Wilhelmstrasse Trial

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Wilhelmstrasse with a view of the Reich Chancellery (No. 77) and the Foreign Office (No. 76) on the left-hand side of the street, August 1934.
Martha Mosse on February 26, 1948 during her testimony in the Wilhelmstrasse trial.

The Wilhelmstrasse Trial was the penultimate, most extensive and chronologically longest of the twelve follow-up trials against those responsible in the German Reich at the time of National Socialism . Leading members of the Foreign Office and other ministries as well as other National Socialist agencies were accused . The English name was chosen accordingly: "The Ministries Trial" ("The Ministries Process"). In German, the process was named after the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin , in which, in addition to the Foreign Office, the offices of other defendants were also based. The official name was "The United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsäcker et al. “The duration of the trial extended from the indictment on November 15, 1947, through the negotiations from January 6 to November 18, 1948 and deliberations to the pronouncement of the verdict on April 11, 1949. The sentence was increased on April 13 Communicated in 1949, the rectification decisions on December 12, 1949.

Preparing the process

The prosecution originally planned sixteen follow-up trials to the main Nuremberg trial . Robert Kempner was not only tasked with preparing the trial against twelve to fifteen officials from the Foreign Office, but was also supposed to prepare three further trials against six members of the ministries and the Reich Chancellery, against representatives of the German business elite and against functionaries of the Reich Main Security Office . In the end, it was decided to reduce the number of outstanding proceedings due to a lack of money or lack of interest, the different groups of perpetrators were combined and the number of accused was limited.

accused

Among the 21 defendants were eight senior members of the Foreign Service; among them Edmund Veesenmayer , who had initiated the deportation of the Jews in Hungary as an agent , and Ernst von Weizsäcker , who was regarded as a representative of a national conservative “traditional political-bureaucratic leadership”. In addition, four people were charged as representatives for banking, industry and the four-year planning authority, and individually members of the Reich Chancellery , the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture , the Reich Ministry of Finance , the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production , the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the Reich Main Security Office, respectively SS main office .

Charges

The indictment of November 15, 1947 states:

  • Planning, preparing, initiating and conducting wars of aggression and invasions,
  • the common plan and conspiracy ,
  • War crimes : murder and mistreatment of combatants and prisoners of war ,
  • Crimes against humanity : Atrocities and criminal acts against German nationals for political, racial and religious reasons between 1933 and 1939,
  • War crimes and crimes against humanity: atrocities and criminal acts committed against the civilian population,
  • War crimes and crimes against humanity: robbery and looting,
  • War crimes and crimes against humanity: forced labor ,
  • Membership in criminal organizations.

Judge

Judges' table at the Wilhelmstrasse Trial (seated from left to right: Leon W. Powers, presiding judges William C. Christianson and Robert T. Maguire)

William C. Christianson , a former Minnesota Supreme Court judge who had previously served in the Flick Trial (Case 5), served as President . The court also included Robert F. Maguire of the Oregon District Court and Leon W. Powers , a retiring attorney from Denison, Iowa, who served as a Supreme Court judge in Iowa from 1934 to 1936.

Prosecutors, defense attorneys and witnesses

Robert Kempner appeared as prosecutor and "Deputy Chief of Counsel"; the charges against the suspects from the economic policy area were represented by Rawling Ragland, later by Morris Amchan.

All of the defendants were assisted by lawyers, almost all of whom had already gained experience in previous Nuremberg trials. The defense of Ernst von Weizsäcker was "very professionally organized and carried out brilliantly" by a team led by Hellmut Becker , which also included Weizsäcker's son Richard . The American attorney Warren Magee , approved by the court at Becker's application on December 29, 1947, as second defense attorney for Weizsäcker, was the only non-German defense attorney in the proceedings.

One of the witnesses was, for example, the diplomat and administrative lawyer Otto Bräutigam , who took part in the trial of Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker on February 6, 1948.

Process flow

With 169 days of negotiations, 323 witnesses, over 9,000 documents as evidence, including the found minutes of the Wannsee Conference , and 29,000 pages of minutes of the negotiation, the process was the most extensive follow-up process.

The diplomats denied having knowledge of extermination camps ; however, knowledge of the murder of the task forces could be proven to them. They were accused of not having raised any objections to the arrest and deportation of European Jews; on the contrary, they had responded approvingly and bureaucratically to corresponding inquiries.

First of all, the defense lawyers successfully demanded inspection of all incriminating documents and a search of the files for exonerating material, which could be carried out by a representative. Afterwards, referring to the Control Council Act No. 10 , it was able to reject Count IV, which dealt with crimes against humanity against German citizens prior to 1939.

The witness Friedrich Gaus , who had been recruited by Kempner as an expert witness in the run-up to the trial and whose credibility was doubted, offered points of attack . In a letter to Kempner, the Protestant Bishop Theophil Wurm made an unjustified accusation that “criminal methods and hideous tortures were used to extort statements and confessions”.

In the course of the negotiation, Weizsäcker presented himself as a confidante of the resistance. The brothers Theo and Erich Kordt spoke for him. In 1938 he tried with all possible means to keep a peace. In the case of diplomatic documents, a distinction must always be made between the wording and the intended purpose. However, the court found Weizsäcker guilty because he signed a letter from Franz Rademacher to the SS dated March 20, 1942 about the deportation of 6,000 French and stateless Jews to Auschwitz and marked it as “Jews identified by the police” and his duty to the Inquiry by the SS as to “whether the Foreign Office had any doubts” about noting them, had not complied, but rather expressed no concerns in this and “in similar cases”. In mitigating the penalty, it took into account the proximity to the resistance that Weizsäcker stated, which it considered credible.

Judgments

Dock in the Wilhelmstrasse Trial. In the back area: first row, from left: Ernst von Weizsäcker, Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland, Wilhelm Keppler and Ernst Wilhelm Bohle. Second row: Otto Dietrich, Gottlob Berger, Walter Schellenberg and Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk
Hans Heinrich Lammers at the Wilhelmstrasse Trial

Acquittals:

Amendment of judgment

Although, according to the existing regulation, the judgments could not be challenged by revision or appeal , the court allowed the defense counsel to review requests for the first time. One of the three judges, Leon W. Powers, gave a "dissenting opinion" on the verdict, accusing the prosecution of constructing culpable conduct in which a person would be found guilty of a crime, "even if by people was committed, for which he was not responsible and over which he had no influence. ”For 17 of the convicts, the defense lawyers filed motions for“ legal and factual errors ”, which were largely rejected by the“ rectification decisions of December 12, 1949 ”, but in the Weizsäcker, Wörmann and Steengracht cases led to acquittals on some of the charges and, associated with this, to reduced sentences. Judge William C. Christianson, in turn, did not approve of the partial waivers in the attached memoranda.

Immediate effects

Ernst von Weizsäcker in Nuremberg with son Richard

The verdict against Ernst von Weizsäcker in particular was received with incomprehension by large parts of the German public. State politicians tried to get his pardon. His prison term ended prematurely on October 15, 1950, after serving a year and a half.

When filling the positions of the Federal Foreign Office, which was newly formed on March 15, 1951, earlier employees were apparently given preference if they had not distinguished themselves as witnesses for the prosecution in the Wilhelmstrasse trial.

Interpretations

In the Wilhelmstrasse trial, “more than the individual criminal guilt of the accused” was at stake, says Dirk Pöppmann, namely “the question of the political and moral responsibility of the German bureaucratic elite for the crimes of the Third Reich.” The American interpretation, who saw “taking part” as opportunism and entanglement in crimes, opposed the view of having held out in difficult times and “prevented worse things”.

literature

  • The verdict in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. The official wording of the decision in case no. 11 of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal against von Weizsäcker and others, with differing reasons for the judgment, corrective decisions, the basic legal provisions, a list of court officials and witnesses. Introductions by Robert MW Kempner and Carl Haensel . Alfons Bürger Verlag, Schwäbisch Gmünd 1950.
  • Paul Seabury: The Wilhelmstrasse. A study of German diplomats under the Nazi regime. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. a. 1954 (German: Die Wilhelmstrasse. The history of German diplomacy 1930–1945. Nest, Frankfurt am Main 1956.)
  • Robert MW Kempner, Jörg Friedrich : Prosecutor of an Era. Life memories. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1983, ISBN 3-550-07961-3 .
  • Rainer A. Blasius : Case 11: The Wilhelmstrasse Trial. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): National Socialism in front of a court. The allied trials of war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952 (= Fischer pocket books. The time of National Socialism 13589). 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , pp. 187-198.
  • Dirk Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsäcker in the Wilhelmstrasse trial . In: Irmtrud Wojak , Susanne Meinl: In the labyrinth of guilt. Perpetrator, victim, accuser (= yearbook on the history and effects of the Holocaust 2003). Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2003, ISBN 3-593-37373-4 , pp. 163-197.
  • Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .

Web links

Commons : Wilhelmstrasse Process  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsacker in Wilhelmstrasse process. 2003, p. 166.
  2. ↑ Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsacker in Wilhelmstrasse process. 2003, p. 172.
  3. ↑ Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsacker in Wilhelmstrasse process. 2003, p. 167.
  4. ↑ Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsacker in Wilhelmstrasse process. 2003, p. 176.
  5. ↑ United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsaecker, et al. (Case 11: "Ministries Case"). United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950 ( Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. Volume 12), p. 12 (only non-German lawyer) and p. 66 (date of admission ).
  6. ↑ HD Heilmann, From the war diary of the diplomat Otto Bräutigam. In: Götz Aly u. a. (Ed.): Biedermann and desk clerk. Materials on the German biography of the perpetrator (= contributions to National Socialist health and social policy. Vol. 4). Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88022-953-8 , p. 123.
  7. ↑ Blasius: Case 11: The Wilhelmstrasse Trial. 2000, p. 190.
  8. ↑ Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsacker in Wilhelmstrasse process. 2003, p. 175.
  9. ^ The judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. 1950, p. 93 f.
  10. ^ The judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. 1950, p. 94.
  11. ^ The judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. 1950, p. 278.
  12. ↑ Blasius: Case 11: The Wilhelmstrasse Trial. 2000, p. 193.
  13. ↑ Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsacker in Wilhelmstrasse process. 2003, p. 192.
  14. ^ The judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. 1950, p. 321.
  15. ↑ Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsacker in Wilhelmstrasse process. 2003, p. 188.
  16. ↑ Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsacker in Wilhelmstrasse process. 2003, p. 183.