Special tribunals in France during the Second World War
The special tribunals in France during World War II ( Sections spéciales en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale ) were set up in 1941 to try communist and anarchist acts. Mostly draconian sentences were imposed.
prehistory
In the Armistice of Compiègne France surrendered to the German Reich in 1940 . France was divided into two zones : the occupied zone (zone occupée) in the north and west of the country and the free zone (zone libre) in the south and southeast, which covered about 40% of the area of France. In the free zone in Vichy , the Vichy regime was installed under Philippe Pétain .
For the French communists, the Hitler-Stalin pact was difficult to endure. After the attack by the German Reich on the Soviet Union , it was decided to assassinate a randomly selected German soldier. On August 21, 1941, Pierre Georges (also known as Colonel Fabien ) shot and killed Alfons Moser, a member of the Navy in the Barbès - Rochechouart metro station . Moser was shot several times in the back when he got into the car and was immediately dead. The perpetrators managed to escape.
Establishment of the special tribunals
It was feared that the Germans would react violently. Indeed, Hitler demanded the shooting of hostages . The French Interior Minister Pierre Pucheu took the initiative. He didn't want the Germans to choose those to be shot. Peace and order were supposed to be created in the country and people preferred to have some influence over the people to be executed .
It was agreed with Hans Speidel , head of the command staff at the military commander in France, Otto von Stülpnagel , that the shooting of hostages would be dispensed with if the French themselves execute a number of communists and Jews . Thus, on August 22, 1941, a law on the establishment of special tribunals, backdated to August 14, was hastily drawn up. The law was published in the Journal officiel on August 23, 1941 .
The law established special tribunals in the free zone at the military tribunals and in the occupied zone at the appellate courts. The special tribunals were designed to combat communist and anarchist activities and decided in the first and last instance. Appeal against the judgments was not provided. The negotiations should proceed quickly, so that the crime did not have to be clarified in all details as long as there was no doubt about the general guilt of the perpetrator.
Above all, the law meant the departure from two important principles of the rule of law: Nulla poena sine lege (no punishment without a law) and Ne bis in idem (prohibition of double punishment ). The law also applied to offenses that were committed before it came into force and people could be convicted again who had already been convicted of the offense. This meant a complete departure from the legal principles that had been in effect in all enlightened countries since Montesquieu at the latest .
Since the real perpetrators had not yet been identified, for the first negotiations before the special tribunals they resorted to communists and Jews who were already in prisons for other offenses. The first to be sentenced to death in Paris were the communists Émile Bastard, Abraham Trzebrucki and André Bréchet, some of whom had only committed minor acts, such as: B. had stuck communist propaganda or given a false name when immigrating to France. Lucien Sampaix, once editor-in-chief of the left-wing daily L'Humanité , was “only” sentenced to more severe forced labor, but ultimately shot by the Germans in December 1941.
The judgments had been agreed and the prosecutors were to apply for the sentences that had been agreed upon at the preliminary discussions. Some judges refused to participate in the special tribunals because they did not want to violate the prohibition of retroactive effects. Some prosecutors disobeyed the deal and asked for a low prison term, while the court passed a death sentence. The negotiations, including consultation with the court and the pronouncement of the verdict, usually lasted only half an hour to an hour. The public was always excluded from the negotiations ( huis clos ).
Outside Paris, nine death sentences were passed in August 1941 . The Germans demanded at least 30 death sentences; so many could not be delivered. Instead of those who were not sentenced to death by the French, hostages were shot.
Aftermath
After the liberation of France, the apparent collaborators were held accountable. In addition, the French Provisional Government created a law to investigate whether someone had behaved in an undignified manner (Indignité nationale). This meant that the small and medium-sized followers should be held accountable by the Épuration légale . This procedure is comparable to the arbitration chamber proceedings for denazification carried out in the western occupation zones of Germany .
The special tribunals were returned to normal criminal or civil chambers. None of the lawyers was punished in any way for their participation in the section special. Only the interior minister of the Vichy regime, Pierre Pucheu, was also called to account for the establishment of the special tribunals. At the time of the liberation he was in French Algeria . There the process it was made because of defeatism, treason, murder of resistance fighters and hunt for workers for the benefit of the Nazi empire and he was on 20 March 1944 in Algiers to the guillotine executed.
Representation in the film
The film "Special Tribunal - Everyone Fights For Himself (Section spéciale) " by director Constantin Costa-Gavras from 1975 gives an accurate representation of the special tribunals.