United Nations War Crimes Commission

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The United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) was a commission of allied states for the preservation of evidence and criminal prosecution of war crimes committed by the Axis powers in World War II , which was founded in London on October 20, 1943 and existed until the end of March 1948.

tasks

The founding members were these 17 nations: United States of America , Great Britain , France , Australia , Canada , New Zealand , South Africa , Czechoslovakia , Poland , Yugoslavia , Luxembourg , the Netherlands , Norway , Belgium , Greece , India and China , which was one of the driving forces behind the Was founded. The Soviet Union , although involved in the preliminary negotiations, did not join the organization because its request for seven individual voting seats (USSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova) was not met. The dominant nations Great Britain, the USA and China were only willing to grant voting rights for the first three “republics”.

The tasks of the commission included:

  • Collecting evidence and documenting war crimes
  • Receiving reports from member states regarding war crimes
  • Creation and publication of war crimes lists
  • Development of procedural issues and extradition agreements
  • Reporting to the Allied Governments
Sir Cecil Hurst, picture from 1945

After tough negotiations, Sir Cecil Hurst was appointed provisional chairman and, from January 1945, Lord Wright of Durley. Three committees with sub-committees were formed:

  1. Facts and evidence,
  2. Implementation questions and
  3. Advisory Committee.

The first meeting took place on October 26, 1943. In February 1944, the first evidence of German war crimes was handed over to the UNWCC. In May 1944, plans were made for the arrest of leading representatives of the Third Reich and the recommendation was made that all members of the SS and Gestapo should be recorded for further investigation above a certain rank after the end of the war .

Until the beginning of 1945, however, the Allied Legal Committee was essentially limited to organizational and fundamental aspects. Because evidence that would have formed a working basis was slow to arrive, the committee members discussed the legal issue. Two questions in particular could not be answered by the end of the war. There was no consensus regarding the criminality of wars of aggression , and the discussion barely went beyond what had already been waged after the First World War . The commission remained split into two camps and no resolution could be passed. What is meant by crimes against humanity was the second question that was controversially discussed. That atrocities should also be punished before the war began was a view that did not prevail. The American and British governments spoke out against it.

It was only after the end of the war that evidence was fully secured and cooperation with national judicial authorities began. A total of 8178 files were created containing allegations against 36,810 suspects, 34,270 of whom were Germans. The available data were compared with those of the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS) created by the American and British armies in 1945 . By August 1947 there were already 60 lists with the names of war criminals; More than 22,000 German citizens were among the more than 24,000 registered people. In addition, the UNWCC campaigned for the establishment of a United Nations War Crimes Court by the United Nations , before which negotiations against the main war criminals should take place. The other war crimes trials were to take place before Allied military courts , unless they fell within national jurisdiction. However, the UNWCC's influence in the prosecution of war crimes was limited, as it had no executive powers and its human and material resources were limited. Therefore, the USA and other allied nations also set up national commissions to carry out war crimes trials.

After the dissolution of the UNWCC on March 31, 1948, 89 war crimes cases were published in 15 volumes in the Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals until 1949 .

background

In view of the German war crimes in the occupied countries, representatives from nine London-based governments-in-exile met in January 1942 and formed the Inter-Allied Commission for the Punishment of War Crimes to prosecute the war crimes committed . The St. James Declaration announced the prosecution and trial of war criminals by the governments-in-exile of the occupied states. In March 1942, at the “International Assembly in London” ( London International Assembly ), the “legal and theoretical foundations for the activities of the UNWCC and the planned international trials in Nuremberg” were developed. Great Britain and the USA decided on October 7, 1942, also under pressure from the London-based governments in exile, to set up a commission of inquiry to prosecute war crimes. This United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes did not begin its work until over a year later after the UNWCC. In addition, the European Advisory Commission (EAC) was established in mid-December 1943 in order to ensure coordination between the Allies with regard to the prosecution of war crimes. This advisory body of the Allies dealt, among other things, with legal questions and problems of potential war crimes trials as well as the modalities for the identification and arrest of war criminals. The intention to punish war crimes legally after a victory over the Axis Powers was confirmed with the Moscow Declaration on November 1, 1943, at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and with the Potsdam Agreement of August 2, 1945. On August 8, 1945, at the London Conference with the “Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Government of the United States of America, the Provisional Government of the French Republic and the Government of the Soviet Socialist Republics on the Persecution and punishment of the main war criminals of the European axis “set the course for the Control Council Act No. 10 of December 20, 1945, which is almost identical in content , on the criminal prosecution of war crimes.

Far Eastern Commission

At the request of China in particular, a Pacific Affairs sub-commission was set up in Asia to prosecute Japanese war criminals. After the establishment of the Far Eastern Advisory Committee (FEAC) and its transformation into the Far Eastern Commission (FEC) in 1946, its tasks were carried out by the Working Committee Committee No. 5: Was Criminals Taken. The eleven member countries of the FEC sent judges and prosecutors to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and carried out war crimes trials on their own until 1951.

literature

  • Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945–48. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-593-34641-9 .
  • Holger Lessing: The first Dachau trial (1945/46). Nomos, Baden-Baden 1993, ISBN 3-7890-2933-5 .
  • Wolfgang Form: Judicial Policy Aspects of Western Allied War Crimes Trials 1942–1950. In: Ludwig Eiber , Robert Sigl (eds.): Dachau Trials - Nazi crimes before American military courts in Dachau 1945–1948. Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0167-2 .
  • Lothar Kettenacker: The treatment of war criminals as an Anglo-American legal problem. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär : The allied trials against war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 .
  • Alen Folnovic: Aspects of the development of the legal figure of acting on command in German and international law. Dissertation. Berlin 2007.
  • Boris Krivec: From Versailles to Rome - The long way from Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege - Significance and development of the penal legal reservation in international criminal law. Dissertation. Hamburg 2004.
  • Daniel Marc Segesser: Justice instead of revenge or revenge through justice? The Punishment of War Crimes in the International Scientific Debate 1872–1945 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2010 (Habil. Bern 2006), in particular pp. 350–361.

English:

  • UNWCC: Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals. 15 volumes. London 1947-1949. Available as PDF: [1]
  • Arieh Kochaveh: Britain and the Establishment of the UNWCC. In: English Historical Review. Vol. 107, 1992, № 423, p. 323 Kochaveh, 349.
  • ME Bathurst: The United Nations War Crimes Commission. In: Am Jnl Intl Law. Vol 39, 1945.
  • Robert Wright: The History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War. London 1948.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Form: Judicial Policy Aspects of Western Allied War Crimes Trials 1942–1950. In: Ludwig Eiber, Robert Sigl (eds.): Dachau Trials - Nazi crimes before American military courts in Dachau 1945–1948. Göttingen 2007, p. 47 f.
  2. ↑ Philip Piccigallo: The Japanese on Trial . University of Texas Press, Austin 1979, ISBN 0-292-78033-8 , p. 144.
  3. ^ Telford Taylor : The Nuremberg Trials. Background, analyzes and findings from today's perspective , Munich 1994, ISBN 3-453-08021-1 , p. 42 ff.
  4. ↑ Arieh Kochaveh: Britain and the establishment of the UNWCC. In: English Historical Review. Vol. 107, No. 423, 1992, p. 323.
  5. ^ War Crimes Trials Under the Royal Warrants 1945-1949; Intl and Comparative Law Quarterly 1990 , p. 785, fn. 35.
  6. ^ Gerhard E. Gründler: International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg 1945 - 1946 ( Memento of March 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Form: Judicial Policy Aspects of Western Allied War Crimes Trials 1942–1950. In: Ludwig Eiber, Robert Sigl (eds.): Dachau Trials - Nazi crimes before American military courts in Dachau 1945–1948. Göttingen 2007, p. 47 ff.
  8. ^ Holger Lessing: The first Dachau trial (1945/46). Baden-Baden 1993, p. 49.
  9. ↑ Boris Krivec: From Versailles to Rome - The long way from Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege - Significance and development of the criminal law reservation in international criminal law. Hamburg 2004, p. 47.
  10. ^ Lothar Kettenacker: The treatment of war criminals as an Anglo-American legal problem. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär: The allied trials against war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 19 f.
  11. ↑ cf. Holger Lessing: The first Dachau trial (1945/46). Baden-Baden 1993, p. 50 f.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Form, Helia-Verena Daubach: The Supreme Court for the British Zone (OGH-BZ)