War Special Criminal Law Ordinance

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The Ordinance on Special Criminal Law in War and Special Operations , in short War Special Criminal Law Ordinance (KSSVO), was issued on August 17, 1938 by the Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) Wilhelm Keitel and the "Führer and Reich Chancellor" Adolf Hitler and was an element of the Preparations for war by the National Socialist German Reich . The ordinance was only announced in the Reichsgesetzblatt on August 26, 1939, when it came into force.

occurrence

According to Article 106 of the Weimar Constitution , military jurisdiction was abolished in times of peace and beyond the courts of the Navy . The jurisdiction against members of the Reichswehr had passed to general (civil) jurisdiction. Even before the reintroduction of universal conscription the Nazis in 1933 led the military justice again and created in 1936 as the highest authority, the Reich Court .

As early as May 1934, a ministerial draft for the Ordinance on Special War Criminal Law was available, which provided for the death penalty in the event of war for "disrupting military readiness". Differing views of those involved in a "major reform of the criminal law" of the Nazi regime delayed a rapid agreement. When the possibility of a war with Czechoslovakia became apparent in 1938 , the Wehrmacht Law Department worked out a special war criminal law ordinance, including a War Criminal Procedure Ordinance (KStVO), which Adolf Hitler and the head of OKW Wilhelm Keitel signed on August 17, 1938, but only cooperated the general mobilization came into force on August 26, 1939 through an announcement in the Reichsgesetzblatt.

content

The Special War Criminal Law Ordinance suspended several offenses of the old Military Criminal Code and formulated new offenses that provided for higher penalties, including the death penalty. The KSSVO comprised eleven paragraphs. Their material core was the so-called special facts, which were defined in paragraphs 2 to 8:

Section 2 Espionage
§ 3 Rioting
§ 4 Violations of the ordinances issued by the commanders in the occupied foreign territory
§ 5 Decomposition of military strength
§ 6 Unauthorized removal and desertion
§ 7 Restriction of Dismissal
§ 8 Disciplinary Violations

Supplementary ordinances

Several additions through an inserted Section 5 a tightened the penalties and expanded the judges' scope of discretion. The First Ordinance to Supplement the War Criminal Law Ordinance of November 1, 1939 (RGBl. I, S, 2131) allowed the regular penalties to be exceeded and made possible a death sentence if it "requires the maintenance of discipline or the security of the troops". The Fourth Supplementary Ordinance of March 31, 1943 (RGBl. I, p. 261) also retroactively included the accused if “the perpetrator caused a particularly serious disadvantage for the conduct of the war or the security of the Reich”; it was left to the judge's discretion to exceed the regular range of punishment if this was not sufficient to expiate “according to the common sense of the people”. In a Fifth Ordinance to supplement the Ordinance on Special War Criminal Law of May 5, 1944 (RGBl. I, p. 115), this was also permissible in the case of negligent acts if the result was a particularly serious disadvantage.

Interpretations

Several authors explicitly refer to the formulation on the decomposition of military strength in § 5 (1) number one, which threatens with the death penalty "anyone who publicly requests or incites to refuse to perform service in the German or an allied armed forces, or otherwise publicly Seeks to paralyze or disintegrate the will of the German or allied people to defend themselves. Following three fundamental rulings by the Reich Court Martial of 1940, the People's Court under Roland Freisler interpreted the term public extensively. Reich Minister of Justice Thierack objected that not everything that is politically talked in private should in principle be viewed as publicly said. Freisler justified his view with the Reich's need for security and the healthy public sentiment, and offered to consider a possibility of punishment for favoring the enemy in future.

Manfred Messerschmidt points out that the crime of degradation of military strength referred to the trauma of the lost First World War and the revolution of 1918. The threat of punishment should counteract possible war fatigue and defeatism as well as signs of disintegration and ultimately prevent revolutionary developments from the outset. Together with the War Criminal Procedure Code , the KSSVO served to prepare for military mobilization in the field of criminal law. The proceedings were accelerated, among other things, by eliminating both the appeal and the revision instance in the armed forces justice. The right to a defense counsel also became largely an “optional rule”, so that the rights of the accused or convicted were massively restricted.

Ingo Müller sees § 5 of the Special War Criminal Ordinance, through which the lighter penalties according to the provisions of the deceit law and the "atrocity baiting" according to § 90f of the Criminal Code could be tightened, an "almost universal means" to suppress any opposition movement.

Annulment of the judgments

In the law on the repeal of National Socialist judgments in criminal justice (NS-AufhG) of August 25, 1998 ( Federal Law Gazette I , p. 2501), reference is made to the War Criminal Law Ordinance. "Convicting criminal court decisions that violated elementary ideas of justice" have thus been repealed. All judgments of the People's Court and those of the court martial established in 1945 in the Reich Defense Districts had been overturned, as well as all convictions based on laws and ordinances contained in the list attached to the law. In 2009, with the second law amending the NS-AufhG (Federal Law Gazette I, p. 3150), all judgments for war treason were also overturned.

literature

  • Manfred Messerschmidt: The Wehrmacht Justice 1933-1945. Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-506-71349-3 .

Web links

Wikisource: Special War Criminal Law Ordinance  - Sources and full texts
Wikisource: NS Abolition Act  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Law on the reintroduction of military jurisdiction of May 12, 1933 (RGBl. I, p. 264)
  2. ↑ Law on the re-establishment of a Supreme Court of the Wehrmacht of June 26, 1936 (RGBl. I, p. 517).
  3. ^ Manfred Messerschmidt: The Wehrmacht Justice 1933-1945. Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71349-3 , pp. 70-71.
  4. ↑ Decisions of the RKG, vol. 2, nos. 22–24, p. 60 ff.
  5. ↑ Both letters of September 11, 1943 and September 28, 1943 in: Federal Minister of Justice (ed.): In the name of the German people - Justiz und Nationalozialismus Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-8046-8731-8 , p. 213.
  6. ↑ Law Service for the Armed Forces Courts, special issue Legal Principles of the Reich War Court on § 5 KSSVO, Berlin 1941, p. 1 and Fritz Grau u. a .: German criminal law. 2nd edition Berlin 1943
  7. ^ Manfred Messerschmidt: The Wehrmacht Justice 1933-1945. Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71349-3 , p. 73.
  8. ^ Ingo Müller: Terrible lawyers. The unresolved past of our judiciary. Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 , p. 151.
  9. ↑ NS — AufhG (PDF; 37 kB) from August 25, 1998 / version from 2002