Rape, Murder and Looting, were they prosecuted crimes?

Urgh,

the idea is to show how the German military code worked.The invididual is not allowed to break the code or the moral of the troops would crash, and the troops´fighting efficiency would drop as well. The military police was there to stop these. The looting mentioned here are the arts etc which were taken away by the SD(?) from the museums and as such cause for bigger actions than the individual looting.

The Russian front thing is different as well the many occasions in 1944 in the west as there was definitely an order to crush the resistance, and as well order to kill some 10 civilians for one german soldier.

I do think the western front and the Russian front were totally different for the soldier´s attitude ( Untermensch in ost ) as killing and looting etc were ordered in the east.In the west I can see that start at the German army revenge attacks 1944.And as such there was no need to put the men in court as it was ordered from the top.
I admit it was horrible but Hitler had lost his mind by then.

I have found about three or four cases in the net where German or foreign volunteers were put into court or under investigation.These were all stopped by Himmler. I´ll be back on these. These include Fegelein´s doings in Poland, the Dutch volunteers of SS in Holland ( camps ) and the massacre at a Greek village about- 44.

And as well I´d like to remind that the lack of evidence of court marshall does not lead to the fact that the Germans were looting freely,it could also mean there was no need for such action. Works both ways.

And I think it is von Rundstedt. If you find another man´s name in the site for the man who spoke please tell.

 

Yes, German soldiers were court maritialed for crimes against the civil population, even in the East. I have read some anecdotal examples suggesting it was done.

Have no book or quote (I know there are german case-studies dealing with those) here yet, but it is not the case that german soldiers commiting crimes against the civil population had _n_o chance of being held responsible or punished.

In simple terms: The chance be being tried for crimes against the occupied population was highest in the west early in the war for a Heer soldier, most little for SS men in the East (the SS had her own jurisdiction system).

Those who have been tried had always a good chance to claim for "extenuating circumstances" and bottom line Hitler himself pardoned them.

As for von Rundstedt you have to bear in mind that his statement was apologetic. His statement was defiantely not true for the East Front.

Maybe I dig out some sources.

Cheers,

 

Cheers Andy, I guess I go with your own statements a lot.

To be honest the thought never crossed my mind before now.

Only when James asked the question and I went off searchng for actual cases, I was just perturbed not to be able to find any.

Im sure there were.

Thats my only interest at this point now, to se if their are any documented cases.

That is James's original enquiry and for all our posts on here, none of us has answered him yet.

Maybe we will find something, maybe we wont, we have not yet.

 

I don´t have any books on the subject so I can only put here what I found in the net:

http://www.waffen-ss.nl/wachbat-e.php

It was not long before the Feldgendarmerie (German military police) received complaints concerning the behaviour of the Wachmänner as certain contingents of 'Nordwest' had committed theft, robberies, and looting. Commander Helle, who was held responsible for the incidents, claimed that his men had not been sufficiently provided with liquor and other luxuries and therefore lost their minds. After a number of procedures Himmler decided to drop the charges , but unfortunately, the misconduct of parts of the Battalion became more structural. Rauters (Höhere SS-und Polzeiführer) Untersuchungsrichter (investigation judge) declared after the war:

'the battalion had a very high crime rate, even when I leave the purely military facts (desertion, absence without leave, abandoning sentry duties, and disobedience, etc.) out of consideration. If I included these facts, the number of crimes committed by members 'Nordwest' would be as high as all crimes of German Waffen-SS and Polizei units put together... The men of the Wachbataillon committed every single crime that is known in common criminal law: crimes like theft, looting, fraud, blackmail, illegal house search, etc.'. (Translated from Dutch)

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June 1944: June 10: Units from SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 7 on an antipartisan sweep, massacre circa 218-300+ Greek civilians in the village of Distomo. George Koch, a member of the Wehrmacht GFP (Geheime Feldpolizei), accompanied the SS troops during the sweep and submits report on the incident. Koch's report states that: the Polizei troops walked through the village without incident, but were later ambused by Greek guerrillas outside of it. The guerrillas escaped, and that the SS troops actually doubled back into the village and began a viscious "atonement action" which included rape and looting as well as shooting civilians. Koch's report directly contradicts the report SS-Hauptstrumführer Fritz Lautenbach , submitted to his battalion CO (SS-Standartenführer Schührers).

June 20: A Red Cross delegation visits Distomo to investigate the incident and find corpses swinging from the trees along the route. News of the massacre travels to the collaborationist Greek govenrment.

Concerned over the impact of the massacre on both the military and political situation in occupied Greece, the Wehrmacht opens up an investigation headed by Special Envoy Neubacher & charges SS-Hauptstrumführer Lautenbach with falsifying a military report. (of course the investigation team neither includes nor interviews Greek civilians) SS-Standartenführer Schührers responds to the charges that although his company is technically guilty of falsifying a report, his unit acted correctly under the circumstances. The inquiry is dropped as the massacre is judged a "military necessity" due to the supposed collaboration between the guerrillas and the Distomo villagers.

http://www.wssob.com/004divpol.html

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June 1942: June 21: Upgraded to divisional status with 9,000? Hungarian Volksdeutsche volunteers - other sources say unit strength 5,400 men with 6,000 horses.
Fegelein is subject to SS Legal investigation on suspicion of having sexual realtions with Polish women, looting and profiteering. The Gestapo even search the SS Riding School for evidence. Himmler protects Fegelein and discourages the investigation.

http://www.wssob.com/008divfgy.html

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http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-21/tgmwc-21-208-07.shtml

Nuremberg Wednesday, 21st August, 1946


Treatment of the civilian population: The Russian prosecution asserted on Page 4101 of the trial transcript that the directives for the Barbarossa order called for the physical destruction of people under suspicion. In order to refute this, I refer to Affidavits 1601, 1601a and 1601b, which show that frequently the death penalty was imposed for excesses, especially in cases of rape.

1601c offers evidence of three death sentences for crimes committed against a Russian family.

 

Hello C.Evans, in your note you describe several persons who were in jail by the Nazis, but none of them were there because of abuse of foreign civilians. So the Nazis had no problem enforcing strict discipline on their troops, however I still have not found any reason to believe they enforced this discipline on people guilty of abusing foreign civilians. - James

 

Hello Friedrich, regarding the above, I know you believe that German soldiers were punished severely for even minor infractions against foreign civilians, but can you cite any instance, even one, in which a German soldier was ever punished for abusing a civilian? I haven't found one yet. I am reaching the conclusion that this simply did not happen. That the Wehrmacht was a lawless organization.

Can you direct me to any book that documents German soldiers being punished for abusing a civilian?

Of course we must speak of the Soviet front as well. Were Soviet civilians not as human as French civilians?

James

 

Kai-Petri, this order was also in effect in Western Europe and was enforced on several occasions in occupied France, the first time as early as 1941 I believe. A German officer was assassinated in a Paris train station. I can't remember how many French prisoners were then ordered assassinated by the Germans as retribution. The French were allowed to pick who would take the punishment and the Vichy government specified only communists.

Regardless as to the orders coming from the top or not, it is never acceptable for a soldier to rape or murder a civilian. If a soldier is ordered to do a crime, and he does commit that crime, just because he had an order doesn’t make it not a crime. - James

 

Hello Andy, can you cite any examples of the above? Of a German soldier being held responsible for their criminal treatment of a civilian?

Again, can you cite any examples, even in the West, of a German soldier being prosecuted for crimes he committed against a civilian?

I just don't think it happened. German soldiers could terribly abuse the civilians and have very little or no fear of being held responsible for their crimes. - James

 

Hi Kai-Petri, this is the first example any of us has come up with so far of a German soldier being held responsible for a crime committed against a civilian. I work at a university and we have the complete set of Nuremberg transcripts here so I will be able to look up the referenced affidavit 1601c. I will let you and everyone else know what I find. - James

 

I'll look it up, even though I haven't studies dealing with that specific at hand.#

But the Wehrmacht criminal statistics reprinted in Franz W. Seidler: "Die Militärgerichtsbarkeit der Deutschen Wehrmacht 1939 bis 1945", 1991 pp. 39-51 or the various examples in Manfred Messerschmidt: "Deutsche Militärgerichtsbarkeit im Zweiten Weltkrieg", in H.J. Vogel et al (Eds.): "Die Freiheit des Anderen. Festschrift für Martin Hirsch", 1981 (I remember an example of a German soldier being sentenced to death for stealing a scarf and 8 pairs of socks)

Also of great value and with examples:

Rudolf Absolon: "Wehrmachtstrafrecht im 2. Weltkrieg", 1958

Manfred Messerschmidt and Fritz Wüllner. "Die Wehrmachtsjustiz im Dienste des Nationalsozialismus", 1987

everything in german, who wonders on such a specific topic.

Hope this helps anyway,

Cheers,

[ 19. May 2003, 05:01 PM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

 

Hi James--you are correct. I quoted from the only source I had available at the time--no new ones yet. Anyway, I can quote unpublished stories as well. These came directly from the German vets I talked to. But in any case--none were crimes against civilians--although one admitted to beating his NCO one time when they were stationed on the Eastern Front circa late '43 or early '44.

Oh and welcome to these forums.

 

Like most others here I can offer very little in this direction. One thing I have wondered about though, I distinctly remember reading (on the web ) that the officer in charge of the massacre at Oradour was supposed to be put on trial for the action, but was killed in action before this trial could take place. I haven't found anything more substantial about this, anybody else have anything?

 

Got a 1945 memoirs by a Finnish Waffen-SS man Sakari Lappi-Seppälä " The graves near Djnepr".

According to him the name Dachau as well brought fear to the SS-men´s minds as the SS men who were convicted of crime were often sent there. He says everyone was afraid of the "Strafkompanie"!

Any SS man who was caught from stealing or leaving his superior´s order unfulfilled was taken to the camp without exception to the rule. Unless he was ordered to be shot which was even more usual.

The usual service day:

Wake up at 5 am.

At 6 o´clock morning check-up with green uniforms on, no military badges or emblems. The men were given their working place where they worked until 9 under strict guard.

At 9 started the "Strafexerzise" that lasted for two hours. It begun with march and singing practice ( 10 minutes ) after which the pace got faster. The last hour was up-down commandments, crawling etc stuff that made the strongest men weak. During winter there were no gloves.The rifle was replaced with a pry bar.The German NCO´s were all around kicking the men up and shouting new orders.If you didn´t follow their orders the only way out was to be shot.

After 11 it was lunch and service at the barracks. After this was time to work again until 3 o´clock. Then was another "Strafexerzise" like the one before.

After 5 o´clock p.m. the men got to rest, the dry food was plain bread. There were no cigarettes awarded for the "Strafkompanie" men.

The sentence was from 6 months to 10 years. There were no longer sentences .the man was shot instead.

If you served well in the camp it was possible to apply to a "Strafkompanie" that was serving at the front. The duty was easier but more dangerous.



He doesn´t tell about the hours between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m. but I´m sure it was less than easy..

[ 20. May 2003, 05:52 AM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

Hi Andy, unfortunately I do not read German yet. I will start learning the language in August. Right now I only know English and some French.

If you have time and can translate some passages from your books about specific instances of German soldiers being held responsible for crimes they committed against foreign civilians, I would be interested in reading them. - James

 

Some interesting points:

Oct 1939
•17th: SS units operating in Poland are given immunity from military law.

Feb 1940
•2nd: Two German Army Generals (Ulex and Blaskowitz) make official protests at the behaviour of SS units in Poland.

And a couple of German sites on this:

http://www.geocities.com/nsinfos/text/07wehrmacht.htm

http://www.webarchiv-server.de/pin/archiv00/2600ob38.htm


http://www.historybookshop.com/timelines/frameset.html?http://www.historybookshop.com/timelines/second-w-war-39-41.htm

 

G.I. RAPIST HANGED

The first Allied soldier to be hanged after D-Day was Private Clarence Whitfield, a black US soldier of the 494th Port Battalion. He was convicted of the brutal rape of Aniela Skrzyniarz, a Polish farm girl working on a farm at Vierville Sur Mer, just behind Omaha Beach, on June 14, 1944. On August 14, Private Whitfield was hanged on a gallows that was erected in the garden of the Chateau at Canisy, five kilometres south of St. Lo.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/1944.html

 

Amazon.co.uk: The Eastern Front 1941-1945: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare (St Antony's): Books: Omer Bartov Has much to say about German army concern about 'wild' actions by soldiers ie those done spontaneously rather than under orders.

 

Have you read it squeeth?


The review does not give away that much because many books already have the same things in them. So what´s new or different?

 

Yes but my books are somewhere else so I can't delve into it at the moment. He concludes that the expansion of the Wehrmacht in the late 30's led to a cadre of thoroughly nazified petty bourgeois junior officers who in the course of the war spread upwards in the hierarchy. He considers that the vast majority of Eastern front soldiers accepted the validity of the racist-annihilationist basis of the war and this rather than comradeship motivated them. His analysis of losses leads him to reject the 'comradeship' view of motivation because group loyalty can't exist with high 'staff turnover'. He also says that the nazi party 'commissars' introduced late in the war were popular as was their propaganda, perhaps because the 'racial inferiority' myth was of some comfort when the Red Army approached the German border, that the 'slavic horde' explanation was easier to accept than the 'operational excellence in the face of a demodernised Ostheer' truth. (I wonder if this is a counterpart to the propaganda against Western troops - 'tommy is no soldier' etc.)

I doubt if Bartov's conclusions are new because the book's about ten years old.

 

Always have to read the book before making any major decisions but...

I don´t say the Germans did not know about the racial propaganda or that they did not accept it, on the contrary. However I find it a bit hard to accept that in the trenches there would have been no comradeship to motivate them, because I personally believe that in the end the political factors vanish and only the comradeship keeps the men moving. I am sure several political agitators on both sides were shot by own men because they really did not see any sense in their talk anymore, because that´s a totally different world in the trenches with its own laws.

That´s my view....