Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

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PFLB
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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#181

Post by PFLB » 22 Jul 2010, 17:38

Well, personally I haven't seen any evidence that they weren't French. I have only seen people pondering over their individual identities, although if you look back through the posts you will find that someone assured us their identities would still be sitting in French archives.

In any case, whether or not the result is ideal cannot in itself prove the existence of a law. As I said, the law has been reformed to narrow the scope for lazy or reckless behaviour in cases of doubt, and improve the protection which people have against their own state. This shows that the law was not ideal at the time, not that the law was as it is now.

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Hecht
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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#182

Post by Hecht » 22 Jul 2010, 17:58

PFLB wrote:Well, personally I haven't seen any evidence that they weren't French. I have only seen people pondering over their individual identities, although if you look back through the posts you will find that someone assured us their identities would still be sitting in French archives.
Well, personally I haven't seen any evidence that they were French traitors.
And, at least for Krotoff, the fact that was of Russian descent could mean many things: a Russian moved to France, a France national with relatives in Russia, a French that moved to Russia, a Volksdeutsche from Russia...
As far as I know he was born in Madagascar from a Russian sailor and apparently a White Russian emigrant.

Also, for the picture I posted, IMO one of the guys is more than clearly not Caucasian.

We will see the day the names would eventually surface from the Archives.


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Hecht
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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#183

Post by Hecht » 22 Jul 2010, 18:14

I've actually found another source: Richard Landwehr stated that Krotoff was a White Russian exiliated in France for being an anti-communist.

Did anybody tried to check the Vermisstbildliste pf the Charlemagne Division?
If recovered just after the war, the 12 should be there.

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#184

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 23 Jul 2010, 03:26

Well, personally I haven't seen any evidence that they were French traitors.
Their wearing of German Heer & SS uniforms, and their service in the aforementioned formations of a belligerent against France, would constitute evidence that they were traitors as per the regulations contained in Articles 76-85 of the French Penal Code. In short, they had "aided and abetted the enemy"
Also, for the picture I posted, IMO one of the guys is more than clearly not Caucasian.
With "IMO" being the operative phrase. You can't prove a negative. You can believe that individual was a Hindu, or Asian or Lady Gaga but you haven't provided evidence to prove it. Virtually all the accounts we have discussed so far describe the prisoners as French.

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#185

Post by David Thompson » 23 Jul 2010, 06:19

A post from Michael Mills, on the application of German treason law in occupied Poland and apparently posted here by mistake, was moved to the thread at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=167668 - DT.

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#186

Post by PFLB » 23 Jul 2010, 07:58

'Well, personally I haven't seen any evidence that they were French traitors.'

As I said, it makes no difference from an international legal perspective, because there is no international law of treason which defines what treason is and how it is to be proved. The only thing that is relevant for the purposes of war crimes is whether they were POW's. If they weren't, then it makes no difference if there was evidence of treason or not because they weren't protected by international humanitarian law.

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#187

Post by Marneschlacht » 23 Jul 2010, 08:42

Hi,
I am reading this new book about this hot subject :
"Eric Lefèvre et Olivier Pigoreau "Bad Reichenhall. 8 mai 1945. Un épisode tragique". Editions Grancher. 28,50 euros."
Attachments
lefevre.jpg
lefevre.jpg (230.95 KiB) Viewed 1084 times

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Hecht
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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#188

Post by Hecht » 23 Jul 2010, 09:44

Rob - wssob2 wrote: Their wearing of German Heer & SS uniforms, and their service in the aforementioned formations of a belligerent against France, would constitute evidence that they were traitors as per the regulations contained in Articles 76-85 of the French Penal Code. In short, they had "aided and abetted the enemy"
Wearing of a German uniform doesn't mean that who wear it is always a French National... :roll:
Rob - wssob2 wrote: With "IMO" being the operative phrase. You can't prove a negative. You can believe that individual was a Hindu, or Asian or Lady Gaga but you haven't provided evidence to prove it. Virtually all the accounts we have discussed so far describe the prisoners as French.
Appear clear to me you don't follow the discussion, but you just reply to posts that clash with your believes, otherwise you would have noticed that, standing to accounts, at least Krotoff may had been not a French National but a Russian exiled in France: this need further investigation, of course.

For the rest, as requested from the forum, please produce evidence that the 8 unknown soldiers were French Nationals.
The account we have discussed here is about 8 of the executed soldiers that are still unknown at the present day, and this is not what I would call "a undebatable evidence of French Nationality".

The fact that Soldbuch were removed from the executed soldiers, and just 4 names on 12 surfaced after the war, need specific research IMO:

Keep Lady Gaga for your entertaiment, please.

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#189

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 23 Jul 2010, 14:58

Hecht, you wrote:
Appear clear to me you don't follow the discussion, but you just reply to posts that clash with your believes, otherwise you would have noticed that, standing to accounts, at least Krotoff may had been not a French National but a Russian exiled in France: this need further investigation, of course.
BTW "Russian exiled in France" = white Russian. I won't drive off into the weeds with the complicated history of their citizenship status but suffice to say that the'd been in France since the 1920's and were originally stateless persons but de facto French.

Not only do I follow the discussion, I contribute to it. Apparently you missed my post about 6 pages ago.


As I mentioned, I think we need to get back to the details of the case before we define it as a war crime.

1) To start off, we should go back to the sources that describe whatever happened at Bad Reichenhall as a war crime against French SS POWs.

Among the first accounts of this incident that I've been able to find are

Richard Landwehr's Charlemagne's Legionnaires 1989

Europaische Freiwillige im Bild - printed by Nation Europa 1986

Jean Mabire's Berlin im Todeskampf 1945 (1977?)

And Robert Forbes' For Europe 2006

Virtually all of these authors/sources are Revisionists whose work deliberately fosters the "pan-European Waffen-SS" myth dear among postwar neo-fascists and their aficionados. I for one have little confidence that any of these authors will let facts get in the way of some good hagiography.

2) One controversy is the existence of the "13th POW" - the man (supposedly a son of a Free French senior officer) who LeClerc ordered spared. Forum member Ostuf Charlemagne mentions the lucky 13th POW but Robert Forbes denies he existed. Did or didn't this 13th French SS POW exist at Bad Reichenhall and did LeClerc reprieve him?

3) Pretty much all account describe the total number of victims as 12 - yet only 4 have been positively identified, as far as I can tell:

* Waffen-Untersturmfuehrer (Ostuf.?) Serge Krotoff - French SS Sturmbrigade veteran and member of , also described as an Russian Civil War emigre

* Waffen-Obersturmfuehrer (Ustuf,?) Robert Doffat (Daffas?)

* Waffen-Grenadier (other accounts say Ustuf.) Raymond Payras

* Leutnant Paul Briffaut (1918 -1945)

Two additional men have been tentatively identified, or identified in at least one of the sources above:

Waffen-Grenadier Jean Robert

SS-mann Jacques Ponnau

Off all the men listed above, I've only been able to identify biographical details on Leutnant Briffaut:

- Born Hanoi, French Indochina
- Joined French Army; served in "the Levant" (probably Syria) as an "aspirant de reserve de infanterie" with the 16RTT in Oct 1939
- 1941: Fought with Vichy French Army against British & Free French Troops
- 1943: Volunteered for LVF; graduate from ecole des cadres, posted to Eastern Front in Oct.
- Feb 1944: WIA during anti-partisan sweep OPERATION MOROCCO
- Assigned to Wehrmacht (unknown which branch) sometime between 1944-45

Of the other six victims - or if there were an additional six victims - I can't find any information

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Hecht
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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#190

Post by Hecht » 23 Jul 2010, 18:18

Rob, you wrote
Rob - wssob2 wrote: BTW "Russian exiled in France" = white Russian. I won't drive off into the weeds with the complicated history of their citizenship status but suffice to say that the'd been in France since the 1920's and were originally stateless persons but de facto French.

To avoid confusion, you should use another term.
White Russia is usually a term used for Belarus, sometimes called Weiss Ruthenien, while White Russians are the people that lived in such area.
It would be better to use "Russian Anti-Communist in exile".

In this case, are you able to produce source that Krotoff received de facto the French Nationality?
Are you noticed of the date in which he did moved to France?
Do you know from which Soviet Republic did he came from?
If not, then, the answer to this matter is that we don't know if Krotoff was a French National or still a Russian one (or a "Staatlos": don't know for Vichy, but a Staatlos is a Staatlos untill the day that he receive a new Citizenship.) .
Very simple.
Rob - wssob2 wrote: 2) One controversy is the existence of the "13th POW" - the man (supposedly a son of a Free French senior officer) who LeClerc ordered spared. Forum member Ostuf Charlemagne mentions the lucky 13th POW but Robert Forbes denies he existed. Did or didn't this 13th French SS POW exist at Bad Reichenhall and did LeClerc reprieve him? 3) Pretty much all account describe the total number of victims as 12 - yet only 4 have been positively identified, as far as I can tell: * Waffen-Untersturmfuehrer (Ostuf.?) Serge Krotoff - French SS Sturmbrigade veteran and member of , also described as an Russian Civil War emigre * Waffen-Obersturmfuehrer (Ustuf,?) Robert Doffat (Daffas?)
* Waffen-Grenadier (other accounts say Ustuf.) Raymond Payras * Leutnant Paul Briffaut (1918 -1945) Two additional men have been tentatively identified, or identified in at least one of the sources above: Waffen-Grenadier Jean Robert
SS-mann Jacques Ponnau Off all the men listed above, I've only been able to identify biographical details on Leutnant Briffaut:
- Born Hanoi, French Indochina
- Joined French Army; served in "the Levant" (probably Syria) as an "aspirant de reserve de infanterie" with the 16RTT in Oct 1939
- 1941: Fought with Vichy French Army against British & Free French Troops
- 1943: Volunteered for LVF; graduate from ecole des cadres, posted to Eastern Front in Oct.
- Feb 1944: WIA during anti-partisan sweep OPERATION MOROCCO
- Assigned to Wehrmacht (unknown which branch) sometime between 1944-45

Of the other six victims - or if there were an additional six victims - I can't find any information[/i]
Then, the answer to my request "please produce evidences about the nationality of the 8/6 unkown executed men" is "We don't have any".
Due to that, and I think you would agree, seems senseless to me to discuss about the right of Le Clerc to execute these men for being traitors, if we don't even actually know the actual number of shot people, the names and the nationality of most of the men executed.
What's the point into keep saying that Le Clerc was right to shot them for Treason, if we don't even know "who" had been shot?

Sources talks of 12\13 soldiers that apparently belonged to the Charlemagne Division executed for arrogance.
I'm pretty sure that if they were shot for Treason, then, there should be by far more details about them around.

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#191

Post by Marneschlacht » 23 Jul 2010, 20:59

Hecht said : "...In this case, are you able to produce source that Krotoff received de facto the French Nationality?
Are you noticed of the date in which he did moved to France?"


According to the book I cited above, Serge Hermann Louis Théodore KROTOFF was born in Tananarive, Madagascar on 11/10/1911 ( French Colony since 1895)
His father Georges was Administrator of the French Colonies. His grand-father, born at Moscow in 1808, was interpreter in Russian Embassy in Paris.
For his 2 years military Service, he was in French Merchant Marine and became officer.

He was French . These datas come from his Military Service File in Marine Nationale Archives (SHD-Vincennes-France).

No less than 22 pages are dedicated to Krotoff in this book. I can advise you to buy this book.

MS

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Hecht
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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#192

Post by Hecht » 23 Jul 2010, 21:03

Thanks, at least we know he was not in exile.

Any additional infos about the personal details of the 6\8 unknown soldiers?

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#193

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 24 Jul 2010, 07:20

To avoid confusion, you should use another term.
To avoid confusion, I use a term commonly used to describe anti-Communist Russians living in France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_%C3%A9migr%C3%A9

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=211927


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 41,00.html

White Russia is usually a term used for Belarus, sometimes called Weiss Ruthenien, while White Russians are the people that lived in such area.
I don’t need a geography lesson.

I think I might need a drink, though. Perhaps a White Russian?

http://cocktails.about.com/od/w/r/wht_rsn_cktl.htm

Image
It would be better to use "Russian Anti-Communist in exile".
It would be cumbersome and imprecise, and thus not better.
In this case, are you able to produce source that Krotoff received de facto the French Nationality?
Are you noticed of the date in which he did moved to France?
Do you know from which Soviet Republic did he came from?
You seem to have mistaken me for someone from the French Archives. But thanks to the kindness of AHF member Marneschlacht, who has read the most recently published book on the subject, we know this information. And he was French. Case closed.

Then, the answer to my request "please produce evidences about the nationality of the 8/6 unkown executed men" is "We don't have any".
Perhaps you would like to have a go at doing some research instead of having other people do it for you.

Oh wait – you did.
he looks like Pakistani or Hindù a lot to my eyes: notice the difference between the skin colour of the soldiers on his sides
There you are then – these are Hindi soldiers.


Due to that, and I think you would agree, seems senseless to me to discuss about the right of Le Clerc to execute these men for being traitors, if we don't even actually know the actual number of shot people, the names and the nationality of most of the men executed.
Perhaps you could read the books I suggested and get back to us with some findings?

Richard Landwehr's Charlemagne's Legionnaires 1989

Europaische Freiwillige im Bild - printed by Nation Europa 1986

Jean Mabire's Berlin im Todeskampf ("Mourir a Berlin") (1977?)

And Robert Forbes' For Europe 2006


(I’ll make it easy for you: see p.486 et. Al.)

What's the point into keep saying that Le Clerc was right to shot them for Treason, if we don't even know "who" had been shot?

define:red herring
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&clie ... d=0CBIQkAE


I'm pretty sure that if they were shot for Treason, then, there should be by far more details about them around.
While I too am surprised at the paucity of data surrounding Bad Reichenhall, especially in books that cover the transition between Vichy and the Fourth Republic, having recently read books like Herbert Lottman’s The Purge: The Purification of French Collaborators After WWII (William Morrow, 1986) and The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach (U Chicago Press, 2000), I posit to the following hypothesis: There isn’t a lot of information about the execution of the French SS men, because it wasn’t controversial at the time.

And it wasn’t controversial at the time – nor should it be now

Because the execution of 12 French SS men at Bad Reichenhall isn’t a crime.

Here’s my understanding:

1)France and Nazi Germany were in a state of war until May 8, 1945.

Sounds obvious, but I recall several attempts to paint a) France as a neutral b) France as a 1945 ally of Germany on this thread.

2) The GPRF was the legitimate, de-facto government of France since August 1944. The French 2nd Armored Division was an official force of that government. The GPRF and the 2nd Armored Division are empowered to act in an executive fashion.

Let’s not rat-hole into the “Vichy was the REAL gov’t” or “LeClerc’s men were American stooges in GI uniforms” red herring.

3) The GPRF and the French military had a defined process for dealing with cases of collaboration and treason, including military courts martial. This process was articulated in the French Penal Code, Articles 75-86. One possible punishment for treason was death by execution.

I suppose one pedantic argument could be that the French SS were no longer traitors with the capitulation of Germany on May 8 (i.e. because they were executed after that date) but I don’t think this line of argument has much value.

4) The Geneva Conventions in effect in May 1945 do not explicitly give POW status, and subsequent internationally-protections, to nationals captured in the service of the enemy.

Whether it’s a German national caught in the service of the US Army by German forces, or a Frenchman caught in German uniform by French forces, the uniform does not supplant the nationality, and the captor forces are likely to consider the individual a traitor.

As PFLB said
States generally regard nationals who serve in foreign armed forces in a war upon the state as traitors. Nothing novel there.
It’s a loophole, if you will, in the existing conventions, which are written as if the POW nationality is that of the belligerent that the captor is fighting against. (and why not? This is the case 99.99% of the time)

So the French SS men were suspected traitors, caught in the uniforms of the enemy in which they served.



5) The French SS in question were French nationals.

Given that writers such as Robert Forbes and Mabire (who regard the incident as a crime) considered the executed men French, I think we can safely assume LeClerc didn’t execute any other nationals.

5) The argument that Bad Reichenhall is a war crime seems to be based on an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, i.e. “absence of evidence is evidence of absence”

In other words, Revisionist writers like Forbes and Mabire, and our current crop of polemicists, claim that LeClerc didn’t conduct a trial before executing the French SS. But neither Forbes, Mabire, nor any other research we’ve seen on this thread so far can prove some sort of courts-martial proceedings didn’t occur. It’s an assumption.

If LeClerc conducted a courts-martial proceeding, is there some requirement for what form it should take? Yes, but there’s no requirement that the proceedings be long, drawn-out or filled with paperwork. If a 15 minute trial and a single memo sufficed for French military and GPRF law, then it’s fufills the legal requirement.

Has any historian poked around in the the French military archives to look for documentation from the executioners? Not that we know of. Perhaps Marneschlacht can tell if Eric Lefevre did, and what he found.

If LeClerc conducted a courts-martial proceeding, is there some law that proof of it has to be on the internet? Obviously not.

If LeClerc did execute the French SS men without trial, then he violated the laws of his own country, not international law. But I haven’t seen anyone claim that – yet.

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#194

Post by D.Laurent » 24 Jul 2010, 16:05

indeed and the widely used Pere gaume witness text (use even by the revisionnist) states that the order of execution came from the headquarters.

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Re: Charlemagne soldiers executed at Bad Reichenhall

#195

Post by Marcus » 24 Jul 2010, 17:02

A post by Hecht containing only personal remarks was removed.

/Marcus

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