NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Michael H. Kater, Doctors under Hitler (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 54–74.

2. Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke, Das Diktat der Menschenverachtung (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1947).

3. Alfred Möhrle, “Der Arzt im Nationalsozialismus: Der Weg zum Nürnberger Ärzteprozess und die Folgerungen daraus,” Deutsches Ärzteblatt 93: 43 (25 October 1996), C-1952. The actual number of German doctors involved, directly or tangentially, in Nazi criminality has never, to the best of my knowledge, been ascertained with a reasonable degree of certainty. Based on the work of Ernst Klee, a ballpark figure of a few thousand seems appropriate.

4. Dick de Mildt, In the Name of the People: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Reflection of their Post-War Prosecution in West Germany (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996), 20ff. The statistics quoted pertain only to West German convictions, not to the total number of Nazi defendants tried and convicted by the Allies in both the IMT and their own national trials. A Federal Justice Ministry investigation in 1965 disclosed that 5,000 Nazi defendants were convicted in the three western occupation zones, more than 12,000 in the southern occupation zone, more than 24,000 in the USSR, more than 16,000 in Poland, and another 1,000 in other foreign trials. The sum total was in excess of 80,000 Germans prosecuted and convicted between 1945 and 1965 for Nazi crimes. Report of the Federal Justice Ministry (1965), cited in “Die Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung von NS-Verbrechen,” unpublished article issued by the Central Office of the State Judicial Administrations for the Clarification of Nazi Crimes, Ludwigsburg, Germany.

5. De Mildt, In the Name of the People, 27–28.

6. Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration, trans. Joel Golb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), chapters 6, 8, and conclusion passim; Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 217–218; Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903–1989 (Bonn: Dietz Verlag, 1996), 455–460; Wolfgang Benz, “Nachkriegsgesellschaft und National Sozialismus: Erinnerung, Amnestie, Abwehr,” in Erinnern oder Verweigern, Dachauer Hefte 6 (Dachau: Verlag Dachauer Hefte, 1990), 13–21. A typical example of this style of (specious) argument presents itself in the agitation for a general amnesty of the “so-called war criminals” (as the critics of continued trials derisively called them). Critics charged that the “war criminals” were ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers being tried for carrying out purely military functions. The reality was different: of the 603 prisoners in Allied custody in spring 1952, only 88 were soldiers, and the remainder were Gestapo, euthanasia, and concentration camp personnel.

7. On the common charge that prosecution of crimes against humanity violated the non crimen principle, see Adalbert Rückerl, The Investigation of Nazi Crimes 1945–1978, trans. Derek Rutter (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980), 35–39. Regarding German perceptions of denazification, see Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past, 27–39; Frank Stern, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge: Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Postwar Germany, trans. William Templer (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1992), 145–149.

8. Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior (New York: Grove Press, 1975). See also the discussion of the Mitscherlichs’ thesis by de Mildt, In the Name of the People, 23–25.

9. Aleida Assmann and Ute Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit/Geschichtsversessenheit: Vom Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999), 88–96, 143–144.

10. Jörg Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie: NS-Täter in der Bundesrepublik (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1994), 202, 206; Telford Taylor, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army, CD-Rom (Seattle, WA: Aristarchus Knowledge Industries, 1995), 280, 298; Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany, chapters 6 and 7, passim; Ulrich Herbert, Best, 437–461.

11. The conception of a “policy toward the past” (Vergangenheitspolitik) embracing amnesty, integration, and normative demarcation is taken from Frei, Adenauer’s Germany. Other scholars have made arguments reminiscent of Frei’s: see, for example, J. Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie; Ulrich Herbert, Best; Frank Stern, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge; Aleida Assmann and Ute Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit/Geschichtsversessenheit; Clemens Vollnhalls, “Zwischen Verdrängung und Aufklärung. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Holocaust in der frühen Bundesrepublic,” in Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich, ed. Ursula Büttner (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1992), 357–392; Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory.

12. Frank Stern, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge, 351–352. Adenauer would continue to link the quashing of war crimes trials with the recovery of national sovereignty. In August 1951, he and his advisors developed a plan for a “security treaty” with the West, which connected the “war criminal problem” with restoration of German sovereignty through termination of the occupation statute. See Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany, 179–180.

13. Willi Dressen, “NS-‘Euthanasie’-Prozesse in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Wandel der Zeit,” in NS-“Euthanasie” vor Gericht: Fritz Bauer und die Grenzen juristischer Bewältigung, eds. Hanno Loewy and Bettina Winter (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1996), 55.

14. See, for example, Frank M. Buscher, The U.S. War Crimes Trial Program in Germany, 1946–1955 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany; Ernst Klee, Was sie taten—Was sie wurden: Ärzte, Juristen und andere Beteiligte am Kranken- oder Judenmord (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998); Ulrich Herbert, Best; Frank Stern, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge; Assmann and Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit; Vollnhalls, “Zwischen Verdrängung”; Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory; Hanna Schissler, ed., The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie.

15. E. H. Carr, What Is History? (London: Penguin Books, 1976), 98.

16. On the methodology of contingency in historical study, see Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 76–100; Gavin Kendall and Gary Wickham, Using Foucault’s Methods (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 5–9; Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Rhizome,” in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Athlone, 1988).

17. “Charter of the International Military Tribunal,” Article 6(c), United States, Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Trials of War Criminals before the Nürnberg Military Tribunals, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1949–1953), xii.

18. Report of Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, London 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1949), 47.

19. Adelheid L. Rüter, C. F. Rüter, H. H. Fuchs, and Irene Sagel-Grande, eds., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen: Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen 1945–1966 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1968–1981).

20. These include Süddeutsche Juristische Zeitung, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, Monatschrift für Deutsches Recht, and Juristische Schulung.

21. Ernst Klee, Dokumente zur “Euthanasie” (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1997); Michael R. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945–46: A Documentary History (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997).

22. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat: Die Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1986).

23. De Mildt, In the Name of the People.

24. On the differences between U.S. and German criminal procedure, see Dünnebier, “Der amerikanische Strafprozess im Spiegel der Rechtsprechung des Court of Appeals,” Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (hereafter NJW) 27 (1952): 1040, 1042; Schmidt-Leichner, “Deutscher und anglo-amerikanischer Strafprozess,” NJW 1 (1951): 7.

1. THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM: NATIONALIST SOCIALIST EUTHANASIA, 1933–1945

1. U.S. v. Karl Brandt et al. (The Doctors’ Trial), National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA), RG 238, M887, 2545.

2. See Klee, “Euthanasie,” 18; Friedlander, Origins, 12; Ulrich Herbert, “Wissenschaft und Weltanschanung. Der Rassismus als die Biologisierung des Gesellschaftlichen” (Geschichte der Medizin Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, photocopy), 3; Michael Burleigh, The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 34; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany 1900–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 11; Paul Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 394; Robert N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 178; Jörg Michael Fegert, “Der Weg zum Nürnberger Ärzteprozess und die Folgerungen daraus,” Deutsches Ärzteblatt 93:43 (October 25, 1996), C-1953.

3. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 11.

4. Ibid., 15–17.

5. Friedlander, Origins, 15.

6. Quoted in ibid.; Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics, 395.

7. Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens: Ihr Mass und Ihre Form (Leipzig: Verlag von Felix Meiner, 1920), 39–40.

8. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 20.

9. Quoted in ibid., 22–23.

10. A. E. Hoche, Krieg und Seelenleben (Freiburg-im-Breisgau and Leipzig: Speyer & Kaerner, 1915); Friedlander, Origins, 9–10.

11. Quoted in Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (London: Routledge, 1995), 213; Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics, 454.

12. Friedlander, Origins, 26; Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 361n33.

13. Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics, 533; Friedlander, Origins, 28–29; Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilization im Nationalsozialismus (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), 324–325.

14. Götz Aly, “Medicine Against the Useless,” in Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene, eds. Götz Aly, Peter Chroust, and Christian Pross (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 59.

15. Quoted in Klee, “Euthanasie,” 37.

16. Testimony of Karl Brandt, U.S. v. Karl Brandt et al. (The Doctors’ Trial), NARA, RG 238, M887, 2401.

17. Statement of Albert Hartl in the public session of the Schwurgericht III/70, Frankfurt a.M., 24 February 1970.

18. Statement of A. Hartl; see also Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 66–68.

19. Friedlander, Origins, 39. As the manuscript of this book was being prepared for publication, German government archivists announced their discovery of the Knauer child’s true name, Gerhard Kretschmar, the disabled infant son of a German farmhand from a town in Saxony, Pomssen. The child’s identity was found in records from the Nazi era maintained by the Stasi, the East German secret police. Irene Zoech, “Named: The baby boy who was the Nazis’ first euthanasia victim—Germany ‘confronts the truth’ with memorial list headed by blind and deformed five-month-old,” Sunday (London) Telegraph, 15 October 2003, 29.

20. Klee, Dokumente, 67; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 93; Friedlander, Origins, 40; Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 257.

21. Friedlander, Origins, 40.

22. Ibid., 43; Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany, 31.

23. Klee, Dokumente, 68; Friedlander, Origins, 44.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Excerpted in Klee, “Euthanasie,” 80; Friedlander, Origins, 45.

27. Ibid.

28. Much of my narrative closely follows Friedlander’s account of the Kinderaktion, Origins, 45ff.

29. Friedlander, Origins, 48–49; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 101.

30. Friedlander, Origins, 54.

31. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 155b; JuNSV, Lfd. Nrs. 117a, 155a, 211; Letter of the Reich Committee for Scientific Registration of Severe Hereditary Ailments to Ministerial Councillor Stähle, Ministry of the Interior, Stuttgart, 11 September 1942, excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 238.

32. Statement by W. Heyde, 25 October 1961 (V1), excerpted in Klee, “Euthanasie,” 84. On this crucial meeting of euthanasia doctors in Berlin, see Klee, “Euthanasie,” 83–84; Klee, Dokumente, 68; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 113; Friedlander, Origins, 64–65. A former student of Alfred Hoche, Heyde was one of the central figures in the planning and implementation of euthanasia. In addition to his duties as an SS doctor and a chaired professor in Würzburg, Heyde was the head of T-4’s Medical Department until late 1941 and a T-4 expert evaluator in the adult euthanasia program. On Heyde’s postwar career, which ended with his suicide in pretrial custody in 1964, see Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke, Die Heyde/Sawade Affäre: Wie Juristen und Mediziner den NS-Euthanasieprofessor Heyde nach 1945 deckten und straflos blieben (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998).

33. Urteil des LG Stuttg. vom 15.9.67 (Ks 19/62), quoted in Klee, “Euthanasie,” 84.

34. Interrogation of Hans Heinrich Lammers, 25 October 1945, NARA, M1270, Roll 11, 876–877.

35. Nuremberg Document NO-824, excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 85.

36. Friedlander, Origins, 68.

37. On the erection of the camouflage organizations, see Friedlander, Origins, 73–74; Klee, Dokumente, 93; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 102–103, 166–167; Aly, “Medicine Against the Useless,” 38.

38. Friedlander, Origins, 75–76; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 87–88.

39. For a facsimile copy of the Merkblatt, see Klee, Dokumente, 96.

40. Friedlander, Origins, 77.

41. Aussage Fritz R. vom 10. March 1967 (Heyde Verfahren), excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 97–98; Friedlander, Origins, 83.

42. Friedlander, Origins, 83–84; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 124–130.

43. Friedlander, Origins, 85.

44. Ibid., 84.

45. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 225, 13.

46. StA Düsseldorf, Verfahren Widmann, 8 Ks 1/61 (8 Js 7212): interrogation Albert Widmann, 11 January 1960.

47. Aussage Gerhard Bohne in der U-Haft in Tübingen, am 14. 10. 59 (V5), quoted in Klee, “Euthanasie,” 110, 111; Friedlander, Origins, 87; Klee, Dokumente, 20–21, 26; Wistrich, Who’s Who, 278–279.

48. Friedlander, Origins, 93.

49. Aussage der Schwester Isabella W. vom 13 February 1946 (4aJs3/46 StA Ffm.), excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 115–116.

50. Vernehmung Vinzenz Nohel durch die Kriminalpolizei in Linz vom 4 September 1945 (Vg 10Vr2407/46 LG Linz), excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 124; Friedlander, Origins, 97–98.

51. Friedlander, Origins, 98–102; Klee, Dokumente, 139–140; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 149–153.

52. Aussage des als “Standesbeamter” in Grafeneck eingesetzten Kriminalbeamten Hermann H. vom 15 October 1947 vor dem AG Münsingen (Grafeneck-Verfahren), excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 138.

53. Friedlander, Origins, 107–108; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 292–293.

54. Friedlander, Origins, 108; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 267–268.

55. Friedlander, Origins, 110. See also Klee, “Euthanasie,” 340–341.

56. Predigt von Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bischof von Münster, am 3 August 1941 in der Lambertikirche, in Klee, Dokumente, 193–198; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 336.

57. Aly, “Medicine Against the Useless,” 39, 46.

58. Klee, Dokumente, 283.

59. Friedlander, Origins, 152.

60. Testimony of Karl Brandt, NARA, RG 238, M887, 2532.

61. On the theme of T-4’s continued involvement in killing after the alleged stoppage, see Klee, “Euthanasie,” 441; Friedlander, Origins, 155.

62. On the topic of Allied bombing of German cities, see Martin Middlebrook, The Battle of Hamburg: Allied Bomber Forces Against a German City in 1943 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981), 328; Eric Markusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1995), 156–168. For a recent account of Allied bombing from the German civilian perspective, see Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945 (Munich: Propyläen Verlag, 2002).

63. Interrogation of Karl Brandt, NARA, M 1270, Roll 2, 0285–0286. See also Direct Examination of Karl Brandt, NARA, RG 238, M 887, Roll 4, 2315–2316.

64. Letter from Dietrich Allers to the Mental Institution Lüneburg, dated 17 June 1943, quoted in Klee, Dokumente, 284.

65. Aly, “Medicine Against the Useless,” 84–87.

66. Aus “Informationsdienst Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP-Reichsleitung” vom 20 June 1942, Nr. 126, excerpted in Klee, “Euthanasie,” 357; H. W. Kranz, “Weg und Ziel bei der Lösung des Problems der Gemeinschaftsunfähigen,” in Nationalsozialistischer Volksdienst, November 1942, quoted in Klee, “Euthanasie,” 356.

67. Klee, “Euthanasie,” 362–363.

68. Ibid., 365–366; Friedlander, Origins, 161. On the Germans’ use of forced eastern workers during the war, see Ulrich Herbert, “Racism and Rational Calculation: The Role of ‘Utilitarian’ Strategies of Legitimation in the National Socialist ‘Weltanschauung,’ ” Yad Vashem Studies 24 (1994): 131–195.

69. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. III (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 873; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 371; Friedlander, Origins, 284.

70. Friedlander, Origins, 143–144.

71. Ibid., 146–148.

72. Ibid., 150. The gassings of concentration camp prisoners under Operation 14f13 resumed in 1944. At the Hartheim killing center, they continued until November of the same year. Zentrale Stelle Ludwigsburg (518 AR-Z 235/1960), excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 271–272.

73. Zentrale Stelle Ludwigsburg (518 AR-Z 235/1960), excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 271–272.

74. Götz Aly, “Final Solution”: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews, trans. Belinda Cooper and Allison Brown (London: Arnold, 1999), 223–224.

75. Klee, Dokumente, 272; Aly, “Final Solution,” 223–224; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 371–372; Friedlander, Origins, 286–287.

76. Friedlander, Origins, 286–287; U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust (New York: MacMillan, 1996), 76.

77. Friedlander, Origins, 286–287; Klee, Dokumente, 260.

78. Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 109; Klee, “Euthanasie,” 376–377.

79. The data are from Ino Arndt and Wolfgang Scheffler, “Organisierter Massenmord an Juden in nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungslagern,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 24 (1976): 105–135; LG Düsseldorf, Urteil Hermann Hackmann, 8 Ks 1/75, 30 June 1981, 89–90; Franciszek Piper, Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz, trans. Jochen August (Oswiecim: Verlag Staatliches Museum, 1993). See also Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution (New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, 1961), 500–501.

2. CONSTRUCTING MASS MURDER: THE UNITED STATES EUTHANASIA TRIALS, 1945–1947

1. M. Cherif Bassiouni, Crimes Against Humanity in International Law (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1999), 61–62; see also the 1907 Hague convention at sections 6–8 of the Preamble.

2. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 19.

3. Moscow Declaration, 1 November 1943, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 20–21.

4. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, 1941–1945: Road to Victory (London: William Heinemann, 1986), 1201–1202; Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 5: Closing the Ring (New York: Bantam Books, 1962), 319–320.

5. Henry Morgenthau Jr., Memorandum for President Roosevelt, 5 September 1944, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 24–25; Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg: The Untold Story of How the Nazi War Criminals Were Judged (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 22–25.

6. Henry L. Stimson, Memorandum Opposing the Morgenthau Plan, 9 September 1944, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 26–27. See also Smith, Reaching Judgment, 24–25.

7. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 27–28; Smith, Reaching Judgment, 26–27.

8. Smith, Reaching Judgment, 28.

9. Henry L. Stimson, Edward R. Stettinius Jr., and Francis Biddle, Memorandum for the President, 22 January 1945, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 31.

10. Memorandum of Conversation of Edward R. Stettinius Jr. and Samuel Rosenman with Vyacheslav Molotov and Anthony Eden, in San Francisco, 3 May 1945, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 35–36; Telford Taylor, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army.

11. See “Charter of the International Military Tribunal,” Articles 6, 9, and 10, in Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (The “Green Series”) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949–1953), xi–xii.

12. Robert H. Jackson, Report to the President, 6 June 1945, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 42.

13. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 186.

14. Hersh Lauterpacht, “The Law of Nations and the Punishment of War Crimes,” British Year Book of International Law 21 (1944): 58–95; Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 187.

15. Charter of the IMT, Article 6, xii.

16. In the continental tradition of jurisprudence, the requirement that criminal laws be specific, clear, and non-retroactive is part of the “principles of legality.” According to Bassiouni, “the drafters of the Charter found it necessary to establish a link between ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ in order to meet the minimum threshold of the ‘principles of legality.’ ” Bassiouni, Crimes, 49. Smith makes a similar observation about the linkage of crimes against humanity with war crimes, as does Douglas. See Smith, Reaching Judgment, 14; Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 50–53.

17. IMT 19:470–472, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 188.

18. R. H. Graveson, “Der Grundsatz ‘nulla poena sine lege’ und Kontrollratsgesetz Nr. 10,” Monatschrift für deutsches Recht (1947): 279. In support of his claim, Graveson cited the comments of the U.S. law professor Jerome Hall: “And why should a person who has committed an obviously immoral crime not be punished on the basis of a law decreed after the fact? . . . Does not substantive justice demand that this question be answered in the affirmative?”

19. Report of Robert H. Jackson, 46, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 41; IMT 2:98, excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 79.

20. Telford Taylor, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army.

21. Ibid. See also Control Council Law #10, excerpted in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nürnberg Military Tribunal under Control Council Law No. 10 (The Green Series), 1: xvi–xviii.

22. Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Trials of War Criminals, 1: xii.

23. Control Council Law #10, Trials of War Criminals, 1: XVII.

24. The Einsatzgruppen case prosecuted Otto Ohlendorf and twenty-three other commanders of mobile killing units; the Krupp case tried the munitions magnate Alfred Krupp and eleven of his directors for plunder and using Jewish slave labor.

25. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 017.

26. In addition to the common law of war, military commissions in 1945 derived their legal jurisdiction from two statutory sources: the U.S. Constitution, Article I, paragraph 8 (delineating the “Powers of Congress”), and the Articles of War. Their competency and form may also be affected by non-statutory sources like Supreme Court and Attorney General opinions and treaties. See A. Wigfall Green, “The Military Commission,” The American Journal of International Law 42:4 (October 1948): 832–848.

27. National Archives Microfilm Publications Pamphlet Describing M 1078, United States of America v. Alfons Klein et al. (Case Files 12-449 and 000-12-31), 8–15 October 1945, 2; Letter from Col H. H. Newman, Acting Adjutant General, to Commanding Generals of the Eastern and Western Military Districts, dated 25 August 1945, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 1, 23–26. Military Government Courts were established as early as September 1944 by Ordinance No. 2 and received jurisdiction inter alia over offenses in the U.S. zone against “the laws and usages of war.” See Military Government—Germany, Supreme Commander’s Area of Control, Ordinance No. 2, “Military Government Courts,” MGR 23–215; Eli E. Nobleman, “The Administration of Justice in the United States Zone of Germany,” Federal Bar Journal 8 (1946): 70–97.

28. NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 1, 572.

29. Ibid., 652. See also Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 766–767.

30. NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 1, 665. The legalist objection to my contention that a paramount concern with its sovereignty determined U.S. interpretations of Nazi euthanasia is that, under international law prior to 1945, a war crimes tribunal could prosecute an act as a war crime only when the act was related to waging war. In his Report of the Deputy Judge Advocate for War Crimes—European Command, Lt. Col. C. E. Straight defended U.S. Army jurisdiction over Nazi war crimes because they met the following criteria: “(1) the act must be a crime in violation of international law, (2) there must be disparity of nationality between the perpetrator and the victim, and (3) the criminal act must have been committed as an incident of war.” On a legalist theory, then, the United States had little choice but to connect euthanasia (as well as other Nazi atrocities) to Hitler’s war of aggression if the United States wanted to abide by the principles and traditions of international law. My thesis in Chapter 2, by contrast, holds that the sovereignty issue, rather than strict adherence to international law and conventions, was uppermost in the minds of the U.S. authorities. See Report of the Deputy Judge Advocate for War Crimes—European Command, June 1944 to July 1948, NARA, RG 549, 59 (citing U.S. v. Lehmann, et al., opinion DJAW, March 1948, Case No. 000-50-06).

31. NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 2, 35.

32. Ibid., 51.

33. Ibid., 54.

34. See, for example, Bouie v. Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964); Model Penal Code section 2.04(3)(b); Wayne R. Lafave and Austin W. Scott Jr., Criminal Law (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1972), 366.

35. See the direct and cross-examinations of witnesses Judith Thomas, Margaret Borkowski, and Emmy Bellin, NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 2, 58–120.

36. See the testimony of Alfons Klein, NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 2, 175–227; testimony of Heinrich Ruoff and Karl Willig, ibid., 344–368.

37. Testimony of Alfons Klein, NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 2, 215, 261–268.

38. NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 2, 393–394.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., 180ff., 319ff., 334.

41. Testimony of Major Herman Bolker, pathologist for the War Crimes Investigating Team No. 682, NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 1.

42. NARA, RG 338, M 1078, Roll 2, 209ff. (Statement of Alfons Klein); 341ff.; 647 (Statement of Heinrich Ruoff).

43. Ibid., Roll 1, 53 (Statement of Adolf Wahlmann).

44. Ibid., 523–526 (Interrogation of Karl Willig).

45. Ibid., 391–405, 429–430.

46. Report of Robert H. Jackson, 299, quoted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 122.

47. Telford Taylor, Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992), 80.

48. Trial of the Major War Criminals before the IMT, 2:242ff., excerpted in Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 123–124.

49. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 124.

50. Smith, Reaching Judgment, 72. Woodward wrote: “There was indeed no plot . . . the other Great Powers knew in 1937 that German military preparations were on a scale to make Germany stronger. . . . It is therefore unreal—and it will seem unreal to historians—to speak of a German ‘plot’ or ‘conspiracy’ [merely because the Powers were ready] to condone all German breaches of faith and to make agreements with the German Government.” The IMT judges struck a compromise in their verdicts on the conspiracy count: they affirmed the existence of a conspiracy dating back to the time of the Hossbach memorandum in November 1937 but restricted the conspiracy solely to the plan to wage aggressive war, not to the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

51. Memorandum from Telford Taylor to Robert Jackson on Further Trials, 30 January 1946, NARA, RG 260, box 2.

52. Memo from Jackson to Taylor, 5 February 1946, NARA, RG 238; Taylor’s letter to Howard Petersen, 22 May 1946, NARA, RG 238; Memo from Taylor to Secretary of War, 29 July 1946, NARA, RG 153/84-1, box 1, folder 2.

53. Udo Benzenhöfer, “Die Auswahl der Angeklagten,” Deutsches Ärzteblatt 93:45 (November 8, 1996): 8. November 1996 (21), C-2057; Paul Weindling, “From International to Zonal Trials: The Origins of the Nuremberg Medical Trial,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14:3 (Winter 2000): 370–371; Taylor’s letter to Petersen, 30 September 1946, NARA, RG 153/84-1, box 1, folder 2.

54. Telford Taylor, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army, 155.

55. Weindling, “From International to Zonal Trials,” 379–380.

56. Ibid., 380–381.

57. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law #10, I: 8–17.

58. See Peter H. Merkl, Political Violence Under the Swastika (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975); Michael Mann, “Were the Perpetrators of Genocide ‘Ordinary Men’ or ‘Real Nazis?’ Results from Fifteen Hundred Biographies,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14:3 (Winter 2000): 335, 343–347.

59. On the details of Brandt’s life, see Interrogation of Karl Friedrich Brandt, 26 November 1946, NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 9, 18–20; Interrogation of Karl Friedrich Brandt, 1 March 1947, NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 9, 6–12.

60. NARA, RG 238, M 887, Roll 4, 2439–2440.

61. Ibid., Roll 1, 61, 11508.

62. Interrogation of Viktor Brack, 4 December 1946, NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 8, 7–8. Like many other young Germans attracted to Nazism, including Karl Brandt, Brack came from an ethnic German background.

63. This information is gleaned from the following interrogations of Viktor Brack: 4 September 1946, NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 8, 1–3; 4 December 1946, NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 8, 2–5; 19 June 1947, NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 8, 4.

64. Interrogation of Viktor Brack, 4 September 1946, NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 8, 8, 14–17, 22.

65. Interrogation of Viktor Brack, 19 June 1947, NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 8, 16–17.

66. NARA, RG 238, M 1091, Roll 8, 17–19. On the Himmler speech, see Herbert Jäger, Verbrechen unter Totalitärer Herrschaft (Freiburg i.B.: Walter-Verlag, 1967), 278–279.

67. Quoted in Jörg Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie, 58.

68. NARA, RG 238, M 887, Roll 8, 7485. Raul Hilberg assesses Brack’s humanitarian pose with acerbic succinctness: “Brack was deeply implicated in the euthanasia program, of course, and in March 1941 he proposed mass sterilizations of Jews. Furthermore, by early fall 1941, he offered to send his chemical expert, Dr. Kallmeyer, to Riga, which at that moment was a place considered for the establishment of gas chambers. Some humanitarian.” Letter to the author from Raul Hilberg, 28 September 2000 (author’s private collection).

69. NARA, RG 238, M 887, Roll 8, 7520.

70. Ibid., 7524.

71. Ibid., 7531.

72. See ibid., Roll 11, 11393ff.

73. Jäger, Verbrechen unter Totalitärer Herrschaft, 353.

74. See Jaspers’s interviews in Der Monat 152 (1961): 15ff., and Der Spiegel, 11 (1965): 57; Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 268–269. For Jaspers, crimes against humanity were also crimes against humankind. On this ground he objected to the Israeli Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to punish Adolf Eichmann, arguing that because the Final Solution, as a crime against humanity, was a crime against the human race, only an international tribunal could mete out punishment to him. Arendt articulated a similar distinction between war crimes and crimes against humanity.

3. FIRST RECKONINGS: THE GERMAN EUTHANASIA TRIALS, 1946–1947

1. See Rückerl, The Investigation of Nazi Crimes, 34. Dick de Mildt notes that Law #10’s prohibition of German prosecution of crimes committed by Germans on non-Germans was not always obeyed, inasmuch as in the period from May 1945 to January 1950, 61 of the 260 Nazi murder trials in West German courts involved the killing of non-Germans. De Mildt, In the Name of the People, 22.

2. For a discussion of some of the differences between Law #10 and section 211, see the State Court of Koblenz’s discussion in JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 225, 52–53; Henry Friedlander, “The Judiciary and Nazi Crimes in Postwar Germany,” The Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, 1 (1982): 31–32; Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie, 152–153.

3. Jacobs v. State, 85 S. 837 (Ala. App 1918). In traditional Anglo-American criminal jurisprudence, as Albert Lévitt summarized in 1922, “an intent is not an essential ingredient of a statutory crime; . . . A crime does not consist of an act and an intent, but simply an act.” Albert Lévitt, “Extent and Function of the Doctrine of Mens Rea,” Illinois L. Review 17 (1922): 586.

4. RGSt. 74: 84. See also Friedlander, “The Judiciary and Nazi Crimes in Postwar Germany,” 36; Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie, 360. On the distinction between perpetration (Täterschaft) and complicity (Teilnahme) in German criminal law, see Albin Eser, “Strafrecht,” in Staatslexikon, ed. Görres-Gesellschaft, 7th ed. (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1989), 338–339; Hans-Joachim Korn, “Täterschaft oder Teilnahme bei staatlich organisierten Verbrechen,” NJW 27 (1965): 1206–1210; Hans-Heinrich Jescheck, Lehrbuch des Strafrechts: Allgemeiner Teil (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1988), 580–633.

5. Gustav Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie (Stuttgart: Koehler, 1973), 182; Radbruch, Rhein-Neckar Zeitung vom 12 September. 1945, reprinted under the title “Fünf Minuten Rechtsphilosophie,” in Rainer Schröder, Rechtsgeschichte (Munster: Alpmann & Schmidt, 1992), 327.

6. Manfred Walther, “Hat der juristische Positivismus die deutschen Juristen wehrlos gemacht?” Kritische Justiz (1988): 275; Schröder, Rechtsphilosophie, 163. On the postwar crisis in German jurisprudence, see Eberhard Schmidt, Gesetz und Richter: Wert und Unwert des Positivismus (Karlsruhe: Verlag C. F. Müller, 1952), 12–14. Schmidt points out that uncertainty about legal interpretation caused German courts at all levels to waver between natural law and positivism. See also Gustav Radbruch, “Gesetzliches Unrecht und übergesetzliches Recht,” SJZ, 5 (August 1946): 105.

7. Radbruch, “Gesetzliches Unrecht,” 105; “Wiedergutmachungsrecht,” SJZ (1946): 36.

8. Radbruch, “Gesetzliches Unrecht,” 105ff.

9. See Gustav Radbruch, “Erneuerung des Rechts,” in Der Mensch im Recht (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1961), 107ff.; Fritz Bauer, “Im Kampf um des Menschen Rechte,” ([1955] 1998) in Die Humanität der Rechtsordnung: Ausgewählte Schriften (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1998), 41; E. Schmidt, Gesetz und Richter, 14. Helmut Coing attempted to amplify the kind of natural law Radbruch had merely gestured toward; see Coing, “Die obersten Grundsätze des Rechts. Ein Versuch zur Neugründung des Naturrechts,” in Schriften der Süddeutschen Juristenzeitung, 4 (1947). For a view critical of these efforts, see Hans Welzel, Naturrecht und materiale Gerechtigkeit. Prolegomena zu einer Rechtsphilosopie (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962).

10. See Hans-Ulrich Evers, “Zum Unkritischen Naturrechtsbewusstsein in der Rechtsprechung der Gegenwart,” Juristenzeitung 21 (April 1961): 241; Entscheidungen des Reichsgerichts in Zivilsachen, 118, 325, 327; Entscheidungen des Bundesgerichtshofs in Zivilsachen (hereafter BGHZ), 3, 106; Entscheidungen des Bundesgerichtshofs in Strafsachen (hereafter BGHSt), 6, 46; BGHSt, 4, 385, 390; BGHZ, 11, 34. For other Supreme Court cases expressing similar views, see BGHSt, 2, 238; BGHSt, 2, 177. Radbruch’s formula was also taken up by the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, or BVerfG). On the influence of Radbruch on the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court, see Björn Schumacher, “Rezeption und Kritik der Radbruchschen Formel,” Ph.D. dissertation (Göttingen University, 1985), 31–103. For differences between the Supreme Court’s interpretation of natural law and that of the Constitutional Court, see Evers, “Zum unkritischen Naturrechtsbewusstsein,” 241.

11. NJW (1949): 473ff.; Deutsche Richterzeitung (hereafter DRZ) (1950), 302; Deutsche Rechtsprechung 1; DRZ (1947), 343.

12. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 011, 156, 175; Anmerkung, SJZ (1947), 633–635.

13. Ibid., Lfd. Nr. 017, 350–352. For other euthanasia verdicts employing the same natural law discourse (including verdicts resulting in acquittal), see JuNSV, Lfd. Nrs. 014 (the Kalmenhof case), 102 (the Rhine province case, especially the part of the verdict pertaining to Hermann Wesse), 211 (the Baden case), 271 (the Eglfing-Haar case), 380 (the Westphalian case), 381 (the Uchtspringe case), and 383 (the Sachsenberg case).

14. The new issue for German courts was formulated by the Göttingen state court in 1953: “whether the defendants were able to become aware of [the wrongfulness of Nazi euthanasia] through a proper exertion of their conscience.” JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 381.

15. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 003, 33–35.

16. W. von Henle und Franz Schierlinger, eds., Strafgesetzbuch für das Deutsche Reich (Munich: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1912), 227.

17. Lothar Dombrowski, ed., Strafgesetzbuch: Textausgabe mit den wichtigsten Nebengesetzen und Kontrollratsgesetzen (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1948), 83.

18. Quoted by Roland Freisler, “Gedanken über das Gesetz zur Änderung des Reichstrafgesetzbuches,” Deutsche Justiz, Rechtsplege und Rechtspolitik (26 September 1941), 934.

19. Postwar German jurists defended the revised version of section 211 as a law untainted by National Socialist ideology, claiming it was modeled on Article 99 of the outline for the Swiss Penal Code of 1918. See Dombrowski, Strafgesetzbuch, 83; Schönke, Deutsche Juristische Zeitung (1947), 77; OLG Köln in DRZ (1946), 94.

20. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 003, 36–38.

21. Ibid., Lfd. Nr. 011, 142.

22. Ibid., 143–144.

23. Ibid., 145.

24. Ibid., 147.

25. Ibid., 147, 160.

26. Ibid., 147–148.

27. Ibid., 149.

28. Ibid., 150.

29. Ibid., 150, 161.

30. Ibid., 151.

31. Ibid. Two other station nurses, identified in the verdict only as K. and F., were charged in the Eichberg killings, but they were acquitted for lack of evidence.

32. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 011, 164–165.

33. Ibid., Lfd. Nr. 017, 326–327.

34. Ibid., 359–360.

35. Ibid., 325.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., 325–326.

38. Ibid., 317.

39. Ibid., 357–358.

40. Ibid., 358–360.

41. Quoted in Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie, 191.

42. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 017, 345.

43. Ibid., 372. In German criminal law, unlike its Anglo-American counterpart, the government can appeal a verdict unfavorable to it. Under Anglo-American law, appeal can only be made by the defendant; issues of guilt or innocence resolved in the defendants’ favor are considered res judicata (matters adjudicated) that are not subject to appeal.

44. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 014, 230; Klee, Dokumente, 62–63.

45. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 014, 230–231.

46. Ibid., 233.

47. Ibid., 232–233.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., 235–236.

50. Ibid., 236.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., 236–237.

53. Ibid., 250–251.

54. Ibid., 251.

55. Ibid., 237–238.

56. Ibid., 238.

57. Ibid., 238–239.

58. Ibid., 239–240.

59. Ibid., 259–260.

60. Ibid., 274–275.

61. Koppel S. Pinson, Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1989), 554; Holger Herwig, Hammer or Anvil? Modern Germany 1648–Present (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994), 368–369; Mary Fulbrook, The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, 1918–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 162–163.

62. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 117, 59.

4. LUCIFER ON THE RUINS OF THE WORLD: THE GERMAN EUTHANASIA TRIALS, 1948–1950

1. Taylor, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army, 261.

2. Frei, Adenauer’s Germany, 179–183; Thomas Allen Schwartz, “Die Begnadigung deutscher Kriegsverbrecher: John J. McCloy und die Häftlinge von Landsberg,” VfZ, 38 (1990): 382–383.

3. Frei, Adenauer’s Germany, 94, 191–201; Herbert, Best, 455–456.

4. 61 RGSt. 242 (1927).

5. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 088, 255.

6. Ibid., 255–256.

7. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 088, 261. The “collision of duties” defense, a species of the doctrine of necessity, is conceptually distinct from extrastatutory necessity. The latter contemplates the sacrifice of one “legal interest” (Rechtsgut) in order to preserve another legal interest deemed superior to it. A person would be justified, for example, in taking someone else’s car without his permission in order to drive a gravely ill child to the hospital. A collision of duties, on the other hand, exists where an actor faces two mutually irreconcilable duties and elects to avoid the greater injustice by violating one of them. To have applied the theory of extrastatutory necessity in the Scheuern case would have meant branding the lives of one group of patients as more valuable than those of the group sacrificed—a style of thought reminiscent of National Socialism. This point was not lost on the Koblenz court; regrettably, its subtlety eluded later courts.

8. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 088, 261–264.

9. Ibid., 262, 267.

10. Ibid., Lfd. Nr. 102, 476–477.

11. Ibid., 477.

12. Ibid., 478.

13. Ibid., 479.

14. Ibid., 479–480.

15. Ibid., 480–481.

16. Ibid., 482.

17. Ibid., 483.

18. Ibid., 484–485.

19. Ibid., 486–487.

20. Ibid., 492–497.

21. Ibid., 499.

22. Ibid., 500–501.

23. Ibid., 502–504.

24. Ibid., 504–512.

25. Ibid., 513; de Mildt, In the Name of the People, 157–158.

26. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 102, 514–517.

27. Ibid., 518.

28. Ibid., 535. Since its inception in the 1920s, “extrastatutory necessity” has pertained to things protected by the law, or “legal interests” or “goods” (such as bodily integrity, freedom, honor, or property), which come into conflict in a situation not of the actor’s own making. The classic example is dynamiting a house to prevent fire from engulfing the entire neighborhood. The two legal interests in such a case—preserving the house to be dynamited versus preserving the neighborhood—are in conflict with each other. German law in this scenario would justify destroying the one house to save the others, because the “legal interest” of many houses is superior to that of a single house. In such a case of extrastatutory necessity, the doctrine operates to justify the actor’s conduct. In reversing the lower court’s verdict, the Supreme Court for the British Zone was sending an unequivocal message that the doctrine of extrastatutory necessity could not be used to justify the sacrifice of one group of people for another, because human lives were not “legal interests” that could be measured against one another.

29. De Mildt, In the Name of the People, 156. On the origins and purpose of the Supreme Court for the British Zone within the postwar administration of justice in Germany, see de Mildt, In the Name of the People, 358n39; Martin Broszat, “Siegerjustiz oder strafrechtliche Selbstreinigung: Vergangenheitsbewältigung der Justiz 1945–1949,” in VfZ, 4 (1981); Wolfgang Benz, “Die Entnazifizierung der Richter,” in Justizalltag im Dritten Reich, eds. Diestelkamp and Stolleis (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1988), 112–130. The Supreme Court for the British Zone also reversed the lower court’s verdicts regarding We., R., Pohlisch, and Panse, but on different legal grounds that do not concern us in this chapter. See JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 102, 538–544.

30. Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie, 228.

31. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 155a.

32. Ibid.

33. De Mildt, In the Name of the People, 107.

34. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 155a.

35. Section 212 defines “manslaughter” simply as a killing that does not qualify as murder under section 211.

36. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 155a.

37. See Regina Schmidt and Egon Becker, “Reaktionen auf politische Vorgänge,” in Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologien, Bd. 19 (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1967), 117ff. See also the following trials: the Treblinka trial (especially the court’s differential treatment of Kurt Franz and Gustav Münzberger), JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 596 (1965); the trial of Josef (“Sepp”) Hirtreiter, JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 270 (1951); the Auschwitz trial, JuNSV, Lfd. 595 (1965); and the Einsatzgruppen trial, JuNSV, Lfd. 555 (1963). Jörg Friedrich’s discussion of these trials is particularly trenchant in Die kalte Amnestie, 350–378. For Herbert Jäger’s comments on the goals of prosecuting Nazi crimes, see Jäger, “Strafrecht und nationalsozialistische Gewaltverbrechen,” Kritische Justiz 1 (1968), 148–149.

38. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 211.

39. Ibid.

40. The insensitivity of Sprauer’s defense here is noteworthy: it amounted to the assertion that his professional career was a higher legal good than the lives of Baden mental patients.

41. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 211.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

5. LAW AND POWER: THE WEST GERMAN EUTHANASIA TRIALS, 1948–1953

1. On the convoluted history of the furor over the proposed European Defense Community (EDC), see Walter LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad Since 1896, vol. 2 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994).

2. Frank Stern, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge, 300; Eleonore Sterling, “Judenfreunde. Fragwürdiger Philosemitismus in der Bundesrepublik,” Die Zeit (October 12, 1965). Sterling’s appraisal of the function of philosemitism in postwar Germany also applies to the suppression of continued trials of Nazi defendants; for Sterling, philosemitism “has less to do with Jews, and more with reasons of state and foreign policy,” insofar as it certified “as already completed a process and product as yet only in the state of emergence; namely, a true democracy and a positive attitude toward the Jewish minority.” On the “normative demarcation” of the Federal Republic from Nazism and Soviet Communism and its instrumentalization to promote the restoration of German sovereignty, see Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany, chapters 10–12.

3. Ulrich Herbert, Best, 483–484; Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie, 282–291.

4. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 226, 94–95.

5. Ibid., 95.

6. Ibid., 99.

7. Ibid., 99–100.

8. Ibid., 100–101.

9. Ibid., 102.

10. Ibid., 113.

11. The quote is from Schmidt, Süddeutsche Juristische Zeitung (1949), 569.

12. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 226, 131.

13. De Mildt, In the Name of the People, 168.

14. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 225, 14–15.

15. Ibid., 18–19.

16. Ibid., 20.

17. Ibid., 28–44.

18. Ibid., 56–59.

19. Quoted in de Mildt, In the Name of the People, 164.

20. The neologism “flipability” was coined by Critical Legal Studies theoretician Duncan Kennedy, but its roots go back to Wesley Hohfeld’s idea that legal propositions can be “flipped,” that is, interpreted in more than one way (and often in contradictory ways). See Wesley Hohfeld, “Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning,” Yale Law Journal 23 (1913), 16.

21. Lehner’s testimony from the Doctors’ Trial appears in Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie, 75–76.

22. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 271, 284.

23. Ibid., 285–287.

24. Ibid., 292–295.

25. Faltlhauser’s sponsorship of the Sonderkost was reported by the director of the Regensburg mental hospital, Dr. Paul Reiss, who was present at the conference of directors in the Bavarian Interior Ministry in November 1942. Reiss offered his testimony before the same Munich court in 1948 that later presided over the Pfannmüller case. The court’s institutional memory must have been, at best, a dim one. See 1 KLs 154/48 StA München, excerpted in Klee, Dokumente, 286. Faltlhauser was himself indicted for murder in July 1949 for his contributions to the killing of well over a thousand patients at Kaufbeuren. The Augsburg Landgericht acquitted him of the murder charge but found him guilty of manslaughter for the deaths of 300 patients. He was sentenced to a prison term of three years by a court that praised him for his “compassion,” “one of the noblest motives in human conduct.” See JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 162, 180.

26. BGHSt, 2, 191.

27. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 383, 8–9.

28. Ibid., 10–11.

29. Ibid., 14–27.

30. Ibid., 48–53.

31. Ibid., 54–56. The “exertion of conscience” defense appears to be a form of “mistake of law” (Verbotsirrtum), that is, the defense that the actor believed in good faith—and had sufficient reason to believe—that his actions were legally justified. On Verbotsirrtum under German law, see Hans-Heinrich Jescheck, Lehrbuch des Strafrechts, 405–421.

32. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 381, 744–745.

33. Ibid., 756–757.

34. Ibid., 758–765.

35. Ibid., 747–748.

36. Ibid., 763–767.

37. Herbert, Best, 439.

38. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 380, 664–674.

39. BGHSt, 2, 194.

40. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 380, 703–704.

41. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 380; Lfd. Nr. 480, 3–4.

42. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 380, 19–21.

43. See, for example, the trials of the Waldniel nurses, JuNSV, Lfd. Nrs. 282 (1951) and 339 (1953).

44. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 587.

45. Dressen, “NS-‘Euthanasie’ Prozesse,” 47. On the convoluted trial history of the four gassing doctors, see de Mildt, In the Name of the People, 115–126; Klee, Was sie taten, 113–128. Bunke and Ulrich would eventually be re-indicted in the mid-1980s and convicted of aiding and abetting murder.

CONCLUSION

1. Letter from Allers to Vorberg, 20 November 1954, excerpted in Klee, Was sie taten, 65.

2. Quoted in Frei, Adenauer’s Germany, 189.

3. See Assmann and Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit, 88–96.

4. Frei, Adenauer’s Germany, 304–307.

5. Jeffrey Herf, “Amnesty and Amnesia,” New Republic (10 March 2003), 37.

6. JuNSV, Lfd. Nr. 211.

7. Interviews with Hans-Heinrich Jescheck (7 March 2000) and Eckhard Herych (3 February 2000), both from the author’s private notes.