Treason under National Socialism

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War treason was a German legal term for "aiding the enemy", who shortly after the seizure of power of the Nazis largely aggravated and especially in connection with the planning and execution of the Second World War that almost any untoward behavior punished was so broad in its meaning so could be.

Originally, these were crimes under the Military Criminal Code of 1872, which during the Nazi era were considered treason and were threatened with the death penalty . The Nazi military justice was extended powers and turned to the § 91b Penal Code , which also concrete constituent elements had been stripped right bending on civilians on. This made it an arbitrary instrument in the persecution of politically unpopular people. Political resistance, support for Jews or black market crimes could also be punished under the pretext of “indirect military consequences”. Tens of thousands of death sentences and many thousands of penitentiary sentences have been established with this law . In the military, the lower ranks were punished more often and more severely than officers.

The processing of these judgments only took place many years after the end of National Socialism. It was not until September 8, 2009 that the German Bundestag unanimously adopted a bill with which all convictions for war treason during the Nazi era were canceled . Parts of the CDU / CSU had given up their decades-long resistance to it.

Legal foundations

From a legal point of view, the political and ideological judgments of the Nazi judiciary were not jurisprudence . Ernst Fraenkel made a distinction between the “normative state”, which merely maintains the facade of a constitutional state in which injustice still invokes norms, and the “action state”, which, as in National Socialism, allows any action outside of the norm, and state unjust measures of legal control withdraws.

The emphasis on ideological judgments of the Nazi judiciary is made clear by a statement by former military judge Erich Schwinge from 1933:

“The question of what function punishment has and how individual legal interests, e.g. nation , honor , religion , morality , are to be protected, can only be answered reliably and unambiguously on the basis of a certain world and community image [...] The judge must be Feel the executor of a unified will. "

In this spirit, Schwinge also classified “ pacifist propaganda” and “[s] e since the war with Russia [...] any support for the goals of Bolshevism ” as treason.

Military criminal law from 1872 to 1934

Announcement of the death penalty carried out on the Belgian Leon Trulin by the German military after a war treason in occupied France in 1915

The military penal code of the German Reich of 1872, which was based heavily on the Prussian military penal code of 1845, regulated the offense of war treason in sections 57 to 61 (Section 56 referred to the corresponding provisions in the penal code for treason offenses by military personnel in peacetime). Treasonous acts by members of the army in accordance with the Reich Criminal Code, Sections 80 to 93, were considered war treason .

"Section 57: Anyone who commits treason in the field will not be punished for treason with prison for less than ten years or with life in prison."

Section 58 allowed the death penalty for well-defined acts such as collaboration and betrayal of secrets , the destruction of communications facilities, insubordination , propaganda for the enemy, and the unauthorized liberation / release of prisoners:

"Section 58: For treason (Section 57), anyone who intends to promote a hostile power or inflict harm on German or allied troops ..." will be punished with death ... "(Note. Cases 1 to 12 follow)

Section 58 (2) made it possible for less severe cases to be imprisoned instead of the regular death penalty.

According to § 59, the joint appointment to treason, without any attempt or even execution, was punished with at least five years imprisonment. Anyone reporting a planned war treason failed should, in accordance with § 60 receive the same punishment as the actual perpetrators. Section 61 held the prospect of impunity for the timely reporting of a war treason - in the sense of prevention.

Law tightened in 1934

Sections 57, 59 and 160 of the 1934 Act

The Nazi regime intensified after the " seizure of power " 1933, the rules for high treason in the civilian criminal code and the war treason in the military penal code.

As early as March 1933, Reich President Paul von Hindenburg issued an ordinance to speed up the proceedings in matters of treason and treason, which limited the preliminary investigation and no longer required an opening resolution. On April 14, 1934, the provisions on high treason and treason were tightened. Since the military law regulation on treason was based expressly on this paragraph, the new version of § 91 was important:

"Section 91 b: Anyone in Germany or as a German abroad who undertakes to encourage hostile power during a war against the Reich or in relation to an impending war or to inflict a disadvantage on the military power of the Reich or its allies is affected by the Death or life imprisonment. If the act only brought about an insignificant disadvantage for the Reich or its allies and only an insignificant advantage for the hostile power, and could not bring about more serious consequences, then prison cannot be recognized for less than two years. "

The provisions of the Criminal Code on treason were tightened twice during the war (1942 and 1944).

Also in 1934, as part of the tightening of the military penal code, the statutory provisions on war treason were revised. On the one hand, all of the more precise definitions of the offense contained in the 1872 regulation were no longer applicable, and on the other hand, the law now generally provided for the death penalty for "war treason":

"Section 57: Anyone who commits treason under Section 91 b of the Criminal Code in the field is punished with death for war treason."

In addition, the group of persons to be prosecuted for "war treason" has been expanded: Section 160, which in the version of 1872 also provided for a conviction of persons not belonging to the German state,

"Section 160: A foreigner or German who, during a war that has broken out against the German Reich on the theater of war, becomes one of the persons listed in sections. 57 to 59 and 134 is guilty of the acts provided for, is to be punished according to the provisions given in this paragraph. "

was explicitly added to the independence of the state affiliation of the crime scene ("even if they were committed abroad").

With the “First Ordinance to Supplement the KSSVO” of November 1, 1939, the military courts were empowered to exceed the statutory penalties in certain cases and also to impose death sentences where this was not intended.

Since March 31, 1943, the "Fourth Ordinance to Supplement the KSSVO" ​​allowed a further expansion of the penalty framework,

"If the regular range of punishment is not sufficient according to the healthy public opinion ."

These rules and regulations extended the group of people who could be prosecuted for war treason to all areas controlled by the German Reich and the Wehrmacht. War treason and any involvement in it (except if it was reported in good time) was now inevitably subject to the death penalty (at most with the hope of a pardon from the competent court lord). In addition, they expanded the offense of "war treason" into indefinite terms and opened up all possibilities for the military courts of the Wehrmacht to pursue any form of deviant or resistant behavior, even just such an attitude, with the death penalty.

Erich Schwinge , an influential commentator on the Military Criminal Code until 1945, defined the feed bar from Section 91b of the Criminal Code as follows:

"Any shift in the balance of power in favor of the enemy state, provided that this can somehow influence the military situation".

A hostile power within the meaning of § 91b StGB is:

"Not only the actual war power of the enemy, but all means available to the enemy".

"Disadvantages" within the meaning of § 91b StGB would be added:

"When the fighting strength is weakened by pacifist propaganda, by arousing public unrest and disrupting economic life".

In such cases, according to Schwinge, “the death penalty was always to be imposed”. In 1944 he also commented:

"Since the war with Russia, any support for the goals of Bolshevism has been sufficient [for the death penalty for war treason, ed.] ."

Legal comparison

The legal text that existed before 1934, regardless of its right-wing and criminal interpretation and application in National Socialist jurisprudence, moves within the framework of other states that was then and partly also today, such as B. Great Britain or the United States.

By deleting the criminal offenses listed in the text of the law from 1934 onwards, the assessment of whether a criminal offense had actually occurred was left to the discretion of the prosecutors and judges. Thus the law lost all constitutional character. The Treason Act of 1814 (based on the Treason Act of 1351), which was valid until 1998 in Great Britain, established the death penalty as a compulsory penalty for certain treason offenses, but tied it very closely to offenses against the sovereignty of the crown.

“When a Man doth compass or imagine the Death of our Lord the King, or of our Lady his Queen or of their eldest Son and Heir; or if a Man do violate the King's Companion, ... "

The American Uniform Code of Military Justice also still provides for the death penalty, but defines the acts in question more concretely than the Nazi legislation:

Ҥ 904, Article 104 - Aiding the enemy: Any person who - (1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or (2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to, or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct. "

The Swiss Military Criminal Law also allowed the death penalty for relatively precisely defined offenses of military treason until 1992. On this basis, 30 soldiers were sentenced to death in World War II. Today life imprisonment is provided for serious cases:

"Article 87: 1. Anyone who willfully, at a time when troops are called up for active service, directly disrupt or endanger the operations of the Swiss Army, who in particular damages or destroys the armed forces' means of transport or communications, equipment or property, or their operations Institutions that serve, prevent or disrupt the army are punished with imprisonment for no less than three years. 3. In severe cases, life imprisonment can be recognized. "

Many questionable judgments have been critically processed by Switzerland since 1998.

application

Memorial for the unknown Wehrmacht deserter (erected in 1995) on the Petersberg in Erfurt

Some of the National Socialist judgments using Section 57, such as sabotage , collaboration with the enemy, betrayal of military secrets , desertion or refusal to obey , were punished similarly in other states involved in World War II . However, the different objectives can be seen in the application: While the Western Allied side was about sanctioning relevant behavior that is harmful to its own armed forces, National Socialist Germany was about keeping its own troops on the ideological line. This is also where the low specification of the elements of the offense and the great freedom in terms of punishment in the legal text come from - it allowed the law to be applied with the greatest severity, even against critics of the regime and those who think differently from politics, even if there were hardly any direct negative effects on one's own troops.

Against this background, the excessive use of military jurisdiction on the German side and the very moderate practice of the Allies on the other hand are not surprising:

“In total, the military courts passed at least 40,000 death sentences during the war (Western allies 300), of which more than three quarters were carried out (World War I 32 executions out of 148 death sentences). Even time penalties often meant death for those convicted, as they were sent to concentration camps or used in 'ascension orders'. "

- Friedemann Needy : Keyword “Military Jurisdiction” in Lexicon Third Reich

Manfred Messerschmidt comes to Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945 with the following figures:

“While 1547 death sentences were imposed in Germany from 1907 to 1932, 393 of which were carried out, the Wehrmacht courts, with the lowest rate, imposed 25,000 death sentences. Of these, 18-22,000 were executed, which is almost fifty times as much. "

The other part of the judgments was based on a wrong, perverse interpretation of the law with frequent disregard of recognized legal principles (e.g. the repeal of the prohibition of analogy in 1935) as well as the basic and procedural rights of the accused. So it is not apparent how z. B. solidarity with persecuted Jews, general oppositional attitudes and actions, black market offenses and many other "offenses" should be subsumed under §§ 56-61. Especially the partial application to civilians clearly contradicts the legal text of the time.

It should be noted that many more death sentences were imposed on the German side than on the Western Allied side.

Since the beginning of the war, the Reich Court Martial was responsible for high treason , state treason and war treason under Section 14 of the War Criminal Procedure Code (KStVO) , even if the offense was committed by a civilian. With the War Criminal Law Ordinance (KSSVO) and the War Criminal Procedure Ordinance (KStVO), the military judiciary was given far-reaching means of power that contradicted legal principles at the beginning of the Second World War. The possibility of appeal was abolished for convicts, but not for judges and prosecutors (some of whom were identical), who often refused to accept judgments that appeared to be too mild and had the case renegotiated.

According to the knowledge of the military historian Wolfram Wette, war treason constituted a “radicalized Nazi law”, which in practice concerned unclear political treason offenses and thus - formally incorrectly - also subsumed high treason cases under Section 57. In retrospect, this should also justify over 300 political murders of soldiers, pacifists and democrats by the radical right in the interwar period. As early as 1933, at the instigation of the NSDAP, the death penalty was generally imposed for all actions that were likely to “inflict a disadvantage” on the warring German Reich and to “encourage” the enemy powers, which also included advocating purely pacifist goals. In practice, the Nazi military justice system mainly pursued "deviant and resistant actions with the maximum penalty".

Exemplary individual cases

According to investigations by Wolfram Wette, political resistance, political resistance and support for persecuted Jews were punished as war treason, but not always consistently, as the case of the military commander in chief Ost Johannes Blaskowitz shows. He had repeatedly protested against the extermination actions of the SS Einsatzgruppen and thus incurred Adolf Hitler's displeasure .

The head of the Army Personnel Office, Rudolf Schmundt , made it unmistakably clear in an instruction at the end of 1942 that "a clear, completely uncompromising attitude to the Jewish question" is required of every Wehrmacht officer and that "no connection, no matter how loose, between an officer and a relative is required of the Jewish race ”. One of the victims of this directive was Sergeant Anton Schmid , who was stationed at the dispersal site in Vilnius. He had close contacts with the Jewish underground organization, hid Jewish workers, provided them with false papers and saved several hundred Jews by transporting them to safer places. He was arrested in January 1942 and came before the court martial of the Feld-Kommandantur (V) 814 / Wilna, which sentenced him to death in February 1942 . According to Wolfram Wette, however, it is not known under which military offense the judges reinterpreted his help for the Jews, since the court martial was lost. The SPD and later KPD member Adolf Pogede was sentenced to death for treason and collaboration with the enemy. In 1944 he was in contact with Soviet prisoners of war at his location .

The corporal Josef Salz was z. B. condemned solely on the basis of oppositional attitudes, which he was charged on the basis of his diary entries. In the judgment it said:

"In which he pretended to be a friend of the Jews and Bolsheviks and viciously reviled and slandered the German people, its leadership and the Wehrmacht, and thereby weakened his willingness to fight and at the same time undertook to play cheap propaganda material into the hands of the enemy."

In addition to helping prisoners of war, overflowing to and contact with partisans , but also only black market crimes, were condemned as war treason.

Another well-known victim was Harro Schulze-Boysen , who was hanged in Berlin-Plötzensee prison on December 22, 1942 for “preparation for high treason ” and “treason” .

Martial law (according to Wolfram Wette) was mainly used against common soldiers. Military treason by the "traditional elites", on the other hand, was more seldom prosecuted, also because it was more difficult to detect:

“[The] Nazi judiciary [held back] in the prosecution of members of the traditional elite: The many treasonous foreign contacts of politicians, diplomats and officers who belonged to the national-conservative resistance who belonged to the national conservative resistance were actually because of treason and war treason need to be followed. Looking back, however, the observer registers with some astonishment that the national-conservative opposition members remained undiscovered at the time, were only persecuted with little emphasis or not at all by the Gestapo and the judiciary and were therefore not punished. In the higher officer corps it was part of good style and the much-invoked corps spirit not to give one another "to the knife". "

A case that has been investigated in more detail is the death sentence - issued in absentia and not carried out - against General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, who joined the National Committee for Free Germany and the Federation of German Officers in 1944 after the Battle of Stalingrad .

Another case that has come to light is that of Lieutenant Colonel Helmuth Groscurth , who opposed a pogrom of 900 “Jews and Russians including women and children” in Zloczow (Ukraine) at the beginning of July 1941 and in vain against a mass shooting of 90 Jewish children on August 20, 1941 intervened. His “provocative” argument to his superiors: “In the present case, however, measures have been taken against women and children that are in no way different from atrocities committed by the enemy, which are continuously reported to the troops.” He equated shootings by SS task forces with previous murders by the Soviet secret police. Groscurth died of typhus shortly after he was captured by the Soviets on February 2, 1943 in Stalingrad.

Because "war treason" and so-called " radio crimes " were John Prassek , Eduard Müller , Hermann Lange and Karl Friedrich Stellbrink on 10 November 1943 beheading executed. The victims were referred to as " Lübeck martyrs " on the 60th anniversary of their execution .

Rehabilitation of victims

Some of the surviving victims of the justice system received little attention and were marginalized in the post-war period. It was not their resistance that was primarily emphasized and appreciated, but rather their “possibly dodgy motives” were debated.

Federal Republic of Germany

An example of this are the court hearings in the 1950s for the shooting of the commander of the Düsseldorf Police, Lieutenant Colonel Franz Jürgens, and four other people who, in order to spare the population senseless suffering, wanted to hand over the city of Düsseldorf to the Allied troops without a fight ( Aktion Rheinland ). The murders of Jürgens and the four civilians were investigated in four trials from March 1949 to December 1952. The Düsseldorf Regional Court in 1949 interpreted it as a “military riot” after 1945 applicable law. The regional court of Wuppertal in 1950 and the Federal Court of Justice in 1952 declared the court proceedings to be legally binding. Among other things, they cited the fact that in almost all states there were martial arts courts . In contrast, it is recognized today:

"The Wehrmacht courts were an instrument of the Nazi injustice state ."

- Richard von Weizsäcker (2007)

For decades, some of the victims of the Nazi military justice system were not rehabilitated because the legislature was of the opinion that they included a whole range of criminal offenses such as war treason, looting and the mistreatment of subordinates, for which the overturning of the verdict without individual examination would appear irresponsible. Furthermore, according to Federal Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, a general overturning of the judgments was rejected in 2007 due to “non-excludable danger to life as a possible consequence of war treason”.

In 2006 and 2007 a rehabilitation was discussed in the Bundestag. In the debate on May 10, 2007, the parliamentary group of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen supported the PDS's motion for these judgments to be included in the 2002 National Socialist Repeal Act :

“The 2002 Amendment included a long list of offenses under the Military Criminal Code with regard to military judgments. Judgments issued under these regulations were set aside across the board. The Federal Association of Victims of National Socialist Military Justice welcomed the reform very much, but has since complained that the provisions on war treason are still missing from this long list of criminal provisions. [...] The request to include the provisions against war treason in the National Socialist Repeal Act is justified. So we will approve the proposal. "

- Volker Beck

The CDU / CSU parliamentary group rejected that request with reference to the Federal Constitutional Court judgment of 19 February 1957 and with reference to the Nazi in the law of 25 August 1998 in § 1 already committed illegality against elementary notion of justice in violation of rulings by the 30th January 1933:

"It [note: the Federal Constitutional Court] has established that under the National Socialist tyranny laws were created on which inhumanity and injustice were written on their foreheads, so to speak, and that they must therefore be denied any validity as a right. [...] The Constitutional Court has also stated that not all laws, just because they were enacted during the Nazi era, can be repealed as legally ineffective without checking their content. "

- Norbert Geis

In the summer of 2009 the Bundestag agreed to rehabilitate all so-called "war traitors" convicted under National Socialism under Section 91b of the Reich Criminal Code. The draft law was unanimously adopted by the German Bundestag on September 8, 2009.

For a long time, a significant problem arose from the existing legality of judgments at that time in relation to the enforcement of financial claims such as B. Survivors' pensions . According to a decision by the Federal Social Court, the payment of a pension was only possible if it could be proven that in the judgments at the time "in individual cases there was no justification for exhausting the penalty or even the penalty was exceeded". As early as 1991, however, the Federal Social Court explicitly distanced itself from its previous jurisprudence and came to the opinion that when assessing military judgments it should be taken into account "that an unjust state has waged a war that is contrary to international law, in which every resistance, including that of simple disobedience or the Leaving the troops, was punished with the death penalty and therefore, in retrospect, as resistance to an injustice regime , may not be excluded from compensation under the Federal Supply Act. "The practice suggests that the death sentences of the Wehrmacht courts are basically obviously unlawful judgments in the sense of constitutional court judgments.

Austria

In 2002, the Austrian National Council decided to overturn judgments against Austrian citizens according to § 57 ff .:

"§ 1: This law repeals convicting military criminal court decisions of the National Socialist military courts against Austrians , which violated elementary ideas of justice after March 12, 1938 to enforce or maintain the National Socialist injustice regime."

"Section 3: Decisions within the meaning of Section 1 are in particular: decisions based on the offenses of high treason, war treason, decisions based on sections 57 to 60, 62 to 65, 67, 69 to 73, 77, 89, 80 to 85, 87, 89, 91, 92, 94 to 97, 99 to 104, 106 to 108, 110 to 112, 139, 141, 144, 147, 147a, 150 of the Military Criminal Code in the versions of the laws of June 16, 1926 (RGBl. I p . 275), July 16, 1935 (RGBl. I p. 1021) and October 10, 1940 (RGBl. I p. 1347). "

On October 21, 2009, the Austrian parliament passed a more comprehensive regulation of Nazi injustice judgments, which, like the German decision in September 2009, rehabilitated “traitors” in a general clause. In the "Repeal and Rehabilitation Act" passed, all armed forces deserters are also rehabilitated, all judgments of the People's Court , the court courts and the special courts from the Nazi era are declared null and void, as are the decisions of the Hereditary Health Court , which brought about compulsory sterilizations and abortions .

Revisionist view

Memorial plaque for the stolen deserter memorial in Braunschweig

From a right-wing extremist , historical revisionist point of view, treason , like treason and high treason , is mostly rejected as "ethically reprehensible, harmful to the community and criminal". Georg Franz-Willing writes :

“Treason has at all times been regarded as one of the most shameful crimes by all peoples and states and has always been punished as such. The betrayal threatens and destroys the moral foundations of every community through breach of loyalty and oath , similar to mutiny , desertion , cowardice before the enemy , the root of which is the betrayal of the bond entered into with the community. "

Appreciating and dealing with such cases of resistance is condemned as a flaw in a Federal Republic that is supposedly dependent on the Allies .

"In the case dealt with at this conference, the ongoing treason and war treachery associated with high treason is glossed over and glorified as 'resistance'; indeed, the 'idea of ​​resistance' became the spiritual basis of the Federal Republic of Germany."

The former military judge Erich Schwinge , from 1948 to 1968 again a university professor in Marburg, took the view in 1993 that "not only the former armed forces judges, but also the military assessors of the arbitration bodies and the court lords who were responsible for confirming the judgments would be stigmatized" . The basic classification of the action of German military jurisdiction as "obvious injustice" is "inaccurate and is based on a one-sided and unscientific evaluation of historical facts".

Processing and research

Research is difficult due to the war-related loss of sources, an unclear separation of justice and military justice, and the fact that the Wehrmacht no longer kept statistics from 1944 onwards.

There are no reliable figures about the total number of cases because historical research has so far hardly dealt with the judgments of the field war courts. In many cases, only the judgment of the court martial and the reasons have been handed down. There, however, the rescue operation is not discussed, but facts such as theft, favoring the enemy, betrayal of war or betrayal of secrets, which were covered by the paragraphs of the Military Criminal Code.

Between 1999 and 2004 a group of around 30 German historians, such as Manfred Messerschmidt , Arno Lustiger , Detlef Bald , Norbert Haase, Jakob Knab , Johannes Winter, Hermine Wüllner, Gerd R. Ueberschär and Peter , talked about Anton Schmid and other rescuers from the Wehrmacht Steinkamp, ​​researched. Her rescue acts and life stories are presented in detail in the two books Rescuers in Uniform and Civil Courage .

The results of two years of research were put together by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in an exhibition What Was Right Back then ... - Soldiers and Civilians Before Wehrmacht Courts .

In September 2009, the monument to armed forces deserters and opponents of the war was inaugurated in Cologne . On October 24, 2014, the large Austrian monument to those persecuted by the Nazi military justice system was ceremoniously opened by Federal President Heinz Fischer at Ballhausplatz in Vienna .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfram Wette / Detlef Vogel (eds.) Collaboration with Ricarda Berthold and Helmut Kramer : The last taboo - Nazi military justice and war treason, construction, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-351-02654-7 . Here is the license edition of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2007, p. 27.
  2. ↑ Ulrike Gramann: July 20, the Wehrmacht and the Bundeswehr. Workplace Peace and Disarmament ( Memento from August 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 136 kB)
  3. ↑ 16/13405 of June 17, 2009 (PDF; 90 kB)
  4. ↑ Rehabilitation of the »war traitors« ( Memento from July 21, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  5. ↑ a b Parliament August 31, 2009 ( Memento from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Ernst Fraenkel: The dual state . European Publishing House, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-434-50504-0 .
  7. ↑ Erich Schwinge: The current situation of the criminal justice system. Halle 1933, p. 22. Quoted from: Detlef Garbe: In each individual case ... up to the death penalty. Hamburg Foundation for Social History, Hamburg, 1989, ISBN 3-927106-00-3 , p. 17.
  8. ↑ Frank Brendle: Treason is an act of peace. In: Junge Welt . September 1, 2007.
  9. ↑ a b Military Criminal Code for the German Empire of June 20, 1872.
  10. ↑ Ordinance of the Reich President to speed up the proceedings in high treason and treason cases of March 18, 1933
  11. ↑ Section 91b of the Act to Change Provisions of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure of April 24, 1934.
  12. ↑ a b The Reich Law Gazette on the website of the Austrian National Library
  13. ^ First regulation to supplement the KSSVO of November 1, 1939. In: Reichsgesetzblatt 1939 I, p. 2131.
  14. ^ Fourth regulation to supplement the KSSVO of March 31, 1943. In: Reichsgesetzblatt 1943 I, p. 261.
  15. ^ Military Criminal Code. Explained by Erich Schwinge. Berlin 2nd edition. 1939, pp. 166f.
  16. ^ Military Criminal Code together with the Special War Penal Ordinance. Erl. V. Dr. Erich Schwinge, ord. Professor of Law at the University of Vienna, Judge-Martial a. D. Berlin 6th edition. 1944, p. 155.
  17. ↑ Treason Act 1814 on The UK Statue Lawbase
  18. ↑ Treason Act 1351 on The UK Statue Lawbase
  19. ↑ The Uniform Code of Military Jusice at Cornell University Law School
  20. ↑ Legal text on the website of the federal authorities of the Swiss Confederation
  21. ↑ Petition on the revision of all death sentences and the Washington Agreement of 1946 of October 9, 1998 on Bulletin officiel - Les procès-verbaux du Conseil national et du Conseil des Etats ( Memento of the original of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was used automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.parlament.ch
  22. ↑ Wolfram Wette / Detlef Vogel (ed.): The last taboo. Nazi military justice and "war treason". Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-351-02654-7
  23. ↑ Keyword: military jurisdiction. In: Friedemann Needy: Lexicon Third Reich. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-492-22369-9
  24. ^ The fight on the inner front , review of Messerschmidts Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945 , Deutschlandradio , December 19, 2005
  25. ^ Act amending the Criminal Code. Reichsgesetzblatt, year 1935, part I, p. 839.
  26. ↑ Thomas Walter: Fast Justice - Good Justice? In: Walter Manoschek : Victims of the Nazi Military Justice , Mandelbaum, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85476-101-5 , p. 28.
  27. ↑ Manfred Messerschmidt: Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933-1945 , Schöningh, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-506-71349-3 , p. 242 ff.
  28. ↑ Manfred Messerschmidt: Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945 , Schöningh, 2005, ISBN 3-506-71349-3 , Chapter: Competence and jurisdiction in high, state and war treason , pp. 109–116.
  29. ^ Franz W. Seidler: The Military Courts of the German Wehrmacht 1939-1945 , Herbig, Munich / Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-7766-1706-3 , pp. 44-46.
  30. ↑ a b c Convicted of "treason". ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), excerpt from a lecture by Wolfram Wette at the Evangelical Church Congress , Frankfurter Rundschau , June 16, 2007 (Part 1 & 2)
  31. ↑ Johannes Hürter : Hitler's Army Leader The German Commanders-in-Chief in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, p. 184 f.
  32. ↑ Dermot Bradley and Richard Schulze-Kossens (eds.): Activity report of the Chief of the Army Personnel Office, General Rudolf Schmundt , October 1, 1942–29. October 1944, Osnabrück, 1984, pp. 15 and 16.
  33. ↑ Wolfram Wette: " Civil courage in uniform " in: Die Zeit , November 9, 2006 No. 46.
  34. ↑ a b Christian Streit: Against the horrors. How General Staff Officer Helmuth Groscurth resisted the murder in the Soviet Union. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of December 9, 2017, accessed on December 28, 2017
  35. ↑ Groscurth's report of August 21, 1941 for the Chief of the General Staff of Army Group South, General Georg von Sodenstern, on the events in Belaya Zerkow on August 20, 1941. In: Fluchschrift , accessed on December 29, 2017
  36. ↑ See the research work: German Resistance Memorial Center and the Federal Association of Victims of Nazi Military Justice e. V.
  37. ^ The events of April 16 and 17, 1945 in Düsseldorf. “Aktion Rheinland” (PDF; 425 kB), report by Klaus Dönecke on the website of the history workshop in Düsseldorf
  38. ^ Addendum to the report by Klaus Dönecke on the website of the history workshop in Düsseldorf
  39. ^ Richard von Weizsäcker: Commentary on the exhibition: "What was right then ..." ( Memento from September 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  40. ↑ See also the interview with Prof. Müller on "Spiegel online one day" on this issue.
  41. ↑ Eckart Spoo : " War Treason ( Memento of August 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )", in: Ossietzky , 12/2006.
  42. ↑ hib announcement 325/2006, November 1st, 2006: today in the Bundestag - include war treason in the law to repeal unjust Nazi judgments. With a link to the draft law of the left-wing faction ( memento from August 17, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  43. ↑ Volker Beck: Repeal of National Socialist judgments, speech of May 10, 2007 in the Bundestag
  44. ↑ Norbert Geis: General repeal of judgments based on war treason to be rejected. Speech on the motion of the left parliamentary group of May 10, 2007 ( Memento of December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  45. ↑ Tagesschau: "Late restoration of dignity" ( Memento from July 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  46. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20090702101122/http://www.fr-online.de/in_und_ausland/politik/aktuell/?em_cnt=1817495
  47. ↑ Focus : 64 years after the Second World War, “war traitors” judgments are repealed from September 8, 2009 (accessed on September 8, 2009), Second Act to amend the NS-AufhG from September 24, 2009 ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 3150 )
  48. ^ Judgment of the BSG in NJW 1992, 934.
  49. ^ Judgment of the BSG in NJW 1992, 936.
  50. ↑ Federal Act on the Rehabilitation of Victims of National Socialist Military Justice at http://www.parlament.gv.at/ (Word document)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / 209.85.129.104  
  51. ↑ FAZ, October 23, 2009, p. 7.
  52. ^ Criminal "resistance fighters" - rehabilitation for "edelweiss pirates" in Cologne at www.stoertebecker.net
  53. ↑ Georg Franz-Willing: betrayal and resistance from an ethical and theological point of view. In: Peter Dehoust: The defeat of the empire - war, betrayal, trials. Nation Europa, Coburg, 1983, ISBN 3-920677-00-5 , p. 126.
  54. ↑ Georg Franz-Willig: betrayal and resistance from an ethical and theological point of view. In: Peter Dehoust: The defeat of the empire - war, betrayal, trials. Nation Europa, Coburg, 1983, ISBN 3-920677-00-5 , p. 127.
  55. ↑ Erich Schwinge in NJW 1993, 369.
  56. ↑ asf news news / 2006 / 2_quartal, appeal of the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace
  57. ↑ Announcement of the traveling exhibition What Was Right Back then ... - Soldiers and civilians before Wehrmacht courts. on: H-Soz-u-Kult . May 30, 2007.
  58. ↑ Monument to deserters. In: FAZ online. September 3, 2009.
  59. ↑ ORF : Late Rehabilitation: Deserter Monument Unveiled , October 24, 2014
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on June 27, 2007 .