Treason Research Articles

Sentencing, Judicial Discretion, and Political Prisoners in Pre-War Nazi Germany

The tools of econometric analysis and inferential statistics reveal that senior Nazi-era judges in pre-war Germany exhibited statistically significant levels of discretion in their sentencing of individuals convicted of high treason or treason. In fact, some of these judges, though appointed to the People’s Court to serve the Nazi state, were inclined to show relative leniency, within certain political limits, when taking into account the characteristics, backgrounds, affiliations, actions, and experiences of those whom they convicted. A modicum of judicial autonomy can co-exist with dictatorship so long as it enhances the efficiency of the courts and does not impugn the regime.

Maximos Homologetes († 662): Martyrium, Märtyrerbewusstsein, „Martyriumssucht“?

Abstract:As soon as Maximos Confessor had died on August 13th 662 due to the effects of dismemberment—his punishment, following a charge of high treason against him and his students—he was seen and revered as a martyr and saint by his followers. During their seven-year banishment, after the first trial in the year 655, those punished interpreted their deliberately accepted punishment as martyrdom, which they documented in literary works, which were later called lawsuit protocols. They modeled the texts upon early Christian martyr trials, and used many elements of the theology of martyrdom for self-identification. By doing so, the group of Palestinian monks that followed Maximos tried to defend themselves against the charges brought against them, arguing that their ecclesiastical, political, and theological enemies were like the persecutors. Because the motives of the punished are very clear, unlike those of the early Christian martyrs, it remains to be seen, whether or not the death of Maximos Confessor really is a martyrdom, especially considering the political and ecclesiastical intrigues as well as the provocative theological stubbornness of Maximos himself.

Traitor Angels by Anne Blankman

Traitor Angels by Anne Blankman

Embezzlement and High Treason in Louis XIV’s France by Vincent J Pitts

Embezzlement and High Treason in Louis XIV’s France by Vincent J Pitts

35 Variations on a Theme from Translatology

35 Variations on a Theme from Translatology Ian Monk (bio) After Georges Perec 00 Source text: To translate is to betray. 01 Alphabetically: AA B EE I L N OO RR SS TTTTT Y 02 Anagram: Bitter? Or ale? Not as tasty. 03 Anagram (other): Treasonably state it: rot! 04 Lipogram in c, d, f, g, h, j, k, m, p, q, u, v, w, x and z: To translate is to betray. 05 Lipogram in a: [End Page 993] To render is to sell out. 06 Lipogram in e: Translation is a back stab. 07 Transposition: To travel is to bewitch. 08 Strict palindrome: “Yar te bots?” i.e. “tal snar tot.” 09 Missing letter: To translate is to be Ray. 10 Two missing letters: To translate is to bray. 11 Added letter: To trans-plate is to be tray. 12 Negation: Not to translate is to betray. 13 Emphasis: To translate, I mean, trying to take something which has been said so memorably well in one language, that it has since become a common or garden phrase, and then try and make another language say exactly the same thing is like, well, to put it mildly, stabbing your best friend in the back some fine day when he was least expecting it. 14 Curtailing: To translate is. [End Page 994] 15 Curtailing (other): To betray? 16 Double curtailing: To is to. 17 Triple contradiction: You’re monolingual? Really? Does that make you honest or something? 18 Another point of view: Snake-tongued, the lot of them! 19 Minimal doggerel: To translate is to decay. To translate is to dismay. To translate is to make hay. 20 Antonymy: To transliterate is to be faithful. 21 Amplification: The act of passing from one idiom to another is equivalent to high treason. 22 Reduction: Not another word! 23 Permutation: To betray is to translate. 24 Crossed interference: To translate or not to be? To be is to betray. [End Page 995] 25 Isomorphisms: Walking implies falling. Eating entails chewing. 26 Synonymous: To put it another way is to do the dirty. 27 Subtle insight: First thought best thought. 28 Another interference: To translate creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. 29 Homoconsonantism: Utter nasal toast, be true. 30 Homovocalism: On a tale I note a cry. 31 Homophony: Two trans slate Sis Bet Ray. 32 Snowball with clinamen: I Am Now Just Swine Mixing Tongues Messages Allusions Biblically, SaintJerome. [End Page 996] 33 Heterosyntaxism: It seems to me that crossing languages involves crossing the pale. 34 Iambic pentameter: To write it in another tongue’s a crime. 35 Interrogative: So must translation mean betrayal? We leave the reader saddled with this ponderous question. [End Page 997] Ian Monk Ian Monk was born near London, but now lives in Paris, France, where he works as a writer and translator of, among others, Hervé Le Tellier, Georges Perec, Raymond Roussel, and Jacques Roubaud. After contributing to the Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Press), he became a member of the Oulipo in 1998. He has published books in English, such as FamilyArchaeology and Writings for the Oulipo (Make Now), in French (Plouk Town and La Jeunesse de Mek-Ouyes (Cambourakis), and even both: N/S (with Frédéric Forte; Editions de l’Attente). Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press

The Shades of a Shadow: Crime as the Dark Projection of Authority in Early Modern England

This article focuses on early modern England to explore the relation between the definition and prosecution of crime through lawmaking and law enforcement on the one hand, and the cultural representation of crime and surveillance on the other. While at the time the control of crime was extremely faulty, culture was part of the apparatus of psychopolicing that was implemented to prevent and contain transgression. Two main areas of crime will be discussed. The first embraces witchcraft, Catholicism, and atheism. Controlling beliefs was a major concern in early modern England since religious divisions eroded the monological discourse of the divine on which mundane authority also rested. The second area includes high treason, petty treason, and vagrancy. All these notions of crime were functional to the preservation of the social order, reflecting the self-validating strategy of sovereign power, which presented its relation with society as mirroring that between God and creation.

Monster of the twentieth century: Kotoku Shusui and Japan's first anti-imperialist movement

Acknowledgments Introduction KOTOKU SHUSUI AND ANTI-IMPERIALIST THOUGHT In the Shadow of Revolution What Is Imperialism? What Causes Imperialism? JAPAN'S FIRST ANTI-IMPERIALIST MOVEMENT The Boxer Rebellion and the Band of Idealists Heiminism and the Russo-Japanese War The Asian Solidarity Association and the High Treason Case IMPERIALISM: MONSTER OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BY KOTOKU SHUSUI Preface Three preliminary observations Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. On Patriotism Chapter 3. On Militarism Chapter 4. On Imperialism Conclusion Epilogue: The Monster of the Twenty-First Century? Notes Bibliography Index

Twee Fischers, twee dramas: <i>Die geheime Bloemfontein-konferensie (1938) en Die Bram Fischer-wals</i<> (2011)

Two Fischers, two plays: Die geheime Bloemfontein-konferensie [The secret Bloemfontein conference] (1938) and Die Bram Fischer waltz (2011) There is no better example within Afrikaner history where different generations of the same family played such extraordinary roles in the course of important historical events for the Afrikaner as well as for South Africa than those of the Fischer family. The name Bram Fischer is well known within more recent history, due to his role as the leader of the legal defence team during the Rivonia trial where prominent political figures, including Nelson Mandela, were tried on several charges including high treason. He is also remembered for his own sensational trial in 1966 where he was branded a traitor by the Afrikaner establishment. Bram’s grandfather, Abraham Fischer, played an important role in the history of the Free State, by being the first premier of the then Orange River colony. He was also known for his role as mediator and translator at the so-called “secret Bloemfontein conference” of 31 May–6 June 1899, where President Kruger unsuccessfully tried to reach a compromise with Sir Alfred Milner—an agreement which could have prevented the Anglo Boer War that followed shortly afterwards. I provide a comparative discussion of the two plays written in Afrikaans about the two Fischers, namely the one about the grandfather, Abraham Fischer (Die geheime Bloemfontein-konferensie [The secret Bloemfontein conference] by Dr. W. J. B. Pienaar in 1938), and Harry Kalmer’s The Bram Fischer waltz (2011) about the grandson. The secret Bloemfontein conference will be discussed as an example of a documentary drama, while The Bram Fischer waltz will be analysed as an example of a biographical drama. Keywords: Afrikaner history, Afrikaans plays, Abraham Fischer (Orange River Colony Premier), Bram Fischer (defence lawyer), documentary drama, biographical drama.

The Defence Response to the Crimes against Peacee Charge at the International Military Tribunals

The day before the opening of the trial of the German leaders at Nuremberg on 20 November 1945, the defence lawyers jointly presented a motion to the Tribunal addressing the ‘crimes against peace’ charges. In this submission, signed by Goring’s lawyer Otto Stahmer, they stated that while public opinion had demanded that those who waged unjust wars be held to account, this idea had not yet been accepted as international law. This meant that the Nuremberg Tribunal, when dealing with aggression, was imposing ‘a penal law enacted only after the crime’ – and, as a retroactive imposition, this was ‘repugnant to a principle of jurisprudence sacred to the civilized world’.So began the defence assault on the ‘crimes against peace’ charges, first at the Nuremberg Tribunal, and later at the Tokyo Tribunal. At Nuremberg, it was Hermann Jahrreiss, counsel for Alfred Jodl, who led the most sustained challenge to the prosecution’s central argument that the Kellogg-Briand Pact provided the legal basis for the crimes against peace charges, and he who compelled the British Chief Prosecutor, Hartley Shawcross, and Shawcross’s chief legal advisor, Hersch Lauterpacht, to defend their position. Taking a strictly positivist line, he deployed the doctrine of absolute sovereignty against the prosecution’s double premise that aggression was a crime and that individuals were personally liable for it. He rejected the prosecution’s proposition that the Kellogg-Briand Pact represented a major shift from one set of international arrangements (war as an institution of international law) to another (war as ‘high treason’ against international law), because it failed to take into account the signatory states’ reservations on the right to self-defence, which demonstrated their unwillingness to submit to general obligations.At the Tokyo Tribunal, the defence lawyers also took a positivist line, maintaining that because aggressive warfare had not been criminalised before the Second World War, individuals could not be prosecuted for initiating it. Reprising themes that had already been rehearsed at Nuremberg, they maintained that the charges had been retrospectively conceived or were inapplicable within international law. Takayanagi Kenzo, defence counsel for Shigemitsu Mamoru, for example, addressed the Potsdam Declaration, which had promised that ‘stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners’. He argued that the Declaration’s reference to ‘justice’ referred to justice according to the law, ‘administered by established legal rules and principles, not according to the sense of right and justice of the judge, however good or wise he may be’. The Tokyo Charter, with its illegitimate and retroactive charges, betrayed these principles by offering not justice ‘but the Hitlerite “justice” of vague “popular feeling”: the antithesis of justice according to law’.

The Dreyfus Affair and the Rise of the French Public Intellectual

Alfred Dreyfus, a thirty-five-year-old French army captain, was arrested in October 1894, found guilty of high treason, drummed out of the military, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island in French Guiana. While Dreyfus was in exile, his brother and Bernard Lazare launched a vigorous campaign, to which Émile Zola and others famously added their support. It was this campaign that transformed the Dreyfus case into an affair: a scandal that transcends a purely legal matter of guilt versus innocence and becomes a dispute that is not or has not at a given time been entirely resolved. Characterized by a passionate polarization of le monde intellectuel, the Affair subsequently became one of those moments in French history — along with the Occupation and the Algerian War of Independence — to which historians are always returning. As Conner notes, Charles Péguy astutely stated several years after Dreyfus's rehabilitation: ‘the longer this affair has been over, the more evident it becomes that it will never be over’ (p. 24; Conner's translation). In his account of the complexities and the actions of the key players in the Dreyfus Affair, Conner therefore covers ground that has been tramped over many times before, as those familiar with the episode will realize. He shows how and why Dreyfus himself was almost forgotten, as traditionalists used the printed media to promote a vision of France underpinned by values of order, authority, nationalism, and exclusion, against their republican opponents defending a France built on truth, justice, reason, and human rights. Conner's contribution to the already vast bibliography of the Dreyfus Affair sets out to provide what the author calls ‘a critical synopsis of the Affair, not its definitive history or a biography of Dreyfus’ (p. 33), a synopsis that sheds light on the actions of its main protagonists and on the rise of the public intellectual. There is indeed an abundance of data here but sadly Conner too often loses sight of that valuable dictum that less is usually more. He writes in sentences which are overly long, and which often contain clumsy parentheses. He has a tendency to shoot off at tangents and to include too many morsels of detailed information; this means that he ultimately fails in his stated aim to provide an account ‘that is comprehensive in scope but not cramped by too much detail’ (p. 34). This is compounded by unnecessary repetition: we have, for example, three descriptions of the committed intellectual (pp. 44, 50, 120), expressed in almost identical terms. Conner is right to remind us that Dreyfus was neither the first nor the last victim of a state miscarriage of justice and that democrats should try to hold their governments to account, but some of the historical parallels he draws with the Dreyfus Affair need to be developed and not simply asserted. In conclusion, there are probably not enough new insights here for those already familiar with the subject and there is too much densely written material for those who are not.

Catch You Later, Traitor by Avi (review)

Catch You Later, Traitor by Avi (review)

Cooperation, defection and resistance in Nazi Germany

This article uses the court records of a sample of individuals, aged between 15 and 62, tried for high treason in Nazi Germany to analyze a rare, real-world prisoner's-dilemma-like scenario that resisters faced once taken into custody: keep quiet and protect their collaborators or turn informant in the hope of obtaining leniency? We find that, although self-interest and defection to the authorities was the norm for most, significant rates of cooperation remained. We also find evidence that the size of the stake, age, education, beliefs, affiliations, and sense of community could play roles in facilitating cooperative behavior.

Ion Valjan: With the Voice of Time. The Hypostasis of a Romanian Belle Epoque

Abstract Ion Valjan is the literary pseudonym of Ion Al. Vasilescu (1881-1960), famous lawyer, playwright, writer of memoirs, publicist and politician. Dramatic author in the line of Caragiale, he was the manager of The National Theatre in Bucharest between 1923 and 1924, and general manager of theatres between 1923 and 1926. He wrote drama, he collaborated with Sburătorul, Vremea, Rampa, being appreciated by the exigent literary critique of the inter-war period. After the war, in 1950, he was involved in a political trial, accused of high treason, espionage for Great Britain, and got sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, where he died. Valjan is the author of the only theatrical show, played in a communist prison, Revista Piteşti 59. Ion Valjan’s memoirs, With the Voice of Time. Memories, written during the Second World War, represent a turn back in time, into the age of the author’s childhood and adolescence, giving the contemporary reader the chance to travel in time and space, the end of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the past century projecting an authentic image, in the Romanian version of a Belle Epoque, interesting and extremely prolific for the Romanian cultural life. Also, evoking his childhood years spent in cities by the Danube (Călăraşi, Brăila, Turnu-Severin), Valjan unveils the harmonious meeting of different peoples and their mentalities, which transform the Danube Plain into an interethnic space of unique value.

Infidelities: Morality, Revolution, and Sexuality in Left-Wing Guerrilla Organizations in 1960s and 1970s Argentina

Fil: Cosse Larghero, Isabella. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina

The Trials of Shakespeare: Courtroom Drama and Early Modern English Law

In this paper I consider the structure and procedures of the English law courts of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods, with reference to three of Shakespeare's plays: The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale. These plays, while not replicating in realistic detail the juridical processes of the early modern legal system, provide an imaginary, hybrid version of immanent institutional configurations in English jurisprudence. Through the dramatic device of the trial scene, Shakespeare offers an informed critique of existing practices and ideologies in three distinct but related areas of law. The trial scene in The Merchant of Venice, far from being the paean to Equity that many commentators have described, engages both with the elevation of conscience in late Elizabethan contract law and the symbolically-charged mutual promise in commercial arrangements. The offstage trial of Claudio in Measure for Measure and the spectacular trial scene at the end of the play raise highly topical issues of the relevance of religious belief to the initiation and resolution of the criminal trial. Finally, the trial for adultery and High Treason of Hermione in The Winter's Tale raises significant constitutional issues concerning the imposition of the King's Imperium and the subsequent diminution in the jurisdictional power of the courts of common law. Drawing these themes together is the burgeoning matter of the institutional relationship between the autonomous subject of law and an increasingly centralised, expansive state.

El obispo Nicolás Videla y el General Belgrano. 1812-1819

With few exceptions, and these not well defined and gross, has been passed in writing and in public opinion and among historians, that Bishop Nicholas Videla del Pino committed a crime against the state or high treason, being realistic feelings and actively collaborate with the political cause. This article documents that was, above all, a good pastor without discriminating against those who were in each of the two sides.

Jo Menell and Angus Gibson, dirs. Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation. 1997. 155 minutes. English. South Africa and U.S. Palm Pictures. $19.97.

Jo Menell and Angus Gibson, dirs. Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation. 1997. 155 minutes. English. South Africa and U.S. Palm Pictures. $19.97.This Oscar-nominated documentary tells the inspiring story of Nelson Mandela from birth to his ascendency to the presidency of South Africa. The story is told through interviews with Mandela himself, his sister, Mabel, his first wife, Evelyn, Winnie Mandela, and several ANC activists and lawyers. The film also features archival and contemporary footage of confrontations between South Africans fighting justice and the police; political speeches by supporters of apartheid as well as the ANC, the Inkatha Freedom Labor Party, and neofascist extreme right leaders; and trials, rallies, celebrations, and funerals. All of this provides a comprehensive picture of the man who has come to be known as the Father of the Nation of South Africa.The film opens with a pan over the desolate landscape of Robben Island before focusing on the prison where Mandela spent twenty-seven years of his life. It then shows Mandela looking out the window of his former cell, his back to the camera. The scene gives way to festive music and a scene of people making their way into a stadium a rally to support Mandela's candidacy president.Using narrative voiceover, the film provides a brief history of the Xhosa people in eastern South Africa, including the arrival of Europeans and their subsequent campaign to drive the Africans from the land. Finally, the narrator tells the viewer that Rolihlahla Madiba Mandela was born in 1918 in the Eastern Cape of royal heritage. It was not until he attended school that he was given his Christian name, Nelson.The film moves from the quiet and tranquility of Mandela's childhood and adolescence in the Cape, with Mandela telling the story of his traditional circumcision and the message that he and his age-mates received from the brother of the king: that they must fight for the liberation of [their] people from the bondage that had been cast upon [them] by the white man. We then move to the hustle and bustle of Johannesburg in April 1941, where Mandela fled with his brother to escape an arranged marriage. By the time Mandela was twenty-three years old he was living in Alexandra, a black slum outside of Johannesburg, and had become a well-respected and formidable lawyer. It was also during this time that he became involved in the African Nadonal Congress (ANC). It was an involvement that he sustained through most of his life, becoming president in 1991.The film depicts the rise of the Nationalist Party in 1948, the implementation of apartheid and pass laws, the demolition of black homes, and the response by the ANC as well as the larger black population through a strategy of nonviolence. It also touches on the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and the subsequent imposition of martial law, Mandela's decision to go underground, his military training in preparation armed struggle against apartheid, his arrest and trial high treason, and his sentencing to life in prison on Robben Island. …

Političke prilike u Banskoj Hrvatskoj na početku Prvoga svjetskog rata

On the bases of relevant literature, newspaper articles and authentic documents dating from the beginning of the First World War, the author made an effort to answer the question whether the accusations of the military authorities against the Croat-Serb coalition were justified. In other words, the goal of this work is to establish whether it is right to claim that the eminent members of the Coalition undoubtedly leant towards high treason. After the analysis, the author presumes that it is accurate to say that most of the eminent members of the Coalition were, in the period before the breakout of the First World War, linked to institutions which were based on the Greater-Serbian idea. The author notices that the civil authorities in Croatia not only failed to institute legal proceedings against them, but also ignored to hold them politically accountable and intervened on their behalf. The author concludes that the above mentioned observations reflect the conjugation between the Greater-Hungarian and Greater-Serbian idea, which was formerly noticed by the Croatian historian, sociologist and political scientist Ivo Pilar.

(( 1608-1610 .) (The Princes Shuyskys and Suzdal Society on the Eve and During the Time of Troubles (On the Question of Roots of the Treason of 1608-1610))

Russian Abstract: В работе рассматриваются непростые взаимоотношения князей Шуйских с населением Суздальского уезда в начале XVII века. На основе анализа эволюции структур землевладения и городовой служилой корпорации автором делается вывод о взаимном отчуждении Шуйских и основной массы местных феодалов, что, в конечном счете, предопределило измену последних своему коронованному земляку Василию Шуйскому.English Abstract: This paper focuses on the problem of relationship between the Princes Shuyskys and the residents of Suzdal uyezd in the beginning of the 17th Century. The author believes that after Vasili Shuisky had become tsar and began strengthening dominance of his clan at the territory of Suzdal region, it was no longer appropriate for the local society and finally caused political instability there.

Falcons' patriotism: 'One state, one nation, falconry'

This work shows the results of the research which goal was to find, systemize and critically overview the information on a patriotic role of the falcon's organization and its members, having in mind reflex of all social-historical events in the period from the birth of falcons till the end of the Second World War. Social, economic, cultural, and in the first place political situations significantly influenced the character of falcons' organizational influence. In the stormy past falcon shared destiny if its state and nation and therefore this body-exercising organization grew in time into falcons' organization. Falcon's goal besides body exercising was aiming higher goals: moral and cultural revival, national freedom, nation's unity. With enlightening of falcon membership a strong and versatile person with the sense for national affiliation, freedom and social equality was developed. Falcons' democracy, patriotism, philanthropy, belief in ideals, contributed to falcons' reputation in population, which significantly influenced accomplishment of one of the main goals of the falcon movement - forming of the united country and accomplishment of higher range in military, economical, social and cultural plan. Research results point out that during the First World War a falcon was a supporting unity of nations into one state. Therefore falcons were convicted to prison, persecution and internment, execution and hanging at 'high treason' court processes. Patriotic spirit and strong national as well as Yugoslav sense followed falcons later on in an uncompromising battle with separatist and pro - fascist power during more frequent strokes on state's integrity. In the first days of occupation, falconry represented a cohesion and mobilization factor in people. At the beginning of the 1940 falconry counted 350.000 members, which was considered 'the second echelon' of defense of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.