Opposing "Victors' justice": German Protestant churchmen and convicted war criminals in Western Europe after 1945

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 47-69

  Webster, Ronald ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 34247730557     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/15.1.47     Document Type: Review

References (21)

1. For a review of German wartime persecutions of Jews in France and the Low Countries, see Raul Hilberg's, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), vol. II, pp. 568-660.
2. Frank Buscher and Michael Phayer, "German Catholic Bishops and the Holocaust 1940-1953," German Studies Review 11 (October 1988), pp. 463-85;
3. and Michael Phayer, "Pope Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12:2 (Fall 1998), pp. 233-56.
4. Kopp (1897-1970) was Oberregierungsrat (senior administrative officer) in the Landeskirchenamt (Church State Office) Speyer. After his 1962 retirement and until his death, Kopp continued to be a close adviser to Stempel. His name continues to crop up in LKAmt correspondence on the prisoners. On the other hand, Pastor Heinz Wilhelmy, an outspoken opponent of the Church's pro-regime stance, writes that Kopp possibly had the best anti-regime credentials, because as a "religious Socialist" before 1933, Kopp was among those who protested against forcing clergymen to supply proof of "Aryan" origins. Wilhelmy, Aus meinem Leben (Speyer: Evangelischer Presseverlag, 1996), p. 124. On 1 April 1962 Willi Hussong (1903-81) officially succeeded Kopp as Oberkirchenrat in Speyer. In 1971 Hussong's efforts on behalf of the prisoners also brought him the West German Bundesverdienstkreuz.
5. For references to Grünagel's troubles with his church after 1945, see my forthcoming article "Dr. Georg Biundo: German Pastor, Ardent Nationalist, Sometime Antisemite," Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte: Internationale Halbjahresschrift für Theologie und Geschichtswissenschaft 2 (Autumn) 2000, pp. 92-111. The German Christians were a pro-Nazi segment of the Evangelical Church.
6. For the most recent study on Heckel, see Rolf-Ulrich Kunze, Theodor Heckel 1894-1967: Eine Biographie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1997). Kunze attempts a revision of the traditionally negative picture of Heckel's role in the Third Reich and after, in my opinion unsuccessfully. For example, Kunze mentions neither Stempel nor his postwar work with the convicted persons, even though Heckel and Stempel worked closely together on this subject. Moreover, Kunzes rehabilitation attempts center on Heckel's refusal to betray Eugen Gerstenmaier, his assistant, who was somewhat distantly connected to the plotters of 20 July 1944. Gerstenmaier succeeded Heckel in the postwar Evangelisches Hilfswerk, which occasionally supported Hans Stempel's work.
7. On this see Johannes M. Wischnath, Kirche in Aktion: Das Evangelische Hilfswerk 1945-57 und sein Verhältnis zu Kirche und Innere Mission (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986).
8. See: Bernd Krebs, Nationale Identität und kirchliche Selbstbehauptung: Julius Bursche und die Auseinandersetzungen um Auftrag und Weg des Protestantismus in Polen, 1917-39 (Neukirehen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 1993), pp. 255-64.
9. According to Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution (London: Sphere Books, 1971), p. 559 and p. 562, de Gaulle pardoned the two major German war criminals, Helmut Knochen and Karl Oberg, in 1963.
10. Fritz Hartjenstein, Wolfgang Suess, and Franz Ehrmanntraut, former commandant, chief of guards, and SS-block leader respectively of the Struthof-Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace were originally condemned to death for torturing and murdering a number of prisoners between 1941 and 1945. (LKAr, SP, St. 363; report of Appeals Court (Berufungsgericht), Colmar, France, 14 March 1951.) These men were either in charge of or operated within a group of some twenty locations administered from the main camp. Before he was named Natzweiler commandant in 1944, Hartjenstein had been in charge of Auschwitz II (Birkenau), notorious as the main Auschwitz killing center. See Hilberg, Destruction, vol. III, pp. 900-01.
11. Franz Ehrmanntraut was a block leader at Natzweiler who took part in prisoner executions. While in the literature his name is variously spelt "Ermannstraub," "Ehrmannstraut," and "Ehrmanntraut, " there can be no question that the same person is meant. See Webb., op. cit., esp. pp. 64 and 93. for references to his crimes and his 1947 British trial. Richard Kuhl, a Natzweiler Kapo, received the death sentence for beating several prisoners so badly that a number of them subsequently died. On Kuhl see LKAr, SP, St. 188. Stempel to the Speyer, Landeskirchenamt (state church office), 5 August 1958.
12. Suess had also had a varied career, which, beyond Natzweiler, included a tour of duty at Dachau. Moreover he enjoyed the questionable distinction of having been given the maximum possible sentence by no less than three courts: originally sentenced to death by the British and French (both in 1947), and again after his French pardon in 1960, sentenced to life imprisonment by several German courts. Suess's (also variously spelled "Zuess") full title at Natzweiler was SS-Hauptscharführer and Lagerführer (SS-Master Sergeant and barracks commandant). His German and British trials and his eventual release are mentioned in LKAr, SP, St. 240, Stempel to Undersecretary Walter Strauß, Bonn Ministry of Justice, 12 February 1960, and, again, ibid., St. 243, Stempel to Oberkirchenrat August Kopp, 25 Nov. 1960; A. Webb, ed., The Natzweiler (Struthof) Trial (London: Hodge, 1949).
13. For the Natzweiler camp, see also Kristian Ottosen, Nuit et Brouillard: Histoire des prisonniers du camp de Natzweiler-Struthof (French translation from the Norwegian) (Brussels: Le Cri Edition, 1994),
14. and Henry Allainmat, Auschwitz en France: La vérité sur le seul camp d'extermination Nazi en France: Le Struthof (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1974). Allainmat provides valuable wartime photographs (between pages 76 and 77) of Hartjenstein, Ehrmanntraut, and Seuss in his Party uniform. At Natzweiler Jews and Allied POWs were murdered and cremated during the war. Medical experiments also took place in this little-known location.
15. On this see also Raul Hilberg, Destruction, vol. III, esp. p. 947,
16. and Christian Bernadac, Les médicins d'impossible (Paris: Éditions France-Empire, 1968).
17. Friedrich recommended the "la Pradelles, father and son." The father had been prominent in international courts both before and after World War II. It was to be, however, the son, Raymond Geouffre de la Pradelle, who was to be the chief advocate for Hauck and his fellow Ascq accused. He also defended the Natzweiler doctor, Professor Eugen Haagen, accused of performing medical experiments on inmates. On these trials see: Raymond de Geouffre de la Pradelle, Aux Frontieres de l'Injustice, Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1979, Chs. II and III.
18. Hilberg, Destruction, vol. II, p. 613.
19. Ferdinand aus der Fünten, Adolf Eichmann's SD representative in Holland, was accused, according to the original Dutch indictment, of mistreating and deporting elderly and disabled Jews, and of forcing "half-Jews" either to submit to sterilization or to be deported with "full Jews." Aus der Fünten was sentenced to death at The Hague in 1949, but this was commuted to life in 1951. In fact he was not to be pardoned until 1989. Raul Hilberg, Destruction, vol. III, p. 1095, indicates that aus der Fünten's sentence was reduced due to Konrad Adenauer's personal intervention. Another author, Henry L. Mason, writes "Many Dutchmen protested when in early 1951 the death sentences of two famed German war criminals - Aus [sic] der Fünten and Fischer - were changed to life-prison terms, by use of the Minister of Justice's power of pardon. Both Germans had played prominent roles in the persecution and deportation of Dutch Jews." Mason, The Purge of Dutch Quislings: Emergency Justice in the Netherlands (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), p. 177, fn. 20.
20. On this see also Reinhard Henkys, Die Nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechern: Geschichte und Gericht (Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 1964), p. 137; p. 257, fn. 254,
21. and Jacob Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry (London: Souvenir Press, 1968), esp. pp. 181, 338, 344.