterogeneous lobby group including victims of National Socialism as well as supporters of this ideology demanding amnesty for German war criminals between 1949 and 1955. Numbering forty high-ranking judges, lawyers, politicians, professors and church representatives, the Circle had access to a vast network and had a considerable impact on Allied and German war-crimes policy. On the basis of new source material, this article examines the Circle’s evolution, its apparently contradictory composition, its argumentation and its aims, by focusing on three of its members, the former minister of justice of the Weimar Republic and legal philosopher Gustav Radbruch, the internationalist Erich Kaufmann and the Nuremberg lawyer Hellmut Becker.

Kerstin von Lingen. Allen Dulles, the OSS, and Nazi War Criminals: The Dynamics of Selective Prosecution.

The six months between January 1945 and the German surrender in early May was a confusing and complicated time in the history of World War II. Not only were Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt jockeying for power in the postwar world, they were also trying to balance the moral demands that German wartime atrocities placed on them. High-ranking German perpetrators were doing their own maneuvering, especially to avoid the retribution that was promised to their victims by the Allies in the Moscow Declaration of November 1, 1943. For example, one survivor of the war was Karl Wolff, Heinrich Himmler’s chief of staff and, as some would argue, the “second [highest] man in the SS” (2), who successfully managed to avoid Allied prosecution in the years following the German surrender. Why and how it was possible for one of Germany’s highest-ranking SS officers to avoid justice is at the heart of Kerstin von Lingen’s latest book about German war criminals who operated in the Italian theater during the war.

The Nuremberg Trial, Seventy Years Later

The trial of the major German war criminals by the International Military Tribunal is universally recognized as a pivotal juncture in the development of international criminal law. Seventy years on, what can be learnt from that experience? This essay examines the Nuremberg Principles and their legacy in national and international law in the seven decades since they took place. It first examines the Nuremberg trials themselves along with the important role played by Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor for the United States, before turning to the impact of the trials on the development of international law, national case law of individual states and the establishment of the ad hoc international criminal tribunals. It then examines two modern challenges to the Nuremberg legacy: firstly, the unfinished business of codifying and enforcing the Nuremberg principles themselves, including the need for a new global convention on crimes against humanity and universal ratification of the ICC Statute: and. secondly the challenges posed by the noncompliance of states with the Nuremberg Principles, particularly with respect to the unlawful use of force and the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Finally, the essay concludes that: (1) international justice does not need to be perfect to work; (2) international criminal trials are not the only way to ensure accountability; and (3) both the Nuremberg trials themselves and the subsequent establishment of the International Criminal Court have had long-lasting and extraordinary effects on the modern world.

British Justice in Western Germany, 1949-55

Britain did not release its final two prisoners from the prison it administered in West Germany until July 1957, eight years after the formation of the Federal Republic and the formal ending of its military rule. By 1949, Germany, once the enemy of Europe assumed greater strategic significance in the minds of western politicians seeking its reintegration within a new European family of nations to forestall fears of Soviet hegemony, not least because it now wanted to re-arm West Germany. The continuing incarceration of German war criminals had become a lesser priority in the battleground of Cold War ideologies. The Adenauer government pressurised Britain to honour its pledge to review the sentences for the hundreds of detainees who remained in custody following the Nuremberg trials. Britain’s moral mandate to govern Germany from 1945 was underpinned by its claims to be exporting democratic liberal values but, as this article explains, was exposed in its illiberal handling of the war criminals issue which ran counter to the new moves towards reconciliation.

The Mauthausen Trial: American Military Justice in Germany

The Mauthausen Trial is a well researched, carefully crafted and thought-provoking book. This concise volume would have been even more compelling if the author had provided additional comparative context and developed a more sharply profiled assessment of his case study. In 1946, a US military commission court tried sixty-one Nazis for war crimes committed in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Having spent an average of four hours on each case, the court handed down fifty-eight death sentences. Forty-nine of the defendants were executed in May 1947, turning the proceedings into the most deadly trial in US legal history. The nine remaining defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment but quickly set free, along with many other German war criminals in Allied custody. The West German population and its elected officials had insisted on the release of the Nazi criminals in exchange for West German allegiance in the Cold War. Tomaz Jardim clearly acknowledges the shortcomings of the Mauthausen trial. The military commission court operated according to what Jardim euphemistically calls ‘relaxed rules of evidence’ (p 115). It accepted testimony based on hearsay, evidence about crimes not covered by the courts’ mandate, and confessions extracted under dubious circumstances. Moreover, the sentences were not subject to an independent appellate process and instead reviewed within the army chain of command. Finally, as a result of the trial strategy developed by the prosecution and accepted by the court, ‘the burden of proof shifted onto the accused’ rendering the charges ‘virtually unchallengeable’ (pp. 172, 170).

Portret oprawcy – rzecz do napisania – the thing to write

This article synthesises the topic of the views of Nazi war criminals in the Polish post-war prose (1944–1989). The author enumerates the most important pieces of Polish prose treating the motif of German war criminals. This outline is an invitation to describe a portrait of the executioners and it signals several important problems related to the subject, including the question of the genesis of evil and the most important presentations of Nazis in Polish literature. Another significant issue is that of the transformation of the image of Nazis over time during the Communist era in Poland and the related stereotypes of Germans in Polish culture through history. The article also briefly discusses the topic of the executioners in the work of Jonathan Littell and Bogdan Rutha

Hilary Earl . The Nuremberg SS‐Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945–1958: Atrocity, Law, and History . New York : Cambridge University Press . 2009 . Pp. xv, 336. $85.00.

As Hilary Earl's study of the SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial shows, Case No. 9 was the least controversial of the twelve subsequent trials staged by the Americans against German war criminals at Nuremberg. Since their own account of the mass murders lay on the table and as leading defendant Otto Ohlendorf openly admitted to his supervision of the murder of 90,000 men, women, and children, the trial against Ohlendorf and his twenty-two codefendants was an open-and-shut case for both the prosecution and the court. In fact, the only real puzzle about the trial concerned the explanation for the conduct of Ohlendorf and his colleagues: in brief, their defense. Although Earl raises many issues in her thoroughly researched book on the Einsatzgruppen case, ranging from the lack of counsel for the accused during pretrial interrogation down to the timing of Adolf Hitler's extermination order, in my view the most intriguing parts of her study relate to the two main protagonists: trial defendant Otto Ohlendorf and judge Michael Angelo Musmanno. Of all the Einsatzgruppen commanders in the dock, Ohlendorf was probably the most intelligent, but he was certainly also the most enigmatic of the lot. Why he freely admitted to his command over the Einsatzgruppen killings at a time when his allied captors were still very much in the dark on the subject remains a mystery, even though Earl gives a highly detailed account of the circumstances under which Ohlendorf made his disclosure. Earl suggests that Ohlendorf's direct frankness may be explained by his inability to grasp the criminal nature of his actions. This substitution of one puzzle with another brings us to the rationalization of the conduct of Ohlendorf and his fellow mass killers.

Atrocities on trial: historical perspectives on the politics of prosecuting war crimes

Foreword by Michael R. Marrus Introduction: War Crimes Trials and the HistorianPart I. Precedents in PunishmentThe Lessons of Leipzig: Punishing German War Criminals after the First World War / Jurgen Matthaus Early Postwar Justice in the American Zone: Hadamar Murder Factory Trial / Patricia Heberer U.S. Army War Crimes Trials in Germany, 1945-1947 / Lisa YavnaiPart II. Allied Courts and German Crimes in the Context of NurembergLaw and Politics in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, 1946-1949 / Jonathan Friedman Nuremberg Doctors' Trial and the Limitations of Context / Michael R. Marrus The Scars of Ravensbruck: Medical Experiments and British War Crimes Policy, 1945-1950 / Ulf Schmidt Sachsenhausen Trials: War Crimes Prosecution in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in West and East Germany / Jonathan FriedmanPart III. Postwar Society and the Nazi PastNo Ordinary Criminal: Georg Heuser, Other Mass Murderers, and West German Justice / Jurgen Matthaus Tainted Law: West German Judiciary and the Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals / Rebecca Wittmann Justice in Austrian Courts? Case of Josef W. and Austria's Difficult Relationship with Its Past / Patricia HebererPart IV. Current Aspects and ImplicationsCrimes-against-Humanity Trials in France and Their Historical and Legal Contexts: A Retrospective Look / Richard J. Golsan Milestones and Mythologies: Impact of Nuremberg / Donald Bloxham Prosecution, Condemnation, and Punishment: Ethical Implications of Atrocities on Trial / John K. Roth

Bishop Bell and the Trial of German War Criminals: a Moral History

This article present a consciously 'moral' and 'historical' discussion of Bishop Bell's opposition to a number of war crimes trials in the wake of the defeat of Germany in 1945. It argues that however consistently Bell had worked on behalf of the victims of the National Socialist persecution of the Jews, he was now guilty of acting not in the interests of those victims but on behalf of the dubious claims of a number of those directly implicated in mass-murder. This represented a major error of judgement. But it was no accident. Bell adhered to a view that distinguished too naively between the Nazis and those who represented another, Christian Germany. It was the legitimisation of this 'other' Germany, not least in face of the danger of Soviet communism, which now mattered most to him. The danger of this argument was that it led the bishop into questionable arguments and controversial company, and that it did nothing to encourage a proper public acknowledgement of the fate of the Jews of occupied Europe.

'Informed Consent' in Public Health Activities: Based on the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, UNESCO

The objective of this paper is to discuss the importance of obtaining informed consent for conducting epidemiological studies and public health activities, based on the Report of the UNESCO's Working Group on Informed Consent. The Report of the UNESCO's Working Group on Informed Consent was reviewed and discussed in connection with the ethical considerations of public health activities and epidemiological research. It was at the Nuremberg Trial for the German war criminals of the Second World War that the principle of 'consent' was first stated as a consequence of the medical abuses carried out during the War. As a result of the Trial, the Nuremberg Code came out in 1947. Since then, various international declarations or ethical principles on 'informed consent' have been developed and published. These ethical principles on 'informed consent' have mostly to do with the clinical research that involves human subjects, and not with epidemiological studies and public health activities. However, UNESCO recently issued a comprehensive Report on Informed Consent based on the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights adopted in 2005, and this included detailed guidelines on informed consent in epidemiological studies and public health activities. Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights emphasizes the principle of autonomy to protect the human rights of the human subjects involved in any public health activities and epidemiological research. As a practical guideline, obtaining informed consent is strongly recommended.

Applying the Death Penalty to Crimes of Genocide

After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the United Nations Security Council moved quickly to establish an international tribunal to indict the architects of the slaughter. Whether motivated by a sincere desire for international justice or a self-serving desire to assuage international guilt for the lack of significant military intervention, one thing is clear: the Security Council began a program that, when coupled with its establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, represented the most significant return to international criminal justice since the Allied prosecution of German war criminals at Nuremberg. But so much had changed since 1951. Whereas the Nuremberg Tribunal imposed death sentences for the most culpable instigators of the Holocaust, there would be no death sentences for the architects of the Hutu genocidal campaign against the Tutsi. Over the course of forty years, there was a sea shift in attitudes about the legality of the death penalty. When the Allies announced their decision to apply the death penalty at Nuremberg, few objected or suggested that executions would violate international human rights law. Indeed, Churchill was initially suspicious of the plan for a war crimes tribunal, having assumed that what remained of the Nazi leadership would simply be executed on the battlefield. As the proceedings unfolded, there were isolated calls for leniency and clemency, and even complaints of victors’ justice, but certainly no suggestion that executions violated international law as such.

Inside the Nuremberg Trial: a prosecutor's comprehensive account

Inside the Nuremberg Trial is a two volume set that provides the most comprehensive and accessible representation of the trial of the major German war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany following World War II. The author discusses the evidence, the arguments of counsel for both the Prosecution and the Defense, and the judgment of the International Military Tribunal. He covers each stage of the trial from early preparation to the judgment, and concludes with a summary of the legacy of the trial in recent history. Separate parts of the book deal with the presentation of the American, British, French, and Soviet delegations of the Prosecution, and separate chapters discuss the defense of each of the twenty-two defendants and each of the seven accused organizations. In addition, the author deals with the evidence of the persecution of the Jews before World War II through the evidence of the persecution and murder of Jews, Gypsies and others during the war. Separate chapters focus on the murders by the Einsatzgruppen (Special Task Force Group) and the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto.

The South Inflamed! The Case of Henry Wirz

To the Editor. — Although I have recently resigned myself to an open season on the Confederacy following the biased public broadcasting series Civil War, I take exception to the comments made by Skolnick 1 in his article. The linking of Major (erroneously called Captain) Henry Wirz, MD, with the German war criminals is inappropriate and uncalled for. These historical facts were ignored: (1) Major Wirz, although a German-trained physician, was a Confederate line infantry officer, not a medical corps officer 2 ; (2) the death rate at Andersonville, Ga, was no worse, and by some accounts better, 3 than that at comparable Union prisoner of war (POW) camps; (3) General Grant's decision to cancel the long-standing prisoner exchanges directly caused the overcrowded conditions; (4) the Yankee blockade and General Sherman's scorched earth policies on his march to the sea caused the decreased food supply, which prisoners and guards shared

The Trial of German War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany

The Trial of German War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany