Leipzig war crimes trials
The Leipzig war crimes trials were held in 1921 to try alleged German
Background
During the First World War the
Following the conclusion of the treaty, the Allied governments began their legal and diplomatic efforts to arrest the former Kaiser. On 28 June 1919, the day the treaty was signed, the President of the Paris Peace Conference addressed a
In anticipation of further Allied action, the German National Assembly established a Central Bureau for the Defence of Germans Accused of War Crimes. On 4 October 1919, at a meeting in Berlin, Johannes Goldsche of the Prussian Bureau of Investigation reported that his office had compiled some 5,000 detailed dossiers on Allied war crimes, which could be made immediately available to defence counsel in the event of prosecutions being brought against German soldiers. The bureau had also investigated Allied allegations of German war crimes, but in this case was not planning to make its findings public for fear of possible repercussions from the Allies.[2]
On 3 February 1920, the Allies submitted a further list of 900 names of alleged war criminals to the German government. The Germans refused to extradite any German citizens to Allied governments, and suggested instead trying them within the German justice system, i.e. at the Reichsgericht in Leipzig. This proposal was accepted by the Allied leaders, and in May 1920 they handed the Germans a reduced list of 45 accused persons. Not all these people could be traced, and in other cases there was difficulty in finding credible evidence.[3][4] In the end, only twelve individuals from the lists were brought to trial. Another three people who were not on any list were tried by Reichsgericht before the other cases began: Dietrich Lottmann, Paul Niegel, and Paul Sangerhausen. The three men were charged with plunder for acts of looting committed in during the Rape of Belgium.[5]
Trials
The trials of Lottmann, Niegel, and Sangerhausen were held in January 1921. All three men were found guilty. Lottmann was sentenced to five years in a civilian prison, Niegel was sentenced to four years in a civilian prison, and Sangerhausen was sentenced to two years in a civilian prison.[5]
The other trials were held before the Reichsgericht (comprising seven judges) in Leipzig from 23 May to 16 July 1921.
Heynen
Sergeant
In passing sentence, the court declared, "One cannot help acknowledging that this is a case of extremely rough acts of brutality aggravated by the fact that these acts were perpetrated against defenceless prisoners against whom one should have acted in the most proper manner, if the good reputation of the German Army and the respect of the German Nation as a nation of culture was to be upheld... There can be no question of detention in a fortress in view of the nature of his offences, especially those committed against prisoners who were undoubtedly sick. On the contrary, a sentence of imprisonment must be passed." Even though imprisonment in a regular jail was considered degrading to military honour, Heynen was sentenced to ten months in a civilian prison.[6]
Müller
Captain Emil Müller, was a former commandant of the POW camp at Flavy-le-Martel, which had, long before his arrival, turned into, "a large cesspool", where 1,000 British POWs had been held. He proved he had tried very hard to improve conditions at the camp and was hamstrung from doing more by military bureaucracy. His lawyer showed how a dysentery outbreak that killed 500 POWs happened after his command had ended. The court considered nine instances of deliberate personal cruelty to be proven, as well as an additional case in which Müller allowed a subordinate to mistreat a POW, other cases of breaches of regulations, as well as two cases of verbal abuse. He was sentenced to six months in a civilian prison, including time served.[7] The term "command responsibility" was first used in this trial.[8]
Neumann
Private Robert Neumann, who had guarded Allied POWs who were forced labourers at a chemical factory at
Dover Castle
Llandovery Castle
Oberleutnant zur See Ludwig Dithmar and Oberleutnant zur See John Boldt, two junior officers who had served on the submarine U-86 in World War I, were put on trial for war crimes during the trials for their involvement in the sinking of Canadian hospital ship Llandovery Castle on 27 June 1918 off the coast of Ireland. Dithmar and Boldt were accused of machine-gunning the survivors of Llandovery Castle's sinking while they were in lifeboats, during what was the deadliest Canadian maritime disaster of World War I. A total of 234 medical personnel, soldiers and sailors died during the sinking and subsequent ramming and machine-gunning of the lifeboats by the crew of U-86, while only 24 people in a single lifeboat survived the sinking. During the trials, Dithmar and Boldt were both found guilty of war crimes and were sentenced to four years in prison, though these were later overturned on appeal based on the argument that both men were only following orders and their commanding officer, Kapitänleutnant Helmut Brümmer-Patzig was solely responsible. Brümmer-Patzig had fled to the Free City of Danzig before the trials started and was never prosecuted.[12]
Ramdohr
Max Ramdohr was charged with crimes against civilian non-combatants during the Rape of Belgium. He was found not guilty.
POW massacres
In regard to both POW massacres, Crusius did not deny having passed on and carried out "the order". The court ruled that medical experts had convincingly demonstrated that, "at the moment when the alleged brigade order was passed on", Crusius "was suffering from a morbid derangement of his mental faculties which rendered impossible the exercise of his own volition. These experts do not hold that this was already the case on 21 August. The Court shares this view... As in accordance with practice, reasonable doubt as to the volition of the guilty party does not allow of a pronouncement of guilt, no sentence can be passed against Crusius as regards the 26th of August."[13]
Despite being found
Laule
Oberleutnant Adolph Laule stood charged with the killing of Captain Migat of the French Army, who had fallen asleep while his unit marched away. When Laule and his men had come upon the Captain and attempted to take him prisoner, Migat had resisted, had shaken off the Germans who were attempting to restrain him, and had been shot in the back while running away. The court found that Laule had not fired the fatal shot or ordered his men to shoot. They had acted on their own, without orders. As a result, he was found not guilty.
Kassel
Response
Even though the sentences were based on those recommended for the same offences under German military law, outside of the Weimar Republic, the trials were seen as a travesty of justice because of the small number of cases tried and the perceived leniency of the judges in passing sentence.[16]
Lawyer and historian
After Sergeant Karl Heynen was sentenced to ten months' imprisonment, the Leipzig correspondent of the London Times called the trial "a scandalous failure of justice". One British MP called for the trials to be moved to London. Another declared that the "contemptible" sentence given to Sergeant Heynen had reduced the trials to "a judicial farce".[18]
In response, the German Gazette commented, "The first verdict in the series of Leipzig trials has agitated public opinion in two great countries, Germany and England, in apparently sharply contrasting ways. The degree of punishment has been criticised in England in a way that is in the highest degree wounding to German sensibilities."[19] French Prime Minister Aristide Briand was so outraged by the acquittal of Lieutenant-General Stenger for the two POW massacres that the French Mission observing the trials was recalled in protest.[18]
Within Germany, on the other hand, the trials were seen as excessively harsh for several reasons:
- The accused seemed in several cases to have been only following orders; merely trying to perform their duty under difficult conditions.
- Several of the charges seemed spurious.
- Imprisonment in a civilian jail was regarded as insulting to military men.
On 15 January 1922, a commission of Allied jurists, appointed to inquire into the trials, concluded that it was useless to proceed with them any further and recommended that the remaining accused should be handed over to the Allies for trial.[20] This was not done, and the trials were quietly abandoned.
Claud Mullins, who had observed the trials on behalf of the British Government, argued that they should be understood in light of the pre-1945 German attitude toward authority. He commented, "I always think that it is significant that there are notices in many German railway carriages that, 'In case of a dispute as to whether the window should be open or closed, the guard will decide.' Germans have a respect for authority which we British can scarcely understand."[21] He said even brief terms in a civilian prison, rather than detention in a fortress, which was the usual punishment under German military law, were a far harsher sentence than people in Allied countries realized because of the very intense humiliation involved. "Six months in a civil jail," he wrote, "thus meant far more than three years' detention in a fortress, which is the usual military punishment. The Germans have always had strange ideas about service 'honour' and this 'honour' was deeply wounded by a sentence of imprisonment, such as mere civilians received."[21] He concluded, "None the less the fact remains that these trials were neither 'a travesty of justice' nor a 'farce.' There was throughout a genuine desire to get to the bottom of the facts and to arrive at the truth. This and the fact that a German Court condemned the doctrines of brutality, which General von Fransecky and Admiral von Trotha applauded, are the important results that will live in history long after the miserable offenders have been forgotten."[21]
Ottoman military tribunals
The effort to
Legacy
Writing in 2002, M. Cherif Bassiouni, an American professor of law specialising in international criminal law and an expert on war crimes, summarised the impact of the post-first-world-war trials of war criminals as follows:
"Thus, apart from helping to lay the legal foundations for international criminal justice in the future, the Allies' experiment in retributive justice following the First World War was a dismal failure. Despite ample Allied resources, the availability of the exhaustive investigative findings of the Commission, and an enemy prostrate from war, hunger, and internal revolution, very few prosecutions were ever undertaken, and of those that were, the sentences handed down were either comparatively light or never fully executed. The value of justice had not penetrated the practices of realpolitik."[24]: 290
In assessing the failure of the Allies to enforce the sections of the Versailles treaty related to war crimes (Articles 227-230), the United Nations War Crimes Commission identified four key failings. The first was the failure to begin the proceedings quickly after the war when they still had popular and governmental support. The second was the lack of unity amongst the Allies. The third was the relative immaturity of international scene at that stage. The fourth was the poor drafting of the relevant parts of the Versailles treaty.[24]: 285
During the
Following the end of the Cold War, the same trend led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002.
See also
References
- ^ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919: Paris Peace Conference, vol. 13, pp. 374–375
- ^ De Zayas (1989), p. 9.
- ^ The Leipzig Trials, 1921, p. 9.
- ^ Yarnall 2011, pp. 184–85.
- ^ a b Gerd Hankel: Die Leipziger Prozesse. Deutsche Kriegsverbrechen und ihre strafrechtliche Verfolgung nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Hamburg 2003, S. 71.
- ^ a b Yarnall (2011), pp. 185–188.
- ^ Yarnall (2011), pp. 188–190.
- ^ ICLR report on the Leipzig War Trials Archived 2007-03-10 at the Wayback Machine, lawreports.co.uk; accessed December 28, 2015.
- ^ Yarnall (2011), pp. 190–191.
- ^ Sir Andrew Macphail (28 February 2000). "Royal Canadian Naval Medical Service". Great War Primary Documents Archive. Retrieved 2 September 2009.
- ISSN 1520-460X. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
- ^ "Patzig's fate? Patzig's fate?". invisionzone.com. Archived from the original on 28 March 2012. Retrieved 15 January 2011.
- ^ a b Yarnall (2011), p. 193.
- ^ Yarnall (2011), p. 192.
- ^ Yarnall (2011), pp. 192–193.
- ^ Yarnall 2011, pp. 194–95.
- ^ De Zayas (1989), p. 5.
- ^ a b Yarnall (2011), p. 194.
- ^ Quoted in Yarnall 2011, p. 194.
- ^ Yarnall 2011, pp. 195–6.
- ^ a b c Yarnall (2011), p. 195.
- ^ Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 310—11.
- ^ On April 24, the world must remember victims of Armenian genocide, Times Union Archived 26 May 2020 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Bassiouni, M. Cherif (January 2002). "World War I: The War to End All Wars and the Birth of a Handicapped International Criminal Justice System". Denver Journal of International Law & Policy. 30 (3): 244–291. Retrieved 5 March 2024.
Bibliography
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1919). Violation of the Laws and Customs of War: Reports of Majority and Dissenting Reports of American and Japanese Members of the Commission of Responsibilities, Conference of Paris 1919. London and New York.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ISBN 0803299087.
- Hankel, Gerd (1982). The Leipzig Trials: German War Crimes and Their Legal Consequences after World War I. Dordrecht: Republic of Letters. ISBN 9789089791320.
- Mullins, Claud (1921). The Leipzig Trials: An Account of the War Criminals' Trials and Study of German Mentality. London: H. F. & G. Witherby.
- Willis, James F. (2014). Prologue to Nuremberg: The Politics and Diplomacy of Punishing War Criminals of the First World War. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313214547.
- Yarnall, John (2011). Barbed Wire Disease: British & German Prisoners of War, 1914–19. Stroud: Spellmount. pp. 183–96. ISBN 9780752456904.