Leipzig war crimes trials
As a result, articles 227–230 of the Treaty of Versailles stipulated the arrest and trial of German officials defined as war criminals by the Allied governments.
Article 227 made provision for the establishment of a special tribunal, presided over by a judge from each of the major Allied powers—Britain, France, Italy, United States and Japan.
It identified the former Kaiser Wilhelm II as a war criminal, and demanded that an extradition request be addressed to the Dutch government, which had given him asylum in the Netherlands since his abdication in November 1918.
On 4 October 1919, at a meeting in Berlin, Johannes Goldsche of the Prussian Bureau of Investigation reported that his office had compiled some 5,000 detailed dossiers on Allied war crimes, which could be made immediately available to defence counsel in the event of prosecutions being brought against German soldiers.
Sergeant Karl Heynen, who was charged with using corporal punishment, including his fists and rifle butt, against 200 British and 40 Russian POWs, who were under his command as forced labourers at the Friedrich der Grosse coal mine at Herne, in Westphalia.
Also, on 14 October 1915, Heynen stood accused of having threatened the POWs under his command with summary execution if they did not immediately return to work during an attempted strike action.
He was acquitted for his actions during the strike, as the court ruled that POWs were entitled to complain but not to refuse to follow orders, but convicted of fifteen other incidents of unnecessary brutality.
Even though imprisonment in a regular jail was considered degrading to military honour, Heynen was sentenced to ten months in a civilian prison.
[8] Private Robert Neumann, who had guarded Allied POWs who were forced labourers at a chemical factory at Pommerensdorf, also stood accused on unnecessary brutality.
Dithmar and Boldt were accused of machine-gunning the survivors of Llandovery Castle's sinking while they were in lifeboats, during what was the deadliest Canadian maritime disaster of World War I.
During the trials, Dithmar and Boldt were both found guilty of war crimes and were sentenced to four years in prison, though these were later overturned on appeal based on the argument that both men were only following orders and their commanding officer, Kapitänleutnant Helmut Brümmer-Patzig was solely responsible.
Lieutenant-General Karl Stenger, the former commander of the 58th Infantry Brigade, stood accused of having ordered Major Benno Crusius in August 1914 to subject all French POWs to summary execution.
The court ruled that medical experts had convincingly demonstrated that, "at the moment when the alleged brigade order was passed on", Crusius "was suffering from a morbid derangement of his mental faculties which rendered impossible the exercise of his own volition.
The Court shares this view... As in accordance with practice, reasonable doubt as to the volition of the guilty party does not allow of a pronouncement of guilt, no sentence can be passed against Crusius as regards the 26th of August.
[13] Oberleutnant Adolph Laule stood charged with the killing of Captain Migat of the French Army, who had fallen asleep while his unit marched away.
[citation needed] Lieutenant-General Hans von Schack and Major-General Benno Kruska were charged with 1,280 counts of murder, for their actions during a 1915 typhus outbreak at a POW camp at Kassel.
[16] Lawyer and historian Alfred de Zayas wrote, "Generally speaking, the German population took exception to these trials, especially because the Allies were not similarly bringing their own soldiers to justice.
"[17] After Sergeant Karl Heynen was sentenced to ten months' imprisonment, the Leipzig correspondent of the London Times called the trial "a scandalous failure of justice".
[18] In response, the German Gazette commented, "The first verdict in the series of Leipzig trials has agitated public opinion in two great countries, Germany and England, in apparently sharply contrasting ways.
Claud Mullins, who had observed the trials on behalf of the British Government, argued that they should be understood in light of the pre-1945 German attitude toward authority.
He commented, "I always think that it is significant that there are notices in many German railway carriages that, 'In case of a dispute as to whether the window should be open or closed, the guard will decide.'
"[21] He said even brief terms in a civilian prison, rather than detention in a fortress, which was the usual punishment under German military law, were a far harsher sentence than people in Allied countries realized because of the very intense humiliation involved.
Armenian historian Vahakn N. Dadrian comments that the Allied efforts at prosecution were an example of "a retributive justice [that] gave way to expedience of political accommodation".
Despite ample Allied resources, the availability of the exhaustive investigative findings of the Commission, and an enemy prostrate from war, hunger, and internal revolution, very few prosecutions were ever undertaken, and of those that were, the sentences handed down were either comparatively light or never fully executed.
