Defense force decomposition

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Decomposition of military strength through instructions for simulating diseases, here a camouflage from 1943, which imitates a booklet from Reclam's Universal Library .

Decomposition of Wehrkraftzersetzung ( military force decomposition for short ) was the designation for a criminal offense in National Socialist Germany that was basically threatened with the death penalty , which was revised in 1938 in the Special War Criminal Law Ordinance (KSSVO) and published shortly before the start of the war on August 26, 1939 in the Reichsgesetzblatt . The listed offenses included conscientious objection , defeatist statements and self-mutilation .

The fact of the dismantling of military strength was demanded early on by the protagonists of the Nazi military justice system, probably since 1934, as a supplement to military law, and in the following period it was repeatedly suggested in various forms. Situations like the one in the November Revolution of 1918 were to be prevented by criminal law and with excessive use of the death penalty, in order to suppress such “revolutionary phenomena” and “mental decomposition (s)”.

The broad formulations in the law, an extensive interpretation of the term "public" and the orientation towards the " healthy public sentiment " enabled numerous judgments with draconian punishments, which for many Germans became the "epitome of terror".

definition

Section 5 of the Special War Criminal Law Ordinance ( RGBl. I 1939, p. 1455) describes the broad elements of a "decomposition of military strength":

"1. Anyone who publicly calls on or incites to refuse to fulfill their service obligations in the German or an allied armed forces, or otherwise publicly seeks to paralyze or undermine the will of the German or allied people to defend themselves;
2. whoever undertakes to induce a soldier or conscript on leave of absence to disobey or to object or to act violently against a superior or to desert or unauthorized removal or to otherwise undermine male discipline in the German or an allied armed forces;
3. Anyone who undertakes to deprive himself or someone else of his military service in whole, in part or temporarily by self-mutilation, by means calculated on the basis of deception or in some other way. "

Penalty limits

Section 5 of the Special War Crimes Ordinance introduces the threat of the death penalty even before the facts are listed. Only after listing the elements of the offense are there restrictions on the penalty for less serious cases:

“(1) Death is punished for decomposition of the military strength:
[... list of the elements of the offense]
(2) In less serious cases, a sentence can be given to penitentiary or prison.
(3) In addition to the death penalty and prison sentence, the confiscation of property is permitted.
(4) Anyone who carelessly provides incorrect or incomplete information that is intended to allow themselves or someone else to be exempted from completing military service in whole, in part or temporarily will be punished with imprisonment. "

Several additions to Section 5a tightened the penalties and increased the judges' discretion. The First Ordinance to Supplement the War Criminal Law Ordinance of November 1, 1939 (RGBl. I, S, 2131) allowed the regular penalties to be exceeded and made possible a death sentence if it "requires the maintenance of discipline or the security of the troops". The Fourth Supplementary Ordinance of March 31, 1943 (RGBl. I, p. 261) also retroactively included the accused if “the perpetrator caused a particularly serious disadvantage for the conduct of the war or the security of the Reich”; it was left to the judge's discretion to exceed the regular range of punishment if this was not sufficient to expiate “according to the common sense of the people”. In a fifth ordinance to supplement the special war penalty ordinance of May 5, 1944 (RGBl. I, p. 115), this was also permissible in the case of negligent acts if a particularly serious disadvantage was the result.

Jurisdiction of Courts

As part of the military jurisdiction of the beginning of the war were in accordance war criminal fine (KStVO) field courts-martial and the Reich Court in all cases of sedition charge. With a 7th implementing ordinance for the KStVO of May 18, 1940 (RGBl. I, p. 787), the exclusive jurisdiction of the Reich Court Martial was restricted in the event of the destruction of military strength. All cases of conscientious objection remained under military jurisdiction. For civilians, the Reich Ministry of Justice otherwise transferred jurisdiction on May 17, 1940, initially to the special courts and criminal panels at the higher regional courts. By ordinance of January 29, 1943 (RGBl. I, p. 76), the People's Court was given jurisdiction for all cases of "public disintegration" and - upon request - also cases of "deliberate evasion of military service" according to Section 5 (1) No. 1 and 3 the Special War Criminal Law Ordinance .

Judgments

Death sentence of the People's Court of September 8, 1943 against the doctor Alois Geiger

By June 30, 1944, according to Wehrmacht crime statistics, 14,262 convictions had been issued for "undermining military strength". Loss of files, especially at the Central Court of the Army, which in 1944 became responsible for the offense of the dismantling of military strength in the replacement army , does not allow more precise figures on the relevant judgments of the Wehrmacht courts. In the second quarter of 1943, 211 death sentences were passed; in the second quarter of 1944, the military courts passed 343 death sentences for undermining the military's strength.

According to conservative estimates, 16,560 death sentences have been passed by civil courts; among them were numerous Poles from the incorporated eastern regions and foreigners. The People's Court alone sentenced a total of 5,214 people to death by the end of 1944. A complete numerical list of those sentenced to death for the charge of “decomposition of military strength” is not available. The People's Court, which was mainly responsible for cases of “public disintegration” from the beginning of 1943, passed 124 death sentences for disruptive military strength by January of the following year. The information from court courts is also only incomplete. The accusation also often played a role in the so-called final phase crimes immediately before the end of the war.

Conscientious objectors

The greatest number of conscientious objectors came from the group of Jehovah's Witnesses , of whom more than ten thousand were imprisoned during the Nazi regime. Another, smaller group of conscientious objectors came from the small religious community of Reform Adventists . Before the Special War Criminal Law Ordinance came into force, conscientious objectors were only punished with imprisonment for refusing to obey or for “deserting for not dishonorable reasons”. According to Manfred Messerschmidt , judges could still have used such a legal classification, even if Adolf Hitler apparently did not want to grant the Bible Students a special position.

The Reich Court Martial was solely responsible for sentencing conscientious objectors for religious reasons. The “persistent perpetrators of conviction” were regularly sentenced to death because of a presumed “propagandistic effect” of their behavior. After interventions by pastors, the judges began to give those sentenced to death the option of revocation until execution. Then a prison sentence of three to four years was recognized, which would have been served after the end of the war.

Concept of public

Paragraph 5 (1) threatened with punishment "anyone who publicly seeks to paralyze or undermine the will of the German or allied people to defend themselves." As early as the first half of 1940, the Reich Court Martial developed a broad interpretation of the element of "publicity" : Even if a statement was only made in a closed or limited group of people, but one had to expect that the statement would be passed on beyond this group, this should be assessed as "public". The Reich Court Martial thereby adopted a provision that it found in the Malice Act. The constituent element of the “public” was replaced by the mere, hardly refutable presumption that the “corrosive statement” could become public.

When the People's Court was given jurisdiction for all cases of “public disintegration” in the civil sector in early 1943, it adopted this interpretation. Reich Minister of Justice Otto Georg Thierack intervened in vain in a letter to Roland Freisler : If everything that was talked about politically was to be seen as being said in public, the deliberately inserted element of the “public” in Section 5 of the KSSVO would no longer make sense.

Freedom of expression was therefore dangerous even in private surroundings; there was always a risk of being denounced .

Heimtückegesetz and KSSVO

Under the threat of up to two years of imprisonment or penitentiary service, those who make or distribute a "grossly distorted assertion of a factual nature that are capable of seriously damaging the welfare of the Reich or the reputation of the Reich Government [...]." Section 5 of the Special War Criminal Law Ordinance defines a criminal who “seeks to paralyze or undermine the will of the German or allied people to defend themselves.” There was hardly a critical utterance that was not interpreted in this sense as a degradation of military strength and thus lead to a death sentence could. The following statements were listed in a compilation from 1943/1944 as "no longer acceptable and basically worthy of death":

“The war is lost; Germany or the Führer would have started the war senselessly or frivolously [...]; the NSDAP should or will resign and [...] pave the way for peace of understanding; a military dictatorship must be established and peace will be made; an intrusion of Bolshevism is not as bad as the propaganda portrays it [...]; Word of mouth and letters from the army with the request to throw away the rifles or to turn them over; the leader is sick, incapable, a human butcher, etc. "

In the reports from the Reich it was stated that defeatist statements in the first years of the war had at best been prosecuted under the Treachery Act and that there was a disproportion between the death sentences of the People's Court and the milder judgments of the lower courts (special courts and criminal panels at higher regional courts). Therefore a central review by the People's Court is to be welcomed; he could also better judge the political significance of the cases.

Execution of the death sentences

According to Section 103 of the first version of the War Criminal Procedure Code (KStVO) , the execution of the death penalty, which was imposed by the military courts, was to be carried out by shooting , and in the case of women, by guilty ax . In fact, in the case of death sentences, senior public prosecutors were often asked to take over the execution of sentences, in whose places of execution beheading was carried out. From the end of 1942, military personnel convicted of war were killed by hanging for the first time .

Repeal of the wrongful judgments

In the law on the repeal of National Socialist judgments in criminal justice (NS-AufhG) of August 25, 1998 ( Federal Law Gazette I , p. 2501), reference is made to the War Criminal Law Ordinance. As “convicting criminal court decisions that were made in violation of elementary notions of justice”, all judgments for “undermining military strength” have been set aside. Individual claims for compensation are not linked to the lifting of the unjust judgments.

Use in the Federal Republic of Germany

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the prosecution of similar crimes against the Bundeswehr is now regulated in Sections 109-109k of the German Criminal Code under the new name "Crimes against national defense". Particular attention should be paid to both Section 109d of the Criminal Code (“ disruptive propaganda against the Bundeswehr ”), which punishes false statements that hinder the operations of the Bundeswehr, and Section 109 of the Criminal Code (“ evasion of military service through mutilation ”).

literature

  • Peter Hoffmann The military resistance in the second half of the war 1942–1944 / 45 . In: Heinrich Walle (ed.): Rebellion of the conscience. Military resistance against Hitler and the Nazi regime 1933–1945 . 4th revised and significantly expanded edition, Mittler, Berlin [u. a.] 1994, ISBN 3-8132-0436-7 , pp. 223-248.
  • Gerhard Paul : Disobedient soldiers. Dissent, refusal and resistance by German soldiers (1939–1945) . Röhrig Universitäts-Verlag, St. Ingbert 1994, ISBN 3-86110-042-8 . ( Saarland Library 9).
  • Norbert Haase, Gerhard Paul (ed.): The other soldiers. Destruction of military strength, refusal to obey and desertion in World War II . Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12769-6 . ( Fischer 12769 story - The time of National Socialism ).
  • Manfred Messerschmidt : The Wehrmacht Justice 1933-1945. Paderborn [u. a.] 2005, ISBN 3-506-71349-3 .
  • Frithjof Päuser: The rehabilitation of deserters of the German armed forces from a historical, legal and political point of view with commentary on the law for the repeal of Nazi judgments (NS-AufhG of May 28, 1998) . University of the Federal Armed Forces, Munich 2005. (Dissertation).
  • Walter Wagner: The People's Court in the National Socialist State. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-54491-6 . (extended new edition from 1974).
  • Peter Kalmbach: A "main weapon against defeatism", the fact of the "decomposition of military strength" as an instrument of the Nazi judiciary . in: Neue Zeitschrift für Wehrrecht, Vol. 54, 2012, pp. 25–32: full text
  • Albrecht Kirschner: Prosecution of statements as degradation of military strength by the People's Court and the Higher Regional Court of Vienna. Dissertation, 2006. Published as a special edition in: Nazi Justice and political persecution in Austria 1938–1945. Analysis of the proceedings before the People's Court and the Higher Regional Court of Vienna . Ed .: Wolfgang Form, Wolfgang Neugebauer and Theo Schiller. Saur Munich.

Movie

Web links

Wikisource: Special War Criminal Law Ordinance  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ So with Manfred Messerschmidt: Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933–1945. Paderborn [u. a.] 2005, p. 72.
  2. ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. 2nd edition, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019549-1 , p. 684.
  3. ↑ Peter Kalmbach: A "main weapon against defeatism" - the fact of the "decomposition of military strength" as an instrument of the Nazi judiciary. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Wehrrecht, Vol. 54, 2012, pp. 25, 27 f
  4. ↑ Michael Bryant, Albrecht Kirschner: Politics and Military Justice. In: Ulrich Baumann, Magnus Koch: "What was right then ..." - soldiers and civilians before the courts of the Wehrmacht. Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89809-079-7 , p. 85.
  5. ↑ Ordinance on Special Criminal Law in War and Special Use = War Special Criminal Law Ordinance of August 17, 1938, published in the Reichsgesetzblatt and entered into force on August 26, 1939 (RGBl. I, pp. 1455-1457)
  6. ↑ Ordinance on Special Criminal Law in War and Special Use = War Special Criminal Law Ordinance of August 17, 1938, published in the Reichsgesetzblatt and entered into force on August 26, 1939 (RGBl I, pp. 1455-1457)
  7. ^ Günter Gribbohm: The Reich Court Martial - The institution and its legal evaluation. Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-8305-0585-X , pp. 22/23.
  8. ^ Walter Wagner: The People's Court in the National Socialist State. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-54491-6 , p. 277 with note 4.
  9. ^ Heinz Boberach: Reports from the Reich. Vol. 15, Herrsching 1984, ISBN 3-88199-158-1 , pp. 6096–6101 "Reports on the criminal law combating attempts at decomposition" (dated December 2, 1943)
  10. ↑ Manfred Messerschmidt, Fritz Wüllner: The Wehrmacht Justice in the Service of National Socialism: Destruction of a Legend. Baden-Baden 1987, ISBN 3-7890-1466-4 , p. 132.
  11. ^ Manfred Messerschmidt: The system of armed forces justice. In: Ulrich Baumann, Magnus Koch: "What was right then ..." - soldiers and civilians before the courts of the Wehrmacht. Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89809-079-7 , pp. 31-33.
  12. ^ Walter Wagner: The People's Court in the National Socialist State. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-54491-6 , pp. 800-805.
  13. ^ Walter Wagner: The People's Court in the National Socialist State. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-54491-6 , p. 801.
  14. ^ Manfred Messerschmidt: The Wehrmacht Justice 1933-1945. Paderborn [u. a.] 2005, pp. 96-97.
  15. ^ Manfred Messerschmidt: The Wehrmacht Justice 1933-1945. Paderborn [u. a.] 2005, pp. 97-101.
  16. ↑ Norbert Haase: The Reich Court Martial and the Resistance to National Socialist Rule. Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-926082-04-6 , p. 14.
  17. ^ Walter Wagner: The People's Court in the National Socialist State. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-54491-6 , p. 278.
  18. ↑ Heimtückegesetz § 2 (2): "The public statements are equal to non-public malicious statements if the opponent expected or had to expect that the statement would penetrate the public ..."
  19. ^ Letter of September 11, 1943 in: Federal Minister of Justice (Ed.): In the name of the German people - Justice in National Socialism. Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-8046-8731-8 , p. 213.
  20. ^ Ingo Müller : Terrible lawyers. The unresolved past of our judiciary. Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 , p. 151.
  21. ↑ Heinz Boberach: Reports from the Reich, Vol. 15, Herrsching 1984, ISBN 3-88199-158-1 , pp. 6096–6101 "Reports on the criminal law combating attempts at decomposition" (dated December 2, 1943)
  22. ↑ Hans Peter Kiausch: Shoot - Decapitate - Hang. In: Ulrich Baumann, Magnus Koch: “Was then right…” , Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89809-079-7 , p. 81. The author estimates their number at a total of 300.
  23. ↑ NS — AufhG (PDF file; 37 kB) from August 25, 1998 / version from 2002.
  24. ↑ Information about the author