War Crimes Program

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The War Crimes Program , also known as the War Crimes Trial Program , was an American program for the criminal prosecution of German war crimes that were committed during World War II . The objective of this program was the creation of legal norms and principles as well as a judicial and prosecution apparatus for the implementation of war crimes trials. The first preparatory measures were taken in the early summer of 1944, with the release of the last war criminals from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison on June 4, 1958, the program was finally completed. The core period of the War Crimes Program ran between May 1945 and its preliminary completion in June 1948.

Before the end of the war

Due to feared retaliation, the Combined Chiefs of Staff decided to conduct war crimes trials, with a few exceptional cases, for the post-war period. At the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) a Court of Inquiry was finally established in August 1944 to prosecute war crimes. This allied investigative court only investigated war crimes on the orders of the SHAEF. SHAEF cooperated with the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), which accepted lists of war criminals from SHAEF and forwarded them there. The UNWCC served as the international clearing house for the registration of crimes and perpetrators and the gathering of evidence. As early as July 1944, the American War Department established a department to prosecute war crimes, the so-called War Crimes Branch . To investigate and secure evidence relating to war crimes, 19 War Crimes Investigation Teams were to be formed in the US Army from the end of February 1945 , but only seven of them began their work by the end of the war. In addition, her area of ​​responsibility also included the hearing of witnesses and tracking down suspected war criminals.

After the end of the war

From May 1945 the Central Registry of War Crimes and Security Suspects was run and the War Crimes Evidence and Investigation Center was set up in Wiesbaden to bundle the investigation results. People suspected of being war criminals were interned in the internment camps of the US Army in Dachau and, until March 1947, in Ludwigsburg . After the Office of Military Government for Germany (US) (OMGUS) took over administration in the American zone of occupation in September 1945, a war crimes branch was created there as a subdivision of the legal department. While the War Crimes Branch of OMGUS were responsible for the Nuremberg Trials on the basis of Control Council Act No. 10 , the War Crimes Branch (later War Crimes Group) of the US Army were responsible for carrying out the Dachau Trials before American military courts (Military Government Courts), for which their own procedural and legal provisions initially applied. Since up to eight different American departments and organizations were temporarily involved in the prosecution of war crimes, the tracking down and arrest of war criminals should be assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps and the investigative work should be based at the War Crimes Evidence and Investigation Center. By the provisional end of the War Crimes Program in June 1948, the workforce had increased to up to 1,200 people. The War Crimes Group became an independent unit from July 1946, which finally united as a central body all competencies relating to the American prosecution of war crimes.

Balance sheet

In addition to the 177 defendants in the Nuremberg follow-up trials, defendants in the Dachau trials in 1922 had to answer before American courts. In addition, other war crimes trials within and a few outside the American zone of occupation took place in US military courts. In addition, preliminary investigations were carried out in almost 2,000 cases up to February 1946 alone, but no proceedings were initiated. The reasons for this lay in the insignificance of the offenses, lack of evidence, death of the accused and objectively unfounded charges.

In the war crimes trials under American jurisdiction, as in the other war crimes trials of the Allies, the constitutional punishment and atonement of Nazi crimes were initially in the foreground. In addition, the population should also be informed about the Nazi crimes and the criminal nature of the acts of violence made clear. Furthermore, these processes should set in motion a collective reflection process in the German population in order to establish a constitutional and democratic culture in post-war Germany and thus in society. The collective shock over the news and recordings of violent crimes in the concentration camps initially had an effect in the early post-war period in Germany in terms of re- education . The main war criminals such as Heinrich Himmler were soon identified as those primarily responsible for war crimes and genocide ; this shifting of guilt harbored the risk of a subordinate judiciary of the lower classes. This assumption was also promoted by the legal construct of common design , which is hardly comprehensible in Germany , the approving participation in a criminal system, which from the outset assumed a criminal offense even without individual evidence of the crime. The American military courts therefore tried to prove the criminal offenses of the accused individually, which they succeeded in the majority of the cases.

The first shock at the concentration camp and war atrocities was followed by solidarity from large sections of the German population with the prisoners in Landsberg in the course of the collective displacement. In the course of the Cold War - West Germany was to become an ally of the Western Allies - the successive reduction of the sentences and thus the early release of the prisoners from Landsberg began after review procedures. The prosecution of war crimes was thus often taken ad absurdum .

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 . In the "Declaration of St. James" the criminal prosecution and trial of war criminals was decided together with the great allied powers. 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 start operating until more than a year later than the UNWCC. In addition, the European Advisory Commission (EAC) was established in mid-December 1943 , also 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 legally punish war crimes after a victory over the Axis Powers was confirmed by the Moscow Declaration on November 1, 1943, at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and by the Potsdam Agreement of August 2, 1945. On August 8, 1945, at the London conference with the “Agreement on the Prosecution and Punishment of the Main War Criminals of the European Axis”, the course was set for the Control Council Act No. 10 of December 20, 1945, which was almost identical in content , on the criminal prosecution of war crimes.

See also

literature

  • Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945–1948. 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 , pp. 41-66.
  • 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 , pp. 17-31.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945–1948. Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 16ff. and 159f.
  2. ↑ Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945–1948. Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 17-19.
  3. ^ A b Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945–1948. Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 20-25.
  4. ↑ 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. 54f.
  5. ↑ Cf. Ute Stiepani: The Dachau Trials and their Significance in the Allied Prosecution of Nazi Crimes. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär: The allied trials against war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 232f.
  6. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past. Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-30720-X , pp. 133–306.
  7. ↑ 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.
  8. ^ 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. 19f.
  9. ↑ See Holger Lessing: The first Dachau trial (1945/46). Baden-Baden 1993, p. 50f.
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Form, Helia-Verena Daubach: The Supreme Court for the British Zone (OGH-BZ)  ( 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: Toter Link / www.olg-koeln.nrw.de