Trial of the Wehrmacht High Command

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht process (OKW process) , in the original English name "The High Command Case" - Military Tribunal V - Case 12, The United States against Wilhelm Leeb and others , or The High Command Case for short , also General Process or just The Case 12 called, was the last and next to the Wilhelmstrasse process (Case XI) one of the longest of the twelve subsequent trials of the Nuremberg trials against managers of the German Empire in the era of National socialism . Three defendants were members of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), the other army and army group commanders in chief . Since the trial was only directed against three members of the OKW, the short name OKW trial is actually misleading, but it has become commonplace. The indictment was filed on November 17, 1947, the hearings lasted from February to October 1948 (169 days of trial), and the verdict was pronounced on April 14, 1949. Of the accused, the former commander in the Netherlands, committed Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz , on the first day of the trial of suicide . 11 of the 14 defendants were convicted (twice life sentences, otherwise temporary sentences).

The accusation

Telford Taylor, Chief Prosecutor, 1947-48

The November 28, 1947 indictment included

  1. Crimes against peace and violation of international treaties
  2. War crimes through responsibility for killing, ill treatment and other crimes against prisoners of war
  3. Crimes against humanity by executing or ordering killings, torture , deportation , hostage-taking , deportation for forced labor
  4. joint planning and conspiracy to commit such acts.

Brigadier General Telford Taylor was the chief prosecutor .

The judge

President: John C. Young , past president of the Colorado State Supreme Court ; as observers functioned Winfried Hale , Judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of Tennessee , and Justin W. Harding , former judge in Alaska and auxiliary Attorney General of the State of Ohio , who already in the legal process had been judges.

The process

The focus of the trial was on war crimes and crimes against humanity, in particular the criminal orders of the Wehrmacht leadership, their transmission and compliance, which had led to a multitude of outrageous war crimes. One focus was the Commissar Order of 1941, which led to the murder of political commissars of the Red Army, and another was the Command Order of 1942, which resulted in the murder of prisoners of war of the Allied forces who had fought on the coasts in the west and in Greece as members of commando companies . Other subjects of the negotiation were the crimes against prisoners of war, mainly soldiers of the Red Army , which have been committed in the millions , and the criminal measures of the Wehrmacht against civilians in the occupied territories, who were killed in large numbers or taken into forced labor .

Defendants and judgments

In view of the previous acquittal of the General Staff and OKW of the charges of being criminal organizations , the judges did not accept the charges of crimes against peace and conspiracy as charges. A collective charge of generals was not admitted. The military tribunal underscored its principle of individual responsibility by giving acquittals. The Commander-in-Chief of Air Fleet 3 , Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle , and the Chief of the Naval Forces in Norway and Commander of the Northern Navy Group, Admiral General Otto Schniewind , were acquitted. The convictions were made for drafting criminal orders such as the Commissar Order and the Command Order , for crimes against prisoners of war and civilians, for the deportation of civilians from the occupied countries for forced labor and for supporting the murder of Jews in the east or participating in it.

List of defendants

image Rank Surname function Year of birth Sentence 1948 Served sentence
Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2004-004-05, Johannes Blaskowitz.jpg Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz Commander in Chief of Army Groups G and H 1883 Suicide on February 5, 1948
Colonel General Karl-Adolf Hollidt Commander in Chief of the 6th Army 1891 5 years imprisonment Dismissed in 1949
Hermann Hoth.jpg Colonel General Hermann Hoth Commander in Chief of the 4th Panzer Army 1885 15 years imprisonment Dismissed in 1954
Federal Archives Image 183-R63872, Georg von Küchler.jpg Field Marshal General Georg von Küchler Commander in chief of Army Group North 1881 20 years imprisonment Dismissed in 1953
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1999-1206-501, Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb.jpg Field Marshal General Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb Commander in chief of Army Group North 1876 3 years imprisonment served
Rudolf Lehmann 1947.jpg Chief Justice General Rudolf Lehmann Head of the legal department of the OKW 1890 7 years imprisonment Dismissed in 1950
Hermann Reinecke.jpg General of the Infantry Hermann Reinecke Chief of the Nazi leadership staff in the OKW, head of the General Wehrmacht Office 1888 Prison for life Dismissed in 1954
FEDERAL ARCHIVE, Georg-Hans Reinhardt 1.jpg Colonel General Georg-Hans Reinhardt Commander in Chief of Army Group Center 1887 15 years imprisonment Dismissed in 1952
Karl von Roques at the Nuremberg Trials.jpg General of the Infantry Charles of Roques Commander of the Rear Army Area of Army Groups South and A 1880 20 years imprisonment Died in 1949
Hans von Salmuth.jpg Colonel General Hans von Salmuth Commander-in-Chief of the 15th Army 1888 20 years imprisonment Dismissed in 1953
Otto Schniewind.jpg Admiral General Otto Schniewind Fleet Commander and Chief of Naval Group Command North 1887 acquittal
Hugo-Sperrle.jpg Field Marshal General Hugo Sperrle Commander in Chief of the Air Fleet 3 1885 acquittal
Walter-Warlimont.jpg General of the artillery Walter Warlimont Deputy Chief of the Wehrmacht Command Staff 1894 Prison for life Dismissed in 1954
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-2007-0313-500, Romania, Otto Wöhler at situation discussion.jpg General of the Infantry Otto Wöhler Commander in Chief of Army Group South 1894 8 years imprisonment Dismissed in 1951

reception

In the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s nobody was interested in the publication of materials on the Nuremberg Succession Trials. As a result, historical revisionist views of the generals and their defenders were initially able to occupy the field of historiography. This also applied to the OKW process. Initially, only one book was published with the defense speeches by Hans Laternser , who had been the lawyer for many generals. The lack of discussion was characteristic of the line -of-the-line mentality of the fifties and the policy of ignoring the crimes dealt with in the war crimes trials and the judgments passed by the Federal Government. This period of no dispute was only interrupted in 1960, when the judgment was first published in what was then the GDR. Because of the dispute in the times of the East-West conflict and the polemical preface contained in the volume, this representation hardly played a role. As a result, the OKW process was forgotten. It was only with the book by the journalist Jörg Friedrich that public attention turned to the war crimes of the Wehrmacht and the OKW trial. In contrast to the information in the title, Friedrich's book is not a “historiographical representation”, but a “great essay” in which the files of the trial are used alongside others to underpin “certain general theses” by the author Friedrich. It was only with the book by Valerie Geneviève Hébert that a modern historical account appeared at the University of Arkansas in 2010 .

Process log

  • Library of Congress of the US: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10 Trial of war criminals Green Series. More precisely Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Volume 10 [1] + Volume XI [2] in the English original language.
  • Case 12 - The judgment against the High Command of the Wehrmacht was passed on October 28 in Nuremberg by the Military Tribunal of the United States. Contains the only German translation until 2017 of the judgment listed in Volume XI under point XI, which comes from the copy of Case 12 stored in Warsaw. Rütten & Loenig, Berlin 1961 (with a 20-page “polemical” preface by the GDR government).

literature

  • Jörg Friedrich : The law of war. The German Army in Russia 1941–1945. The trial of the Wehrmacht High Command. Piper, Munich et al. 1993, ISBN 3-492-03116-1 .
  • Valerie Geneviève Hébert: Hitler's Generals on Trial: The Last War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 2010. (Very positive review, summary and criticism of the book: Detlev F. Vagts in: American Journal of International Law. Vol. 104 (2010), pp. 548f.)
  • Wolfram Wette : Case 12. The OKW trial (against Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and others). In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): National Socialism in front of a court. The allied trials of war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , pp. 199-212.

Web links

Commons : Process Oberkommando der Wehrmacht  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfram Wette: Case 12: The OKW Trial. Published in: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): National Socialism in front of court. The allied trials of war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , p. 205.
  2. ↑ Hans Laternser: Defense of German soldiers. Appeals to Allied Courts. Bohnemeier, Bonn 1950.
  3. ↑ Wolfram Wette: Case 12: The OKW Trial. Published in: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): National Socialism in front of court. The allied trials of war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , p. 210.
  4. ↑ See under literature in this lemma
  5. ↑ Wolfram Wette: Case 12: The OKW Trial. Published in: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): National Socialism in front of court. The allied trials of war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , p. 210.
  6. ↑ See section literature
  7. ↑ Wolfram Wette : Case 12. The OKW trial (against Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and others). In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): National Socialism in front of a court. The allied trials of war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , pp. 199–212, here: p. 210.
  8. ↑ Jonathan Lurie: Review of Valerie Genevieve Hebert: Hitler's Generals on Trial: The Last War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg. H-Law, H-Net Reviews. September 2010. [URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=29942 ]