Control Council Act No. 10

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The decision taken by the Allied Control Council Law no. 10 (KRG 10) ( english Control Council Law No. 10 , abbreviated CCL10 ) from 20th December 1945 was formed in the early postwar years, the most important legal basis for lawsuits against individuals who because of war crimes , crimes against Peace or crimes against humanity have been charged.

Allied agreements

In the Moscow Declaration of October 30, 1943, on the responsibility of Hitler supporters for atrocities committed , Great Britain , the United States and the Soviet Union announced that they would try the main German war criminals in a joint court. Other perpetrators should be extradited to the countries in which they had committed their crimes.

In the London Statute of August 8, 1945, the basis for the International Military Tribunal (IMT) was created, which was to carry out the Nuremberg Trial of the main war criminals and to be responsible for war crimes , crimes against peace , in particular planning and conducting a war of aggression, as well as crimes against humanity . There it was also stipulated that a state function exercised could not exempt the offender from punishment or should be assessed as mitigating the penalty.

The London Statute formed the substantive and legal basis for the KRG 10. However, the crimes against humanity defined here were not limited to wartime.

The prosecution of other war criminals was to be carried out by the military courts of the four occupying powers in Germany. The Control Council Act No. 10 created a uniform legal basis for this.

Content of the KRG 10

The Control Council Act explicitly refers in a preamble as in Article I to the Moscow Declaration and the London Statute. If states accede to the provisions of the London Statute, they should not gain any influence on the criminal prosecution laid down here in the territory of the Control Council.

Control Council Act No. 10

In Art. II No. 1, the first section defines four offenses that are prosecuted as crimes. These are a) crimes against peace, b) war crimes, c) crimes against humanity and d) membership of one of the organizations whose criminal character has been determined by the IMT.

Art. II No. 2 stipulates that the perpetrator alone is not deemed to be guilty of such a crime . An accessory who participated in the crime, ordered or facilitated it is also considered guilty . Anyone who participated by consent or was involved in planning or execution or belonged to an organization involved in the execution of these crimes will also be found guilty.

In Art. II No. 3 the penalty limits are set. The penalties range from the death penalty to life imprisonment with or without forced labor, a fine or substitute imprisonment and the confiscation of property to the total or partial loss of civil rights .

Art. II No. 4 stipulates that an official position as a government official does not exempt from responsibility for a crime and is not a reason for mitigation. Receivers of orders are responsible for their crimes, but this fact can be mitigated.

Art. II No. 5 excludes the statute of limitations for the crimes referred to in this article if the act was committed between January 30, 1933 and July 1, 1945.

Article III stipulates measures such as detention of suspects, identification of witnesses and preservation of evidence; the latter can lead to the postponement of a death penalty . The occupation authorities can declare German courts to be responsible for the judgment of crimes that German nationals have committed against other Germans or against stateless persons.

Articles IV and V regulate the extradition of suspects to other zones of occupation or to other states.

implementation

The prosecution of National Socialist crimes was initially carried out by the military courts of the four zones of occupation. In the American zone the criminal punishment was with twelve Nuremberg follow-up trials , the Dachau trials and the like. a. particularly extensive. The places of jurisdiction in the French occupation zone were Rastatt and Baden-Baden . Most of the British military trials took place in Hamburg and became known as the Curiohaus trials . These processes used a “royal order” as a legal basis and did not use the newly coined offenses such as “crimes against humanity” as a charge.

The occupying powers primarily pursued trials against perpetrators who were guilty of crimes against Allied military and civilians or who were charged with crimes against humanity. The occupying powers made different use of the possibility provided for in Article III of empowering German courts to try crimes committed by German nationals against other Germans or against stateless persons. In the American Zone, German courts were only commissioned in individual cases. In the British Zone , German courts were initially generally empowered by Ordinance No. 47 of the Military Government of August 30, 1946, but this authorization was modified several times and formally repealed with effect from August 31, 1951. The authorization of the French military government, which had only been granted in June 1950, also ended on this date.

Although the Control Council Act No. 10 continued to apply formally, it was no longer applied in the western zones and in the Federal Republic of Germany . When the occupying powers withdrew, only some of the Nazi mass crimes for which they had taken jurisdiction had been convicted. German courts had already found it difficult to apply the provisions of the Control Council Act, as it meant applying new legal principles retrospectively ( Nulla poena sine lege ). Now the West German courts relied solely on the German penal laws, which often proved unsuitable for the comprehensive punishment of National Socialist crimes and which led to a statute of limitations if the crime was delayed . In the Soviet occupation zone and later in the GDR , however, the Control Council Act continued to be used until 1955 to punish National Socialist crimes.

reviews

The Control Council Act No. 10 was controversial from the start as a retroactive criminal law.

The political scientist Peter Reichel states that in 1949 the Federal Republic would have had the option of adopting the international legal facts contained in Control Council Act No. 10 as special laws and introducing special courts: “It was decided against this path, which was innovative in terms of past politics, but was certainly also unpopular, and for that Principle of the prohibition of retroactivity ( Art. 103 GG ) and legal continuity, however questionable the reasoning may appear. "It was accepted that" many perpetrators could only be punished for aiding and abetting and some offenses could not be punished at all. "

The German International Criminal Code only came into being in 2002.

Validity period

The Control Council Act of December 20, 1945 has in fact not been applied in the three western occupation zones since 1951 . It was formally amended for the Federal Republic of Germany by Article 2 of Act No. A-37 of the Allied High Commission of May 5, 1955 and by the First Act to Repeal the Law of Occupation of May 30, 1956 repealed.

For the GDR, the Control Council Act was suspended by the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the dissolution of the High Commission of the Soviet Union in Germany on September 20, 1955.

The range of punishment set out in Art. II No. 3 was restricted in 1946 on the recommendation of the International Military Tribunal for the "Corps of Political Leaders" of the NSDAP (Reichsleiter, Gauleiter and Kreisleiter): In no case should the penalties exceed the level prescribed by the Denazification Act will.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gisela Diewald-Kerkmann: Political denunciation in the Nazi regime or the small power of the "Volksgenossen". Dietz, Bonn 1994, ISBN 3-8012-5018-0 , p. 186 f. (At the same time: Bielefeld, Univ., Diss., 1994).
  2. ^ W. Fredericia: Misunderstanding No. 10 Die Zeit , July 24, 1952
  3. ↑ Peter Reichel : Invented memory. World War and the murder of Jews in film and theater (= Fischer 16805 The time of National Socialism ). Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16805-7 , p. 283.
  4. ^ Peter Reichel: Coming to terms with the past in Germany. The confrontation with the Nazi dictatorship from 1945 until today (= Beck'sche Reihe. Vol. 1416). Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-45956-0 , p. 25.
  5. ↑ BGBl. I p. 437
  6. ↑ International Military Tribunal: The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Volume 22: negotiation records August 27, 1946 - October 1, 1946. sn, Nuremberg 1948, pp. 567-570 (photomechanical reprint. Delphin, Munich 1984).