Nacht und Nebel
Nacht und Nebel (German: [ˈnaxt ʔʊnt ˈneːbl̩]), meaning Night and Fog, also known as the Night and Fog Decree, was a directive issued by Adolf Hitler on 7 December, 1941 targeting political activists and resistance "helpers" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, who were to be imprisoned, executed, or made to disappear, while the family and the population remained uncertain as to the fate or whereabouts of the alleged offender against the Nazi occupation power.
[2] Up until the issuing of the Nacht und Nebel decree in December 1941, prisoners from Western Europe were handled by German soldiers in approximately the same way as by other countries: according to international agreements and procedures such as the Geneva Conventions.
[4] Hitler and his upper-level staff made a critical decision not to conform to what they considered unnecessary rules, and in the process, abandoned "all chivalry towards the opponent" and removed "every traditional restraint on warfare".
[6] On 7 December 1941, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued the following instructions to the Gestapo: After lengthy consideration, it is the will of the Führer that the measures taken against those who are guilty of offenses against the Reich or against the occupation forces in occupied areas should be altered.
[8] Essentially, the decree was about how to more effectively combat the increasing resistance actions in the territories occupied by Germany in Western Europe after the June 1941 beginning of the Axis war against the Soviet Union.
[10] On 12 December, Keitel issued a directive explaining Hitler's orders: Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal.Three months later Keitel further expanded on this principle in a February 1942 letter stating that any prisoners not executed within eight days were to be handed over to the Gestapo[11] and: to be transported to Germany secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place here; these measures will have a deterrent effect because - A.
No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.Reinhard Heydrich's Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service; SD) was given the responsibility to oversee and carry out the Nacht und Nebel decree.
[18] They were usually arrested in the middle of the night and quickly taken to prisons hundreds of kilometres away for questioning, eventually arriving at concentration camps such as Natzweiler, Esterwegen, or Gross-Rosen, if they survived.
[21] When the concentration camps in the east and west of German-occupied Europe were dissolved in the face of the advancing Allied armies and their inmates evacuated - often on cruel death-marches - centrally located camps such as Dachau and Mauthausen at the end of World War II filled with thousands of NN prisoners, whose special status was largely lost in the chaos of the last months before the liberation.
[29] The Nacht und Nebel prisoners' hair was shaved, and the women were given a convict costume of a thin cotton dress, wooden sandals, and a triangular black headcloth.
According to historian Wolfgang Sofsky: Prisoners of the Nacht und Nebel transports were marked by broad red bands; on their backs and both trouser legs was a cross, with the letters "NN" to its right.
The deportees were sometimes herded 80 at a time with standing room only into slow-moving, dirty cattle wagons with little or no food or water on journeys lasting up to five days to their next unknown destination.
They were confined in cold and starving conditions; many had dysentery or other illnesses, and the weakest were often beaten to death, shot, guillotined, or hanged, while the others were subjected to torture by the Germans.
Despite the best attempts of Joseph Goebbels and the Propaganda Ministry (with its formidable domestic information control) to hide the program, people's diaries and periodicals of the time show that it became progressively known to the German public.
[36] Soldiers brought back information, families on rare occasion heard from or about loved ones and Allied news sources and the BBC were able to get past censorship sporadically.
[37] Although captured archives from the SD contain numerous orders stamped with "NN" (Nacht und Nebel), it has never been determined exactly how many people disappeared as a result of the decree.
Doubts among the Allies about the atrocities being committed by the Nazis were pushed aside when the French entered the Natzweiler-Struthof camp (one of the Nacht und Nebel facilities) on 23 November, 1944, and discovered a chamber where victims were hung by their wrists from hooks to accommodate the process of pumping poisonous Zyklon-B gas into the room.
[39] Former Supreme Court Justice and chief prosecutor at the international Nuremberg trial, Robert H. Jackson listed the "terrifying" Nacht und Nebel decree with the other crimes committed by the Nazis in his closing address.
