"Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

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#16

Post by David Thompson » 17 Jan 2003, 19:33

Part 2:
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#17

Post by David Thompson » 17 Jan 2003, 19:35

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#18

Post by David Thompson » 17 Jan 2003, 19:37

Part 4:
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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#19

Post by PFLB » 11 Jul 2010, 06:40

Reviews and Recommendations of JAG for US Army in Europe in lynching trials:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... Cases.html

* I should clarify that - despite the label they are not all POW lynchings - those are the R and R for all non-concentration camp cases, of most which are POW lynchings.

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Re: Hard Stance on Airbombing

#20

Post by Pingpongtweet » 31 Jan 2013, 23:43

Germany considered taking away the POW protection of Allied airmen who could be proven to have deliberately killed civilians, usually by using machine-guns from bombers and fighters.

Later in the war this seems to have been so common that it generated a heated discussion in the German government circles on how to act to put a stop to those murders of civilians, and the tone was on letting the civilians themselves carry out retaliation murders (lynchings). Some quotes:
1. Obergruppenfuehrer Kaltenbrunner informed the deputy Chief of WFSt in Klessheim on the afternoon of 6.6, that a conference on this question had been held shortly before between the Reich Marshall, the Reich Foreign Minister and the Reichsfuehrer SS. Contrary to the original suggestion made by the Reich Foreign Minister who wished to include every type of terror attack on the German civilian population, that is, also bombing attacks on cities, it was agreed in the above conference that merely those attacks carried out with A/ C armament, aimed directly at the civilian population and their property, should be taken as the standard for the evidence of a criminal action in this sense. Lynch law would have to be the rule. On the contrary, there has been no question of court martial sentence or handing over to the police.
a. First and foremost, following the lines of the generally distributed declaration made by Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels and numerous press notices written in the same vein, it is essential to announce any definitely established incident of this kind giving the names and units of the aviators, the place the incident occurred and any other relevant facts. The purpose of this would be to make clear the serious intentions of the Germans in the face of disbelieving enemy propaganda and especially to discourage effectively any further murderous action against our civilian population. Therefore the question is whether the SD knows of such a case or whether the necessary proof is available from which to construct a case like this with the required statements. Obergruppenfuehrer Kaltenbrunner replied to both in the negative.
3. At a conference with Colonel von Brauchitsch (C-in-C Air Force) on 6.6, it was settled that the following actions were to be regarded as terror-action, justifying Lynch law.

a. Low level attacks with aircraft armament on the civilian population, single persons as well as crowds.

b. Shooting on our own (German) air crews in the air who have bailed out.

c. Attacks with aircraft armament on passenger trains in the public service.

d. Attacks with aircraft armament on military hospitals, hospitals and hospital-trains which are clearly marked with the Red Cross.
Memorandum with reference to Terror-Aviators

In his midday report of 4 July the Fuehrer has issued the following directive:

According to press reports the Anglo-Americans intend to subject to air attack small localities without any war-economic or military value, as a reprisal against V-l. In the event this report proves true, the Fuehrer orders that notice be served via radio and the press that every enemy aviator who is shot down while participating in such an attack is not entitled to treatment as a prisoner of war but that he will be treated as a murderer as soon as he falls into German hands. This rule shall apply to all attacks on small localities which constitute neither military targets, nor communication targets nor armament targets, etc., and are therefore of no military significance.

Nothing is to be done at the moment; on the contrary, measures of this sort are only to be discussed with the Armed Forces Legal Section (WR) and with the Foreign Office.
The series of letters goes from 1 to 11, just replace the number in the web-link.
http://ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/aviators11.htm

It would be interesting to know how often lynchings took place. The targeting of civilians certainly took place, for example Chuck Yeager admits to receiving orders to do so in his memoirs.
"I’m certainly not proud of that particular strafing mission against civilians. But it is there, on the record and in my memory."
It is understandable if survivors took revenge on downed flyers, even if they were not the right one, when the blood ran hot, e.g. a child or other family member was killed. After the war the U.S. tried to punish those known to have lynched aviators.
Ferencz -- who went on to a distinguished legal career, became a founder of the International Criminal Court and is today probably the leading authority on military jurisprudence of the era -- cannot specifically address Weiss's actions. But he says it's important to recall that military legal norms at the time permitted a host of flexibilities that wouldn't fly today. "You know how I got witness statements?" he says. "I'd go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone one up against the wall. Then I'd say, 'Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.' It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 680_5.html

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#21

Post by Pingpongtweet » 01 Feb 2013, 21:35

David Thompson wrote:In 1944, Nazi authorities grew increasingly concerned over bombing raids. On 11 Jan 1944 the U.S. Army Air Force began using P-51 Mustang fighters to escort American bombers in daylight precision raids over Germany. Before this time, Allied fighters could not provide consistent protection for the bomber squadrons because of the fighters' limited range. The P-51, markedly superior to German fighter planes, achieved air superiority over the Reich within five months, leaving German war industry largely unprotected from the devastating daylight precision bombing of American "Flying Fortress" and "Liberator" formations (Luftwaffe Diaries 508-539).

As a result of these raids, Hitler and other Nazi officials began to consider whether allowing the civilian population to lynch captured allied aviators might boost German morale and deter the allies. Here are the first of some primary source documents on the subject. These are from "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression" vol. 8, pp. 107-08:
This is from the originating post in this thread, a thread to which my comment above was moved to from the thread http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=196348

The only comment I would like to make here is that the background editorial by David Thompson seems to be quite misleading in view of the contents of the presented documents.

The first paragraph is no doubt correct, but completely out of context in this thread.

The second paragraphs is directly misleading. It is clear from the provided documents that the primary concern of the Nazi authorities was the recent deliberate machine-gun killings of German civilians by U.S. fighters (who aparently were under orders to shoot at "anything that moves" on the ground, which the Germans considered to be criminal and "gangster" tactics, meriting a swift death to any bailed out fighter-pilot that could be connected to this type of killing of civilians.

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#22

Post by David Thompson » 04 Feb 2013, 01:05

Pingpongtweet -- You wrote:
It is clear from the provided documents that the primary concern of the Nazi authorities was the recent deliberate machine-gun killings of German civilians by U.S. fighters (who aparently were under orders to shoot at "anything that moves" on the ground, which the Germans considered to be criminal and "gangster" tactics, meriting a swift death to any bailed out fighter-pilot that could be connected to this type of killing of civilians.
Your observation confuses two separate issues discussed in the documents (lynchings and summary execution by the SD without court-martial), and also confuses the paper terminology with the actual practice. As the documents point out, the narrow definition of terror-flyers only defines the circumstances in which the Luftwaffe would turn over prisoners to the SD (Sicherheitsdienst - Security Service) for execution without court-martial. It has nothing to do with lynchings.

As the documents note, there is no way of regulating lynchings, since no one determines whether or not the captured airmen fit the terror-aviator criterion. The result was the indiscriminate murder of captured airmen.

Here are the first seventy-six "Flyer cases" (in numerical order by case number) prosecuted by US military tribunals. Of these cases, only three feature strafing allegations (4% of the total), while forty-three involve bomber crews, aircraft with multiple crew members or incidents with multiple victims (64% of the total). In the overwhelming majority of cases, the police and/or SD made no effort to comply with the restrictions you discuss.

Case No. 000-012-0793 US v. Flauaus and Fachinger – 2 airmen
Case No. 000-005-0066 (US v. Lienhart) – multiple crewmen
Case No. 000-012-0413 (US v. Karl Dressler) – single pilot
Case No. 000-012-1149 (US v. Anton Schosser) – multiple crewmen
Case No. 5-37 (US vs. Franz Goetz et al) Tried 22 Jan 47 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 5-67 & 5-72 (US vs. Josef Hangobl) Tried 18 Oct. 45 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 5-83 (US vs. Mathias Kapeller et al) – bomber crewmen
Case No. 5-88 (US vs. Alois Grisl) Tried 26 June 46 – bomber crewmen
Case No. 5-92 (US vs. Erich Wandrey) Tried 15 July 47 – bomber crewmen
Case No. 5-100 (US vs. Karoly, Ney et al) Tried 7 June 46 – bomber crewmen
Case No. 5-113 (US vs. Anton Taurer et al) - bomber crewmen
Case No. 5-144 (US vs. Franz Hofbauer et al) Tried 30 Jan. 47 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 5-150 (US vs. Fritz Thaler et al) Tried 24 July 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 5-173 (US vs. Johann Stieblaichinger) – multiple crewmen
Case No. 6-55 (US vs. Ludwig Engelhard) Tried 24 June 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 6-155 (US vs. Gustav Karl Wilhelm Ruester) – unknown single victim
Case No. 8-5 (US vs. Harras Kieslinger) – bomber crewmen
Case No. 8-27 (US vs. Franz Strasser) Tried 24 Aug. 45 – bomber crewmen
Case No. 11-52 (US vs. Bernhard Koenke) Tried 16 Sept. 46 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 11-96 (US vs. Karl Adam Kirchner et al) Tried 16 May 47 – single fighter pilot, convicted by an SS summary court of strafing an ambulance [Lt. D. T. Loyd]
Case No. 12-1247 (US vs. Gustav Stork et al) Tried 29 Jan. 47 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 12-25 (US vs. Karl Baumgaertner) Tried 14 April 47 – unknown, multiple victims, one perpetrator said he was excited because his house had been bombed.
Case No. 12-27 (US vs. Georg Osterrieder) tried 9 Sept.46 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-43 (US vs. Kurt Gross et al) Tried 9 Oct. 47 – unknown, two victims
Case No. 12-45 (US vs. Albert Heim et al) Tried 18 Dec. 46 – unknown, multiple victims
Case No. 12-57 (US vs. Otto Rueger et al) Tried 5 June 47 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 12-80 (US vs. Josef Stern) Tried 28 April 47 – unknown single pilot
Case No. 12-348 (US vs. August Barth et al) Tried 30 Sept. 47 – bomber crewman
Case No. 12-413-1 (US vs. Hans Heitkamp) Tried 8 Aug. 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-468 (US vs. Karl Bloch et al) Tried 15 Oct. 45 – unknown multiple victims; one defendant upset by deaths of family members in an unrelated strafing attack
Case No. 12-472 (US vs. Hermann Noack et al) Tried 5 Aug. 46 – unknown, multiple victims
Case No. 12-481 (US vs. Dominikus Thomas) Tried 9 Oct. 45 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 12-485 (US vs. Ernst Mueller) Tried 19 March 46 – multiple victims; order that all captured airmen to be turned over to civilians for killing
Case No. 12-489 (US v. Goebell et al.) – bomber crewmen
Case No. 12-489-1 (US vs. August Haesiker) Tried 26 June 47 – bomber crewmen
Case No. 12-524 (US vs. Otto Rudolf) Tried2 April 46 – unknown single pilot
Case No. 12-531 (US vs. Ernst Boehrs et al) Tried 7 Feb. 47 – bomber crewman
Case No. 12-551 (US vs. Josef Ehlen et al) Tried 7 Nov. 46 – unknown, multiple victims
Case No. 12-551-1 (US vs. Karl Eggert) Tried 3 June 47 – bomber crewmen
Case No. 12-658 (US vs. Otto Behme et al) Tried 5 Nov. 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-788 (US vs. Karl Thoma) Tried 18 June 47 – unknown single victim; mistreated for lying on prison bed with dirty shoes
Case No. 12-793-2 (Us vs. Georg Sturm) Tried 29 July 47 – unknown, multiple victims
Case No. 12-819 (Us vs. Friedrich Katz et al) Tried 4 Feb. 46 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-926 (US vs. Adolf Weger and Julius Schulze) – unknown, multiple crewmen
Case No. 12-926-1 (US vs. Karl Neuber) Tried 26 April 46 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 12-931 (US vs. Hans Seibolt et al) Tried 7 March 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-932 (US vs. Wilhelm Foerster) Tried 19 April 46 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-1022 (US vs. Otto Winter) Tried 21 May 47 – unknown, multiple crewmen
Case No. 12-1034 (US vs. Christian Blum et al) Tried 24 Aug. 46 – bomber crewmen
Case No. 12-1067 (US vs. Hans Staudinger et al) Tried 3 Aug. 46 – bomber crewmen
Case No. 12-1068 (US vs. Friedrich Altena) Tried 19 Sept. 47 – fighter pilot
Case No. 12-1104-1 (US vs. Wilhelm Kanschat) Tried 28 Aug. 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-1106 (US vs. Wilhelm Bock) Tried 13 Nov. 46 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 12-1109 (US vs. Johann Gross) Tried 4 June 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-1115 (US vs. Ludwig Firmenich et al) Tried 6 June 46 – unknown, multiple victims
Case No. 12-1119 (US vs. Friedrich Hanselmann) Tried 14 Feb. 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-1140 (US vs. Heinrich Rixen) Tried 4 Dec. 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-1145 (US vs. Clemens Wiegand) Tried 16 Oct. 45 – multiple crewmen
Case No. 12-1149-2 (US vs. Emil Breitenstein) Tried 18 Sept. 46 – multiple victims
Case No. 12-1155 (US vs. August Kobus) Tried 14 Nov. 45 – fighter pilot
Case No. 12-1155-1 (US vs. Bernhard Stredele) Tried 14 March 46 – fighter pilot; orders involved bomber crews
Case No. 12-1155-2 (US vs. Karl Boehm et al) Tried 25 June 47 – fighter pilot
Case No. 12-1160 (US vs. Karl Polus) Tried 13 Sept. 46 – bomber crew
Case No. 12-1168 (US vs. Wilhelm Luethje) 26 May 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-1182 (US vs. Heinz Endress) Tried 13 Nov. 45 – unknown, multiple victims
Case No. 12-1182-1 (US vs. Richard Drauz) Tried 11 Dec. 45 – unknown, recaptured escapee
Case No. 12-1182-2 (US vs. Karl Otto) Tried 6 May 47 – unknown; multiple victims
Case No. 12-1203 (US vs. Siegfried Scholz) Tried 17 April 47 – bomber crewman
Case No. 12-1217 (US vs. Erich Hinkel) Tried 25 April 47 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-1292 (US vs. Werner Hess) Tried 9 Aug. 47 – single victim who allegedly strafed passenger train [Maj. James B. Cheney]
Case No. 12-1307 (US v. Richard Hammer et al) Tried 4 April 47 – bomber crewman
Case No. 12-1395 (US v. Karl Grosch et al) Tried 22 Feb. 47 – multiple crewman/victims
Case No. 12-1397 (US v. Albert Bury et al) Tried 17 July 45 – unknown single victim; kill all captured airmen order
Case No. 12-1418 (US vs. Georg Schultheiss) Tried 21 Sept. 45 – single victim; possibly a strafing incident [Donald E. Brent]
Case No. 12-1422 (US vs. Gustav Heidmann et al) Tried 9 July 46 – unknown single victim
Case No. 12-1449 (US vs. Rudolf Dirnagel et al) Tried 14 Aug. 47 – multiple victims; bomber crewmen

Interested readers can check the case details for themselves using the name list at http://www.uni-marburg.de/icwc/forschun ... /usadachau, and then click on the case number given in the table.

Reichsmarschall Goering (Göring), in his IMT testimony (IMT proceedings vol. 9, pp. 360-61), also remarked on how indiscriminate lynching became in Germany -- the populace tried to beat up or killed downed Luftwaffe pilots and aircrews:
In this connection there were heated discussions. All of the gentlemen who had to take part in the Führer's daily briefing sessions will recall exactly that the Führer repeatedly told me in a very unfriendly manner that he definitely wished to know the names and the punishment of those officers who again and again had protected fliers from the population. I did not have these people searched for or arrested, nor did I have them punished. I always pointed out to the Führer that it had already happened that even our own fliers who had bailed out had been most severely

360
15 March 46

mishandled by our own people, who at first were completely confused, and I therefore repeatedly emphasized on behalf of the Air Force that such things must be stopped.

There was one last sharp controversy, again in the presence of many gentlemen, at a briefing session in which, when again I referred to these things, the Führer cut me short with the words, "I well know that both air forces have come to a mutual agreement of cowardice." Whereupon I told him, "We have not come to an agreement of cowardice, but somehow we airmen have always remained comrades, no matter haw much we fight each other." All the gentlemen present will remember this.

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#23

Post by Penn44 » 14 Apr 2013, 04:55

Has there been any study of the conviction rate and types/lengths of sentences of the Flier Lynching trials at Dachau?
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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#24

Post by David Thompson » 14 Apr 2013, 05:37

Penn44 -- If there is, I haven't seen it. The USJAG reviews of the trials, which should give a pretty good start on such a study, are on line at the University of Marburg's ICWC website at http://www.uni-marburg.de/icwc/forschun ... /usadachau

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#25

Post by Penn44 » 15 Apr 2013, 10:02

Thank you, David, very useful information.

I would be interesting to plug the information into a statistical program to see what comes out.

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#26

Post by Panzermahn » 19 Apr 2013, 16:46

It seems that much studies has been done on the lynching of POWs (typically Allied air crew who bailed out over Germany) due to the availability of US military tribunal and court records.

However, the same can't be said with regards to the lynching of German or Axis pilots who bailed out over enemy territory during WW2. I recall that de Zayas' work on the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau dealt with several cases of French civilians lynching downed German pilots during the Battle of France in 1940 and the execution of downed German pilots in Ukraine 1941 but there seems to be no information on the fate of German/Axis aircrew captured in the Balkans.

For example the incident where a German pilot who bailed out in England during the Battle of Britain who was set upon by a British mob, the official British records dealing with this incident seems to be obscure as compare to the numerous and abundant American records on the incidents such as the lynching of American aircrew by German civilians like in the case of the Russelheim Trials

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#27

Post by David Thompson » 20 Apr 2013, 06:47

I'm not seeing what point you're trying to make here, Panzermahn. The American JAG reviews of the "flieger trials" have been posted online because someone was interested enough to do it. The same could be done with the German war crimes records, if you or a group of people wanted to volunteer for the job. Furthermore, many aviators from different countries were shot down during WWII, or ended up missing in action. That doesn't necessarily mean that some civilian population lynched them.

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#28

Post by Penn44 » 21 Apr 2013, 08:34

In addition to the US files of war crimes cases brought to trial at Dachau, in the National Archives there are numerous US files on war crimes cases investigated, but closed without going to trial. US war crimes investigators closed these cases because of various reasons most often because the alleged perpetrator(s) or witness(es) were never found or were dead, etc. These closed cases make for interesting reading as well. Just because the US investigators closed a case does not mean that a crime did not occur. Considering the number of cases tried and untried, there were other incidents of lynchings and other incidents of abuse which occurred, but were never reported to American authorities, and therefore never opened as cases at all.

Given all of this, one wonders what was the prevalence rate of lynchings resulting in murder as well as non-lethal physical assaults against downed Allied airmen? A bail out over enemy occupied territory was risky business. Anecdotally at least, I think we can say that lynchings were not rare, and that physical assaults were quite common. In many cases, more lynchings would have occurred had the German military not arrived to take the down airmen into custody. I have encountered a number of cases in which an airman was captured by a German soldier, and could see in the distance his buddy getting killed by civilians. Quickly getting into the custody of the German military often made the difference in life or death for an Allied airman. In these cases, the local German police often failed to protect down airmen and in some cases initiated or participated in the assaults. German soldiers generally protected their prisoners from civilians.

On a side note, at the Frankfurt train station, on one occasion, a captured American airman under German military guard was approached by an angry German civilian with an intent on striking him. The German guard interceded and threatened the German civilian with physical harm if he touched the airman. The German guard told the German civilian that at least the American was serving in the military something the civilian was not. However, overall, the Frankfurt train station was a dangerous place for captured American airman. At other times, other German guards allowed German civilians to strike American airmen.

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#29

Post by PF » 27 Jun 2013, 23:47

Postscript-killing of at least 2 {3?} airmen July 28 1944 Gusen Austria
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 4#p1802444

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Re: "Other" War Crimes -- POW Lynchings

#30

Post by PF » 23 Sep 2014, 15:35


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