How Many of The German WWII Generals Were War Criminals

[General Mung Beans]

I've read that virtually all German army group commanders in World War II including von Manstein and Rommel deserved to be executed for war crimes. How true is this claim? And what about Soviet, Italian, Japanese, or even American/British generals/marshals?

[K. A. Pital]

The problem with German generals was that they almost universally followed suit and issued orders similar to the criminal Reichenau order. Except those orders were issued on a lower level. This made them war criminals.

The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations.

Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i. e., the annihilation of revolts in hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews.

That's why! It does not mean they were universally implicated, but a great many of them were. If not for their obvious value as military advisors, many more German military commanders would have been executed, I believe.

[PainRack]

The problem was more limited to the Eastern front actually due to the atrocities and racial policies enacted there.

Rommel for example escaped most of the flak because he fought a "clean" war in Africia.

[Sea Skimmer]

Rommel escaped in part simply because he was forced to commit suicide by the Nazi Party before the war was over; his command tenure in France after Africa was a mixed bag, on the one hand he was against deporting Jews, on the other hand he was perfectly fine using swarms of slave labor to build fortifications. Additionally troops under Rommel’s command in the form of SS Division Das Reich massacred over 600 French civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane in June 1944; not under Rommels direct orders, but the US hanged General Tomoyuki Yamashita for similar but larger massacres at Manila with a much less direct command link to the offending units.

[Gil Hamilton]

Wasn't one of the reasons Yamashita executed was because they needed the legal precedent for command responsibility and his trial was virtually a kangaroo court in order to ensure his conviction for war crimes? MacArthur and gang NEEDED him to be guilty if they were going to get people more deserving of being hung in the then upcoming trials in Tokyo. I mean, they hung him not on the charge that he ordered war crimes to be committed but that war crimes happened down the chain of command from him that he failed to prevent, including war crimes that he actually punished the perpetrators for committing during the Battle of Singapore.

It seems to me that if you are the losing party in a war, the winning side is going to hang you if they want to regardless of the laws involved.

[K. A. Pital]

It seems to me that if you are the losing party in a war, the winning side is going to hang you if they want to regardless of the laws involved.

Doenitz wasn't hanged, despite directly ordering war crimes, such as summary execution of torpedo boat crews by the SS.

[Sea Skimmer]

The problem with Yamashita is Yamashita, an Army General, simply did not command the Japanese troops in Manila; they were navy troops under the authority of an independent naval base command that completely refused Yamashita’s orders to abandon the city. However Yamashita none the less was far higher ranking then any present naval officer and basically could have sent his own Army forces to compel the city to become open and this is the grounds on which he was executed. It wasn’t even command responsibility; Mac just wanted someone to hang for the fact that 100,000 Filipinos died in the battle.

This case related to the various supposed reasons why Macarthur later then squashed all remaining Manila trials, and almost all the war crimes trials in Japan proper aside from a handful of the top Army leadership like Tojo. He seems to have regretted the outcome. Big mistake as seen by Japan’s endless attempts at denying everything these days.

You can certainly find decent numbers of German officers who never ordered a war crime, and some who commanded men who never committed one deliberately the whole war, though this is surely very rare, but you aren’t going to find them on the Eastern Front or in Yugoslavia or Poland which is a pretty damn huge chunk of the European battlefield. The fact was war crimes weren’t supposed to matter for the Nazi German minion, it wasn’t his mission. It was a war to colonize Eastern Europe, Norway, Holland and a few other places to form a Third Reich which was simply an exercise in applying a more discriminatingly racist form of European colonization vs. Africa and Asia. The more ‘useful’ tribes would be rounded up and placed in menial roles; the annoying distant ones would be annihilated or driven off into the wilderness.

Then the matter simple remains that specific war crime or not, every fighting Nazi German solider was a solider in the war against the allies and human civilization. By resisting tenaciously until the bitter end they certainly weren’t doing anyone any favors; and yeah, plenty of German troops did surrender, but they sure never got a reputation for it.

[PainRack]

The problem with Yamashita is Yamashita, an Army General, simply did not command the Japanese troops in Manila; they were navy troops under the authority of an independent naval base command that completely refused Yamashita’s orders to abandon the city. However Yamashita none the less was far higher ranking then any present naval officer and basically could have sent his own Army forces to compel the city to become open and this is the grounds on which he was executed. It wasn’t even command responsibility; Mac just wanted someone to hang for the fact that 100,000 Filipinos died in the battle.

Yamashita execution was certainly a case of victor justice. While no Imperial commander was clean, Yamashita record was generally much better than any other Japanese army general.

For example, he actually executed war criminals under his command, such as the officers responsible for the Alexender Hospital massacre. The key issue of course was his... tolerance for Sook Ching. While he was uncomfortable with the actions, he clearly did allow the massacre to occur. The Kempeitai argument that this was neccessary to bring about a successful occupation did convince him to let them have a free reign.


For those reading up on the Kempeitai occupation, their rationale and ad hoc justification would seem eeriely similar to the Bush adminstration own justification for their actions during the War on Terror.

[Thanas]

I think that having a standard of "allowing war crimes to occur under the command" is pretty vague. If it covers anything from "received reports and did nothing" to "heard about other tropps doings something and failed to protest", then we can probably say that the vast majority of all Generals (allied and axis alike) were war criminals by implication. It is far better to get a handle on specific war crime orders (like the commissar order) instead, as it is pretty clear cut in that regard.

As to that specific war crime of the commissar order, the newest research shows that ~ 80% of all German divisions on the Eastern Front received and executed that particular order, which by implication shows that around 80% of those commanders were war criminals. At least up until 1942, when execution of the commissar order was stopped. Also, the number of officers who protested (like Meinel) was pretty miniscule.

[Flameblade]

It seems to me that if you are the losing party in a war, the winning side is going to hang you if they want to regardless of the laws involved.

Doenitz wasn't hanged, despite directly ordering war crimes, such as summary execution of torpedo boat crews by the SS.

Really, that just reinforces Gil Hamilton's sentiment. The Allies didn't want Doenitz hanged, therefore, despite directly ordering war crimes, he wasn't hanged.

[Shawn]

Slightly O.T, while pre-dating WWII, I always wondered why Nathan Beford Forrest was put up against the wall and shot for the Fort Pillow massacre in the American Civil War. He was the on scene commander, under the theory of command responsability he should have been executed.

[Thanas]

Command responsibility was a new theory the Allies specifically invented just for the Axis because otherwise it would have been to hard to try them. It has been completely ignored since then, as the victorious nations are powerful enough to resist enforcement of the doctrine, which is why Nuremberg has unfortunately been titled as victor's justice.

[Lonestar]

Slightly O.T, while pre-dating WWII, I always wondered why Nathan Beford Forrest was put up against the wall and shot for the Fort Pillow massacre in the American Civil War. He was the on scene commander, under the theory of command responsability he should have been executed.

The only person in the CS government tried and convicted of War crimes was the head of Andersonville, and that was because of conditions at least partially outside his control.

The US Government didn't aggressively pursue court cases after the CW against former Confederates.

[Sea Skimmer]

The north was deeply afraid of a protracted guerrilla war in the south; as was already occurring in many occupied areas and as had been carried on by southerners for many years against the British in the Revolutionary War in the same general territory. That consideration was allowed to overrule all efforts to go after Confederates, Andersonville couldn't be ignored only because it was very public during the war.

[Raptor 597]

It seems to me that if you are the losing party in a war, the winning side is going to hang you if they want to regardless of the laws involved.

Doenitz wasn't hanged, despite directly ordering war crimes, such as summary execution of torpedo boat crews by the SS.

Really, that just reinforces Gil Hamilton's sentiment. The Allies didn't want Doenitz hanged, therefore, despite directly ordering war crimes, he wasn't hanged.

I was of the understanding that Doenitz was left off the hook by his effective defense, showing that the submarines under Nimitz's command also utilized the same practices?

[K. A. Pital]

I was of the understanding that Doenitz was left off the hook by his effective defense, showing that the submarines under Nimitz's command also utilized the same practices?

No. He was not indicted for unrestricted submarine warfare, but for ordering to hand over any captured torpedo boat crews to SD for execution.

[Mr Bean]

I was of the understanding that Doenitz was left off the hook by his effective defense, showing that the submarines under Nimitz's command also utilized the same practices?

No. He was not indicted for unrestricted submarine warfare, but for ordering to hand over any captured torpedo boat crews to SD for execution.

Didn't he also get cut some slack for trying two of his skippers for war crimes one for machining the survivors of a u-boat attack, the second I can't recall but I remember it was something like sinking a well identified hospital ship in broad daylight then trying to cover this up in logs.

[Thanas]

I was of the understanding that Doenitz was left off the hook by his effective defense, showing that the submarines under Nimitz's command also utilized the same practices?

No. He was not indicted for unrestricted submarine warfare, but for ordering to hand over any captured torpedo boat crews to SD for execution.

Source?

[Elfdart]

Slightly O.T, while pre-dating WWII, I always wondered why Nathan Beford Forrest was put up against the wall and shot for the Fort Pillow massacre in the American Civil War. He was the on scene commander, under the theory of command responsability he should have been executed.

The only person in the CS government tried and convicted of War crimes was the head of Andersonville, and that was because of conditions at least partially outside his control.

The US Government didn't aggressively pursue court cases after the CW against former Confederates.

What really put the noose around Wurtz's neck was that when local civilians tried to bring food to Andersonville, he had them turned away at gunpoint.

[acesand8s]

No. He was not indicted for unrestricted submarine warfare, but for ordering to hand over any captured torpedo boat crews to SD for execution.

Doenitz was indicted for Counts One (conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity), Two (crimes against peace/waging an aggressive war), and Three (war crimes, which included unrestricted submarine warfare and the Commando Order). He was found not guilty on count one and guilty on counts two and three.

The conviction on count two was based on the importance of the submarine arm in Germany's war plans and that it took him over a week to surrender after taking over Germany on May 1, 1945.

The conviction on count three is more complicated. Based on my reading of the verdict, it seemed to have been largely due to Doenitz keeping the commando order in place after becoming head of the navy in 1943. (There was one instance of a MTB crew being captured by the navy and given to the SD for execution during his tenure as commander in chief of the navy; Doenitz argued that naval unit was not in his chain of command, which the tribunal appeared to accept.) In terms of unrestricted submarine warfare, he was acquitted of any wrongdoing in attacking armed British merchant vessels without warning; however, he was judged to have violated the Naval Protocol of 1936 by attacking neutral ships in war zones without warning and failing to rescue crews from sunk merchant ships (Laconia Order). But, due to the testimony of Admiral Nimitz on US submarine warfare provisions and the British Skagerrak Order (whereby any ship encountered in the Skagerrak at night would be sunk), there was no punishment assessed for the violation of the Naval Protocol. Additionally, he was found guilty of making a suggestion that concentration camp labor be used in shipyards and recommending the Geneva convention be violated, though both of these appear to be considered lesser offenses by the tribunal.

Source

DOENITZ

Doenitz is indicted on Counts One, Two, and Three. In 1935 he took command of the first U-Boat flotilla commissioned since 1918, became in 1936 commander of the submarine arm, was made Vice-Admiral in 1940, Admiral in 1942, and on 30 January 1943 Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. On 1 May 1945 he became the Head of State, succeeding Hitler.

Crimes against Peace

Although Doenitz built and trained the German U-Boat arm, the evidence does not show he was privy to the conspiracy to wage aggressive wars or that he prepared and initiated such wars. He was a line officer performing strictly tactical duties. He was not present at the important conferences when plans for aggressive wars were announced, and there is no evidence he was informed about the decisions reached there. Doenitz did, however, wage aggressive war within the meaning of that word as used by the Charter. Submarine warfare which began immediately upon the outbreak of war, was fully co-ordinated with the other branches of the Wehrmacht. It is clear that his U-boats, few in number at the time, were fully prepared to wage war.

It is true that until his appointment in January 1943 as commander-in-chief he was not an "Oberbofehlshaber." But this statement underestimates the importance of Doenitz' position. He was no mere army or division commander. The U-Boat arm was the principal part of the German fleet and Doenitz was its leader. The high seas fleet made a few minor, if spectacular, raids during the early years of the war, but the real damage to the enemy was done almost exclusively by his submarines, as the millions of tons of allied and neutral shipping sunk will testify. Doenitz was solely in charge of this warfare. The Naval War Command reserved for itself only the decision as to the number of submarines in each area. In the invasion of Norway, for example, he made recommendations in October 1939 as to submarine bases, which he claims were no more than a staff study, and in March 1940 he made out the operational orders for the supporting U-boats, as discussed elsewhere in this Judgment.

That his importance to the German war effort was so regarded is eloquently proved by Raeder's recommendation of Doenitz as his successor and his appointment by Hitler on 30 January 1943 as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Hitler too knew that submarine warfare was the essential part of Germany's naval warfare.

From January 1943, Doenitz was consulted almost continuously by Hitler. The evidence was that they conferred on naval problems about 120 times during the course of the war.

As late as April 1945 when he admits he knew the struggle was hopeless, Doenitz as its commander-in-chief urged the Navy to continue its fight. On 1 May 1945 he became the Head of State and as such ordered the Wehrmacht to continue its war in the East, until capitulation on 9 May 1945. Doenitz explained that his reason for these orders was to insure that the German civilian population might be evacuated and the Army might make an orderly retreat from the East.

In the view of the Tribunal, the evidence shows that Doenitz was active in waging aggressive war.

War Crimes

Doenitz is charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to the Naval Protocol of 1936, to which Germany acceded, and which reaffirmed the rules of submarine warfare laid down in the London Naval Agreement of 1930.

The Prosecution has submitted that on 3 September 1939 the German U-Boat arm began to wage unrestricted submarine warfare upon all merchant ships, whether enemy or neutral, cynically disregarding the Protocol, and that a calculated effort was made throughout the war to disguise this practice by making hypocritical references to international law and supposed violations by the Allies.

Doenitz insists that at all times the Navy remained within the confines of international law and of the Protocol. He testified that when the war began, the guide to submarine warfare was the German Prize Ordinance, taken almost literally from the Protocol; that pursuant to the German view, he ordered submarines to attack all merchant ships in convoy and all that refused to stop or used their radio upon sighting a submarine. When his reports indicated that British merchant ships were being used to give information by wireless, were being armed and were attacking submarines on sight, he ordered his submarines on 17 October 1939 to attack all enemy merchant ships without warning on the ground that resistance was to be expected. Orders already had been issued on 21 September 1939 to attack all ships, including neutrals, sailing at night without lights in the English Channel.

On 24 November 1939, the German Government issued a warning to neutral shipping that, owing to the frequent engagements taking place in the waters around the British Isles and the French coast between U-Boats and Allied merchant ships which were armed and had instructions to use those arms as well as to ram U-Boats, the safety of neutral ships in those waters could no longer be taken for granted. On I January 1940, the German U-Boat command, acting on the instructions of Hitler, ordered U-Boats to attack all Greek merchant ships in the zone surrounding the British Isles which was banned by the United States to its own ships and also merchant ships of every nationality in the limited area of the Bristol Channel. Five days later a further order was given to U-Boats "to make immediately unrestricted use of weapons against all ships" in an area of the North Sea, the limits of which were defined. Finally on 18 January 1940, U-Boats were authorized to sink, without warning, all ships "in those waters near the enemy coast in which the use of mines can be pretended." Exceptions were to be made in the cases of United States, Italian, Japanese, and Soviet ships.

Shortly after the outbreak of war the British Admiralty, in accordance with its Handbook of Instructions of 1938 to the merchant navy, armed its merchant vessels, in many cases convoyed them with armed escort, gave orders to send position reports upon sighting submarines, thus integrating merchant vessels into the warning network of naval intelligence. On 1 October 1939, the British Admiralty announced British merchant ships had been ordered to ram U-Boats if possible.

In the actual circumstances of this case, the Tribunal is not prepared to hold Doenitz guilty for his conduct of submarine warfare against British armed merchant ships.

However, the proclamation of operational zones and the sinking of neutral merchant vessels which enter those zones presents a different question. This practice was employed in the war of 1914-1918 by Germany and adopted in retaliation by Great Britain. The Washington Conference of 1922, the London Naval Agreement of 1930 and the Protocol of 1936 were entered into with full knowledge that such zones had been employed in that war. Yet the Protocol made no exception for operational zones. The order of Doenitz to sink neutral ships without warning when found within these zones was, in the opinion of the Tribunal, therefore a violation of the Protocol.

It is also asserted that the German U-Boat arm not only did not carry out the warning and rescue provisions of the Protocol but that Doenitz deliberately ordered the killing of survivors of shipwrecked vessels, whether enemy or neutral. The Prosecution has introduced much evidence surrounding two orders of Doenitz, War Order Number 154, issued in 1939, and the so-called Laconia order of 1942. The Defense argues that these orders and the evidence supporting them do not show such a policy and introduced much evidence to the contrary. The Tribunal is of the opinion that the evidence does not establish with the certainty required that Doenitz deliberately ordered the killing of shipwrecked survivors. The orders were undoubtedly ambiguous, and deserve the strongest censure.

The evidence further shows that the rescue provisions were not carried out and that the defendant ordered that they should not be carried out. The argument of the Defense is that the security of the submarine is, as the first rule of the sea, paramount to rescue and that the development of aircraft made rescue impossible. This may be so, but the Protocol is explicit. If the commander cannot rescue, then under its terms he cannot sink a merchant vessel and should allow it to pass unharmed before his periscope. These orders, then, prove Doenitz is guilty of a violation of the Protocol.

In view of all of the facts proved, and in particular of an order of the British Admiralty announced on 8 May 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk at night in the Skagerrak, and the answer to interrogatories by Admiral Nimitz that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war, the sentence of Doenitz is not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare.

Doenitz was also charged with responsibility for Hitler's Commando Order of 18 October 1942. Doenitz admitted he received and knew of the order when he was Flag Officer of U-boats, but disclaimed responsibility. He points out that the order by its express terms excluded men captured in naval warfare, that the Navy had no territorial commands on land, and that submarine commanders would never encounter Commandos.

In one instance, when he was Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, in 1943, the members of the crew of an Allied motor torpedo boat were captured by German naval forces. They were interrogated for intelligence purposes on behalf of the local admiral, and then turned over by his order to the SD and shot. Doenitz said that if they were captured by the Navy their execution was a violation of the Commando Order, that the execution was not announced in the Wehrmacht communiqué, and that he was never informed of the incident. He pointed out that the admiral in question was not in his chain of command, but was subordinate to the Army general in command of the Norway occupation. But Doenitz permitted the order to remain in full force when he became commander-in-chief, and to that extent he is responsible.

Doenitz in a conference of 11 December 1944, said "12,000 concentration camp prisoners will be employed in the shipyards as additional labor."

At this time he had no jurisdiction over shipyard construction and claims that this was merely a suggestion at the meeting that the responsible officials do something about producing ships, that he took no steps to get these workers, since it was not a. matter for his jurisdiction, and that he does not know whether they ever were procured. He admits he knew of concentration camps, A man in his position must necessarily have known that citizens of occupied countries in large numbers were confined in the concentration camps.

In 1945 Hitler requested the opinion of Jodl and Doenitz whether the Geneva Convention should -be denounced. The notes of the meeting between the two military leaders on 20 February 1945 show that Doenitz expressed his view that the disadvantages of such an action outweighed the advantages. The summary of Doenitz' attitude shown in the notes taken by an officer, included the following sentence:

"It would be better to carry out the measures considered necessary without warning, and at all costs"[12]) to save face with the outer world."

The Prosecution insisted that "the measures" referred to meant that the Convention should not be denounced, but should be broken at will. The Defense explanation is that Hitler wanted to break the Convention for two reasons: to take away from German troops the protection of the Convention, thus preventing them from continuing to surrender in large groups to the British and Americans; and also to permit reprisals against Allied prisoners of war because of Allied bombing raids. Doenitz claims that what he meant by "measures" were disciplinary measures against German troops to prevent them from surrendering and had no reference to measures against the Allies; that this was merely a suggestion, and that in any event no such measures were ever taken, either against Allies or Germans. The Tribunal, however, does not believe this explanation. The Geneva Convention was not, however, denounced by Germany. The Defense has introduced several affidavits to prove that British naval prisoners of war in camps under Doenitz' jurisdiction were treated strictly according to the Convention, and the Tribunal takes this fact into consideration and regards it as a mitigating circumstance.

Conclusion

The Tribunal finds Doenitz is not guilty on Count One of the Indictment, and is guilty on Counts Two and Three.

[K. A. Pital]

Bleh. I forgot that "indicting" doesn't mean actually recognizing someone as guilty on a charge.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Wasn't one of the reasons Yamashita executed was because they needed the legal precedent for command responsibility and his trial was virtually a kangaroo court in order to ensure his conviction for war crimes? MacArthur and gang NEEDED him to be guilty if they were going to get people more deserving of being hung in the then upcoming trials in Tokyo. I mean, they hung him not on the charge that he ordered war crimes to be committed but that war crimes happened down the chain of command from him that he failed to prevent, including war crimes that he actually punished the perpetrators for committing during the Battle of Singapore.

It seems to me that if you are the losing party in a war, the winning side is going to hang you if they want to regardless of the laws involved.

well they couldn't hang the guy who was about to inheirit a major japanese heavy industrial company we needed for the rebuilding.

[TOSDOC]

Rommel escaped in part simply because he was forced to commit suicide by the Nazi Party before the war was over; his command tenure in France after Africa was a mixed bag, on the one hand he was against deporting Jews, on the other hand he was perfectly fine using swarms of slave labor to build fortifications. Additionally troops under Rommel’s command in the form of SS Division Das Reich massacred over 600 French civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane in June 1944; not under Rommels direct orders, but the US hanged General Tomoyuki Yamashita for similar but larger massacres at Manila with a much less direct command link to the offending units.

Rommel's wikipedia article mentions that he paid these slaves as laborers--is the article then inaccurate?

[Sea Skimmer]

They may have been paid, but if you didn’t work for the Nazis when they wanted you to work then you couldn’t get food through the ration system. Slaves all the same because of that. Germany kept all its western European territories in line by controlling the food supply with considerable success.

I was looking around Wikipedia on Rommel earlier actually, and it has articles claiming that the Jewish populations of Benghazi and Tripoli were largely deported back to Nazi death camps and presumably murdered. Rommel wasn’t the top commander in Africa for some of this time, but if true it constantly casts a shadow over claims that his part of the war was squeaky clean. All the more so since in mainland Italy, Mussolini blocked deportations of Jews until his own fall, making it bit unlikely that Italian troops were the ones deporting those Jews from Africa. I didn't feel like tracking down real sources myself, someone should.

[Thanas]

What are the sources claimed?

This comes as something of a surprise to me, seeing as how Rommel did not execute jewis POWs and did not approve the deportation of jews later on in France.