Bonn or Landsberg? Part 1/2
[Der Weg 1951-05/06] An original translation of "Bonn oder Landsberg?"
Title: Bonn or Landsberg? [de: Bonn oder Landsberg?]
Author: Eberhard Fritsch
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 05, Issue 05/06 (May 1951)
Page(s): 392-397
Dan Rouse’s Note(s):
Der Weg - El Sendero is a German and Spanish language magazine published by Dürer-Verlag in Buenos-Aires, Argentina by Germans with connections to the defeated Third Reich.
Der Weg ran monthly issues from 1947 to 1957, with official sanction from Juan Perón’s Government until his overthrow in September 1955.
Source Document(s):
[LINK] Scans of 1951 Der Weg Issues (archive.org)
Bonn or Landsberg?
By Eberhard Fritsch
There is a danger in trying to reduce the complex issues of current German politics to a simple formula, which is why the title might initially surprise. However, if one looks beyond the tangle of superficialities to the background against which all events unfold, Bonn and Landsberg have truly become the two poles of German development after 1945. This is not due to the inevitability of historical logic, nor to any expression of will by the affected German people: both Bonn and Landsberg have become symptoms of a perspective that determines its actions not by the laws of reason or the will for order, but, as someone aptly noted, by the fear of Hitler's shadow.
Bonn is the attempt to establish a modus vivendi through collaboration with the enemy, within whose framework the attainment of freedom, dignity, and greatness is hoped for. We are not anti-Bonn, neither out of principle nor out of obstinacy; we intellectually recognize the necessity of such an interim solution, but emotionally feel as recently expressed in an editorial by Das Ufer: “We do not love our state, we have no relationship with it.” Thus, one may internally defend or reject Bonn: it cannot be ignored.
But what is Landsberg? Landsberg—and this term also encompasses Werl, Spandau, Mont Luc, Loos, Fresnes, etc.—is the unequivocal and real response of the victorious powers to Bonn's collaboration. In principle, it is animated by the same spirit as Winston Churchill's response to a member of the German resistance, which ruthlessly clarified that the fight was against Germany, not just Hitler. A more realistic starting point for taking a stance on this issue emerges when one recalls that highly significant quote by Roosevelt: "Events do not happen, they are planned." As with Bonn, so too with Landsberg: one may internally defend or reject it, but it cannot be ignored, neither today nor tomorrow—not out of a desire for revenge, but because of the continuing dynamics that cling to such expressions of hate-filled will to destruction. Historically, this means that while the readiness for reorganization is alive in the majority of European peoples, the rulers respond with the perpetuation of hate.
Between Bonn and Landsberg lies the field of tension that was able to cover the vacuum of the first post-war years. Landsberg awakened a gradual understanding; it grew beyond a matter for those directly affected to one for the entire people. Its principle could become the principle for Europe: cradle or grave. We hope for Europe that it will not allow the principle of lawlessness embodied by Landsberg to ignore Bonn's subservience. We hope for Bonn that its will for self-preservation and its submission to the principle of collaboration will not lead to the conscious destruction of the rights of German people. Bonn will have to decide whether it sees itself as the trustee of European integration and whether, based on its clarity on this issue, it will embark on a path that could bring it closer to the trust and respect of the people. Landsberg hammers the entire people's deep disenfranchisement into their conscience time and again, turning every gesture of the victors into a mere phrase and every promise of equality into a mirage. If we fail to overcome resentments, desires for revenge, narrow-mindedness, and fear in Europe—by all and in all areas of life—then we ourselves destroy the last connecting element that could have provided a new starting basis.
Let no one object that Landsberg is small in numerical terms compared to the opportunities for achieved prosperity, renewed labor deployment, economic strengthening, or that the possibility of winning dollars should not be endangered by inconvenient demands. Landsberg is not a number; it is a principle. As significant as skillful political tactics are for shaping a bearable present, the future will not judge us by them, but by the foundation we created for the powerful ascent of our children and grandchildren. And if every dollar won and every negotiated contract is stained with the blood of those who still await or suffer their unlawful execution, then the curse that slew Siegfried when he took the ring from Alberich will inexorably be fulfilled.
In what follows, the focus will not be so much on the tragedy of individual fates in Landsberg, but rather on its significance in the frontline of a fundamental and global confrontation. The first part will present the legal and factual circumstances and their implications, while the second part will reveal the larger framework of real and coordinated planning within which these events unfold. Let us not be misled by grotesque puppet shows and the countless dancing marionettes whose task is to conjure a credible spectacle for humanity.
It is not our intention—and this is stated upfront to characterize the resentment-free atmosphere in which our thoughts move—to trivialize certain events or to excuse any cruelties. Acts of madness, if they occurred, should be judged with full severity, in accordance with the demand of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.
In contrast to the Hamburg newspaper Die Welt, we do not believe that it is ever too late for justice. For that is what makes so many people despair of our time, what drove so many of the most valuable to suicide: the conscious destruction of the standards of value that form the higher responsibility before which man must stand in action and thought. Therefore, we condemn what violates these standards of value, which are still valid for us despite everything, more plainly but more consistently than the many hyenas who only want the victims of their hatred. However, we desperately resist the idea that the blood of our victims should be bartered.
A) The Condemned
On January 31, 1951, the American High Commissioner Mr. John McCloy commuted the death sentences of 21 prisoners in Landsberg, who had been sentenced to death in the Nuremberg trials, to life imprisonment; 29 were released, but 7 death sentences were confirmed, 5 by Mr. McCloy and 2 by General Handy, based on the review by the Clemency Board or the Modification Board. The seven condemned to death are the SS members Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, Erich Naumann, Werner Braune, Hans Schmidt, Georg Schallermaier, and Paul Plobel.
The fate of Otto Ohlendorf is particularly intertwined with the tragic development that brought about the greatness and collapse of National Socialist reality: Ohlendorf passionately endeavored to preserve the essence of German socialism in political reality from any distortion; after profound conflicts with superior authorities, he was punitively transferred to the East as an Einsatzgruppen leader and was later sentenced to death for this reason.
Ohlendorf's ideological thinking is based on an unconditional commitment to personality. He joined the NSDAP in 1925, recognizing it as the völkisch-social movement and developing into a bearer of its evolutionary dynamics. In 1931, he undertook a trip to Italy to study fascism and realized that, in pursuing Roman state thinking, it had already succumbed to a fateful dogmatization. He therefore felt obligated to work with all his strength to prevent a similar development in Germany. January 1933 combined the political victory of the National Socialist movement with the danger of rigidifying into a dogmatizing government system. Ohlendorf gave up his judicial career to take a position as personal assistant to Professor Jessen at the Institute for World Economy in Kiel. Here began his tenacious struggle for the alignment of state and party political reality with the spiritual foundations of the idea. People close to Ohlendorf describe him as a constructive and creative idealist, tenacious, almost obsessed, in pursuing a conception he recognized as correct. The tensions arising from his work with parts of the party leadership led to his arrest by the Gauleitung in 1934, and soon he had to permanently abandon his academic activity.
Like many at that time who were disgusted by the favoritism of certain party functionaries, he too found his way to the SS, which was based on the principle of ethical, intellectual, and physical selection. In April 1936, Professor Höhn appointed him as an expert on economic issues in the political intelligence service of the SD, which dealt with gauging opinions and moods among the people. This position, and later that as head of SD Inland, gave Ohlendorf the opportunity to send his reports on abuses and danger points, along with increasingly urgent proposals for their remedy, directly to the highest Reich authorities, bypassing party or state offices. The conflicts this caused with the promoters of merging the SS and state police led to his departure from full-time SD work in 1938.
He then devoted himself to purely professional economic activity. At the beginning of the war, the Reichsführer SS again entrusted him with the leadership of SD Inland, which Ohlendorf, to preserve his intellectual and political independence, now took on honorarily. He came into sharp conflict with Reinhold Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Security Main Office, who was striving to centralize the tasks of the state police within the SS to an ever greater extent. Ohlendorf rejected these efforts as a distortion of the essence of the SS as well as the fundamental ideas of the German revolution, which had championed the recognition and development of the free personality against all leveling tendencies. He feared that through the entanglement of such opposing tasks, this principle would have to give way to a disastrous collective thinking, as had already happened fatefully in many areas of state life.
The urgency of all war-related issues and the particular suitability of the SS for carrying out special state tasks, as it combined discipline and loyalty with political reliability, favored Heydrich's efforts. How fundamentally the views on these issues diverged is also evidenced by the fact that in 1942, in an internal meeting, the Reichsführer SS was still determined to definitively separate the units of the Waffen-SS from the other SS tasks and to relinquish their leadership. Ohlendorf's proposals, driven by his commitment to personality, for a minority statute to solve the Jewish question in Germany, his suggestions for creating a Jewish national territory, his attempts to establish an independent judicial review body for the concentration camps, and his advocacy for anthroposophists and other ideological groups deviating from National Socialism led to such strong divergences that Martin Bormann eventually enforced his removal and punitive assignment to the Einsatzgruppen in the East.
One year after Heydrich's death, he succeeded in his tenaciously pursued transfer back to Berlin, from where he sharply opposed the extermination policy of some Gauleiters and police leaders in the East. After the surrender, he presented himself to the Allies and was sentenced to death in April 1948 on the charge of having given an order for the liquidation of 90,000 Jews in the Russian area.
The commonly circulated version claims that Ohlendorf confessed to the charges against him during the trial. In reality, however, the trial clearly established the following on this key point: that such an order was never given by Ohlendorf; that the mentioned order was not even issued through him but directly to the Einsatzkommando leaders before the invasion of Russia; that he vehemently opposed this “Führer order,” which ordered the shooting of Jews suspected of being partisans, militant communists, and Bolshevik commissars, in anticipation of uprisings and partisan activity in the conquered territories; that he repeatedly tried to persuade the Reichsführer to revoke this order; that in clearly documented cases, he did everything in his power to ensure a milder application or circumvention of this order. Not even the prosecution representatives could suggest during the trial that he had ever given or even passed on an order to kill individual persons or groups of persons. Despite all this, the death sentence against Otto Ohlendorf was now confirmed.
The death sentence against Oswald Pohl was confirmed on the basis of the charge of destroying the Warsaw Ghetto and the associated deportation or extermination of 56,000 Jews. The defense proved that this action had no connection whatsoever to Pohl, the head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, and that he was only assigned to level the empty ghetto months later. It was also proven that he neither selected prisoners for medical experiments nor sent Jews to Auschwitz. Despite all this, the death sentence against Oswald Pohl was confirmed.
Two of the three charges on which McCloy confirmed the death sentence against Dr. Werner Braune were not included in the trial's indictment and were constructed afterward, in one case through a gross distortion of words. Here too, purely military measures for combating partisans were used to justify the highest penalty. The Clemency Board, however, did not take into account the fact that in November 1941, the Romanian commander of Odessa urged Braune to comply with the so-called “Führer order,” but he refused despite repeated requests and threats of diplomatic steps, with the approval of his superior Ohlendorf. The Jews of Odessa were not shot. Despite all this, the death sentence against Dr. Werner Braune was confirmed.
In the confirmation of the sentence against Einsatzgruppen leader Erich Naumann, significant exculpatory responses he gave during cross-examination by Judge Musmanno were omitted. Also, the documentary findings available to the Clemency Board regarding Naumann's correct behavior towards politically disadvantaged individuals in Germany and Holland were not considered. The Dutch Attorney General, Baron van Trüll, traveled to Germany to intercede for Naumann with German and American authorities. Despite all this, the death sentence against Erich Naumann was confirmed.
After his arrest, Georg Schallermaier was subjected daily for four weeks to the so-called “stage show” in Dachau camp: however, he was not incriminated by a single one of the former Dachau prisoners. Only two years later, during his denazification, was he accused by a communist prisoner. The one-sided, undocumented, and barely credible accusations against him in no way justify the death penalty. This is also proven by the testimonies of notable witnesses, including prominent Jewish exculpatory witnesses. Despite all this, the death sentence against Schallermaier was confirmed.
The obvious judicial error is particularly stark in the case of Hans Schmidt, who had worked in the Buchenwald camp administration: he had to miss 90 days of the four-month Buchenwald trial alone because he was in the hospital due to severe mistreatment he had suffered in Oberursel camp. During the remaining time, he was severely impaired for health reasons. He only learned of the charges against him through the confirmation of the death sentence by General Handy, that is, on January 31, 1951! The seven impeccable exculpatory testimonies submitted by his lawyer were not taken into account, nor were the numerous exculpatory statements and clemency petitions from former Buchenwald prisoners who had spoken in support of the condemned. Despite all this, the death sentence against Hans Schmidt was confirmed.
B) The Confirmation of the Death Sentences
No misdeed, if proven in a legally impeccable court proceeding, should be covered up. But neither should any person be convicted based on preconceived opinions and despite clearly proven judicial errors.
The prerequisites for impeccable jurisprudence are expertise, a sense of responsibility, and impartiality. These three prerequisites were not fulfilled in the main Nuremberg trial.1) Were they fulfilled in the confirmation of the seven Landsberg death sentences?
EXPERTISE
The witness Wisliceny named under oath before the Nuremberg Tribunal the numerically small circle of persons implicated in the planning of the Jewish extermination. None of those sentenced to death on the charge of “responsibility for the Jewish extermination” belong to this circle.
The convictions were pronounced based on arbitrary and demonstrably false numbers. Here, two million dead are cited as victims, there one million. These numbers were derived from unsubstantiated statements by a witness and from earlier population figures, without even taking into account the fact of prior flight or evacuation (for instance, in Dnepropetrovsk, 70,000 of 100,000 Jews had already fled when the Germans invaded).
It is proven that the Clemency Board, in the few weeks at its disposal, did not have the opportunity to review all the available trial material, in order to become even remotely familiar with the facts.
The judgments of the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal were shaped by the mentality of the US justice system and consideration for the Bolshevik ally. This US mentality, which at that time was unencumbered by knowledge or experience in communist and partisan warfare, has probably undergone a profound transformation since then. The shooting of North Korean refugee columns and the bombing of North Korean villages on the mere suspicion that partisans might have infiltrated them suggest this. Also, MacArthur's words before the US Congress on April 20 hint at it: “The only purpose of war is victory. This can be replaced by nothing else.” Ignorance of the facts, flawed argumentation, and failure to consider the changed factual conditions demonstrate that the confirmation of the death sentences was carried out without the necessary expertise.
SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY
In 1946, the “Malmedy Trial” was forced through in one of the most inhumane and repulsive proceedings in legal history. The verdicts placed such a heavy burden on individual SS groups that the entire SS could subsequently be declared a “criminal organization” in the main Nuremberg trial. By 1948, the untenability of these verdicts was established, and investigations revealed such horrific tortures, coerced confessions, sadistic brutalities, and document forgeries2 that, already in the first review, four of the 43 sentenced to death were released, and in 27 cases, the death sentences had to be commuted to life imprisonment. The remaining death sentences were also commuted to life imprisonment in 1950 through “clemency.” In the other Dachau trials, five of the fourteen sentenced to death were acquitted after the complete untenability of the charges against them was proven in 1950 (!), while the other death sentences had to be commuted to life imprisonment. All this immensely burdens the American justice system. The confirmation of the seven death sentences reveals the same lack of sense of responsibility, which is symptomatic of this type of war criminal trials. All that's missing is a new “Mr. Everett.”
IMPARTIALITY
The political Bolshevik commissars were granted the protection of the Hague Land Warfare Convention through a convenient distortion of the treaty text, although they cannot be regarded as “members of the fighting troops” in any way. This view is still maintained today. In contrast, German prisoners of war and convicts are denied the benefit of the new Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War from August 1949, which in Article 8 extends the protection of the Convention to war criminals as well. The militant communists are shielded from any risk of prosecution, while the German soldiers are deprived of any opportunity for defense.
In the same way, one acts by not acknowledging for the German defendants that the convictions are unlawful because they were based on legal norms that were only established after the acts they were accused of, while simultaneously not applying the Basic Law of 1949, which abolished the death penalty for Germany, to the convicts, since it was enacted only after their conviction.
The duration of detention for most defendants already exceeds the entire length of the war. The 'death candidates' (red jackets) have had to expect their execution every day. Yet, in the Nuremberg Wilhelmstrasse trial, the American military court's judgment reads:
“To permit a person sentenced to death to go for months and even years without learning of the suspension of the sentence, living in unbearable fear and mental anguish, not knowing whether the next day will be his last on earth, is a trait characteristic of the sadism of the Nazi regime; if anything must be considered a crime against humanity, it is such conduct.”
“We (Americans) do not allow ourselves to commit a crime against humanity,”
an American recently wrote to General Hasso von Manteuffel, labeling the restoration of German sovereignty as such a crime!
The German defendants were denied the justification of their actions on the grounds of military obedience. An English example is held against this: British Admiral Sommerville sank the Vichy fleet off Oran on Churchill's order, leading to the death of 1,500 Frenchmen. The British defense counsel R. T. Paget in the Manstein trial addressed this case and reached the following conclusion: Sommerville would not have been condemnable even as a defeated party, since he had to execute Churchill's order without hesitation; Churchill's order was also justified because England's security depended on it. — Field Marshal Montgomery articulated the duty of obedience in October 1946 in a speech in Glasgow as follows: “Men must learn to obey orders, even when all their instincts scream not to obey them. I am a soldier and always obey orders.” — In unrelenting consistency, the immediate present demonstrates to us that absoluteness of the obedience principle through the dishonorable dismissal of General MacArthur.
Therefore, neither expertise, sense of responsibility, nor impartiality were upheld in McCloy's decision. It is necessary to state this clearly and unambiguously. Moreover, the US High Commissioner made knowingly false statements in his justification letter: He states that the confirmation of the death sentences was delayed because they wanted to afford the convicts all possibilities of defense in an appeal procedure and the judges the necessary time for review. None of this is true: No appeal procedure took place! It was also claimed that the judgments were subjected to revision by the American court. This is also untrue. On the contrary: The highest American federal court refused a revision of the judgments due to alleged lack of jurisdiction. If, nonetheless, on April 23, 1951, the US Supreme Court rejects the appeal of the convicts, it is a formal gesture meant to support McCloy's argumentation. This “decision” does not arise from legal insight but solely from that Rooseveltian “planning.”
They have attempted to shift the entire issue of this disenfranchisement to the level of mercy, that is, a voluntary generosity of the victors. But in reality, it is about the fact that here, with the silent acquiescence of the peoples, the legal principles of a universal and binding morality are being violated by an international conspiracy coalition! Mercy has certainly not played a role in the thinking and actions of the victorious powers; why should it now suddenly become the motive for a fundamental change of stance? The hanged of Nuremberg had to die to justify the mountains of corpses in Dresden and all other deliberate atrocities; the principle of Landsberg is now to crown and justify the humiliation and degradation of the defeated.
“The others (the defeated) must be wrong, for just think what it would mean if they were not monsters. Think how heavily these destroyed cities and thousands of phosphorus bombs would then burden the victors... Afterward, they have crafted for themselves a right to slaughter in the name of humanity... thus, a victory is only complete when, after conquering the citadel, one also conquers the consciences.” (Maurice Bardeche in Nuremberg.)
C) Conclusion
The US delegate in the drafting of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War stated that the right to appeal against a judgment passed on a war criminal is a fundamental right in accordance with the principles of humanity. It follows that denying the right to appeal represents a violation of these principles. Although the procedural norms of the Nuremberg Tribunal declare a judgment final and unappealable, the legal, moral, and political conditions have since changed so substantially that clinging to accidental purpose norms from 1945 appears unjustifiable by anything other than the will to kill. Legally, for instance, the new Geneva Convention of 1949 was signed, the UN declared the basic laws of humanity universally binding, and in Germany, the Basic Law abolishing the death penalty was passed.
Morally, the exposure of countless miscarriages of justice and legal breaches in the “war criminal trials” has demolished the entire foundations of this jurisprudence; conversely, new significant facts, witness testimonies, and exculpatory elements have come to light. Politically, the international situation has changed so radically that the legal norms established in 1946 concerning partisan warfare in the East have been entirely disproven by events; the American mentality has undergone significant transformation based on its own experiences in Korea, and thus also the standards applied by US justice; the urgent need has emerged to unite all forces of the cultural world to defend against Bolshevism.
There is no longer any ground that could justify denying the appeal process! From this, two necessities logically arise, whose legitimacy every upright person should acknowledge both emotionally and rationally:
Since the confirmation of the seven death sentences represents a judicial error, a revision of the judgments must be conducted before an international appeals body. This body would suitably be composed of jurists from the Allies, West Germany, and neutral states and must provide the assurance of an objective, responsible, and impartial review of all incriminating and exculpatory documents, as well as guarantee the unhindered effectiveness of the defense.
The norms established by this body must, to achieve legal validity, be recognized by all states represented in it as binding legal principles for their citizens, in extension of the demand by Dr. Otto Kranzbühler (Looking Back on Nuremberg):
“We are prepared to accept as binding for ourselves every sentence that the Supreme Court of the United States also declares binding for every American.”
If the High Commissioners, particularly the US High Commissioner, deem these two necessities unfeasible for reasons that would deserve a detailed justification in the interest of all, they still have the recourse to the act of mercy. In doing so, they at least protect compromising political interests, in which they may be enmeshed, through their demonstrated personal goodwill, and even if they cannot thereby restore shattered justice, they still save seven human lives.
The circle closes: We return to the beginning of our discussion: Two men now carry the final decision, Dr. Adenauer and Mr. McCloy. Both represent something more fundamental, Bonn and Landsberg. Dr. Adenauer's position is strong, his regime authoritarian, all power concentrated in his person, his mastery of party politics sovereign, his maneuvering tactics flexible, his connections to the occupation powers unassailable, the weight of his word acknowledged by the High Commissioners. Mr. McCloy hopes to recruit soldiers for what is currently probably the materially strongest world power, which feels cornered and faced with mortal danger by a power that is often spiritually superior.
Two men are gambling for the favor of a people, but between them stands the unbridgeable principle of Landsberg, which signifies more than just a word. The wall could be demolished. Adenauer has the power and the capabilities to do it, McCloy could have the insight and the will... if—both were their own men. Will they act according to their conscience or according to an anonymous command?
The puppets dance obediently on the string: rarely has reason prevailed over hate. Will it this time? Adenauer and McCloy are called upon: Bonn or Landsberg?... To both applies that telegram that Dr. Ehlen sent to the Federal Chancellor in February:
“...Prevent executions without a judicial appeals body! If this does not happen, you will be complicit in the perversion of justice! The consequences will be incalculable for Western culture and will also drag you before the judgment seat of history!...”
On one side stands murder, legalized by a harlot who called herself 'Justice.' Neither law nor the world's conscience will ever absolve the responsible. On the other side stands Europe in its darkest yet most hopeful hour. Woe to those who now thrust it from the edge into the grave! In the East, an evil destiny lurks. It reaches for us all, for you too, Mr. Adenauer, for you too, Mr. McCloy. Millions of hearts are anxious with the question:
BONN OR LANDSBERG?
see special issue Der Weg: The last word about Nuremberg [de: Das letzte Wort über Nürnberg]
see Der Weg, Year 05 Issue 04 (April 1951), p. 306.