Proof of pre-planned Soviet mass rapes in Germany

[Panzermahn]

Let me get it straight -you are asking if rape was a criminal act under soviet penal Code? Under what law do you think the people mentioned in prosecutor report were tried?

Do you have any links in English that shows the rape was a criminal act under the pre-1939 Soviet penal code?

As for Kuby -I asked why he did not make your recommended reading list. After all he is German WW II vet who fought on EF - kind of makes his position unique relative to all post-war writings.

I have his book in German, but I realised his book were more on military history rather than focusing on the subject of Soviet behaviour in occupied Germany. Being a German WW II vet doesn't meant he is not a commie

b) There is not a single OKH/OKW order (at least that I know of) or orders signed by Hitler that forbids mistreatment execution of jews and there are bunch of GKO and Front level documents forbiding mistreatment of German civilians .

Yes, there are no such orders from Hitler as far as I know but Hitler (as well as other Third Reich brass) himself did saved Jews notably Dr. Bloch, who treated Hitler's mother.

Same retrospection on Stalin and his regime. There are a bunch of GKO and Front level documents forbidding mistreatment of German civilians as you posted but it doesn't mean that ALL Soviet officers or men obey such orders. Even Uncle Joe himself doesn't give a hoot if a Red Army man raped or sexually assaulted women as demonstrated by his callousness in this subject when Milovan Djilas complained to the Stalin about the behaviour of Soviet troops

[Oleg Grigoryev]

This is beyond grotesque. Did you really honestly believe, that there was a chance, that rape was not a crime under Soviet criminal code? You are arguing for the sake of arguing. Here – I’ll humor you: http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/uk136-e.html Criminal code form 1934 articles 153-154

153. Sexual relations with the application of physical force, threat, fear, or with the use, through deception, of the helpless condition of the victim (rape)--
deprivation of liberty for a term up to five years.
If the rape has as its consequence the suicide of the victim or was perpetrated on a person, not having attained sexual maturity, or, on a person of mature years, [by? several persons] --
deprivation of liberty for a term of up to eight years.

154. Compelling a woman to enter into a sexual relationship or the satisfaction of a sexual desire in another form by a person, on whom the woman is materially dependent, or subordinate at work--
deprivation of liberty for a term up to five years.

I have his book in German, but I realised his book were more on military history rather than focusing on the subject of Soviet behaviour in occupied Germany. Being a German WW II vet doesn't meant he is not a commie

It is about 70% about interaction of Soviets and Germans and 30% about actual combat. I guess you did not get too far. Pity really. Does anybody who does not subscribe to you commix version of WW II is a commie? Be it as it may I quoted large portions from him here:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... &start=225
and here : http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... y#p1364333
I am really interested what do you have to say about this.

Yes, there are no such orders from Hitler as far as I know but Hitler (as well as other Third Reich brass) himself did saved Jews notably Dr. Bloch, who treated Hitler's mother.

THAT is the difference. There is German a paper trail showing that extermination of Jews was a state policy. There is a Soviet paper trail showing that abusing German civilians was not a Soviet policy.

Same retrospection on Stalin and his regime. There are a bunch of GKO and Front level documents forbidding mistreatment of German civilians

So you admit then that it was not a Soviet policy.

That doesn't mean that ALL Soviet officers or men obey such orders.

Well duh – that is why they were prosecuted.

Even Uncle Joe himself doesn't give a hoot if a Red Army man raped or sexually assaulted women as demonstrated by his callousness in this subject when Milovan Djilas complained to the Stalin about the behaviour of Soviet troops

Well since he issued bunch of orders forbidding mistreatment of locals - I guess he did.

[Panzermahn]

This is beyond grotesque. Did you really honestly believe, that there was a chance, that rape was not a crime under Soviet criminal code? You are arguing for the sake of arguing. Here – I’ll humor you: http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/uk136-e.html Criminal code form 1934 articles 153-154

Good try but unfortunately, I like to hear what you are going to say about this:

"Real security was achieved only when the Red Army was garrisoned in barracks building in 1947-48. Even later the Russians took over the whole areas of towns, throwing the inhabitants out on the streets. From mid-1945, however Russians caught raping women were liable to punishment. They might even suffer execution. Some were shot in the act, adding a further trauma to the victim of the sexual assault. A scale of charges was introduced in the summer 1945, with ten days for debauchery and four years for aggravated rape. No German could report the crimes, however. When a group of young Germans prevented a rape by beating up the culprit, they were arrested and charged being Werewolves. It was only in 1949 that Russian soldiers were presented with real deterrent, with ten to fifteen years for simple rape, and ten to twenty for raping a child and for group or aggravated rape.The east Germans had been allowed their own police, but at the beginning these men were armed with nothing more potent than clubss and they were not encouraged to step in when the crime was being committed by a Soviet soldier. They were given a small number of guns in mid-1946"

Giles Macdonough, After the Reich (2007), Life in the Russian Zone, Page 211,

Bold is my emphasis. Now be aware that I am not using Beevor as a source, so you don't have to use the typical anti-Beevor raison d'eitre common with certain forum members from Russian Federation when it comes to discussion about Soviet rapes in Germany and Eastern Europe. My question would be that, if a penal code for Soviet armed forces pre-1939 already has punishment for crimes of rapes to deter its soldiers from comitting this crime, would why the Soviets need to (re)introduce again a bunch of charges in 1945 in order to stop Soviet troops from raping German civilians?

THAT is the difference. There is German a paper trail showing that extermination of Jews was a state policy. There is a Soviet paper trail showing that abusing German civilians was not a Soviet policy

It's absurd to say that having official paper trails indicates that abusing German civilians was not a Soviet policy when agitprop maestros like the Soviet-Jew Ehrenburg were allowed to incite Russians to hate or kill Germans by their sub-level eructations in official Soviet newspapers or propaganda organs.

Also there is a German paper trail showing that German commanders ordered their soldiers to follow international law and to prescribe against arbitrary actions that may lower unit discipline in the Eastern Front

So you admit then that it was not a Soviet policy.

I did not say so. I am saying having a bunch of paper trails doesn't mean that it was encouraged in its spirit to act upon unto it. You have bunch of German paper trails that documented the plans for extermination of Jewish people, but after WW2 there are still Jewish survivors because not all Germans believed in those policies.

Who knows, there is also a possibility having those paper trails maybe a part of Soviet propaganda tactics to present itself to the Russian people as well as to the international community that it was fighting a "just" war and to show itself as a liberator (of women's modesty in the eyes of the rape victims) to the European people

You had not yet explain whether those changes in the so-called Soviet policy towards better treatment of German civilians or POWs are the result of attempts of reducing German stubborness to resist to the very end or if its the basic realisation that it was legally, ethically and morally wrong in the most basic law of humanity

[David Thompson]

Panzermahn -- You asked:

My question would be that, if a penal code for Soviet armed forces pre-1939 already has punishment for crimes of rapes to deter its soldiers from comitting this crime, would why the Soviets need to (re)introduce again a bunch of charges in 1945 in order to stop Soviet troops from raping German civilians?

Probably for the same reason Germany increased its punishment for "defeatist remarks," sabotage, looting and other crimes during the war -- as criminal behavior increased, so did the punishment.

You also remarked:

You had not yet explain whether those changes in the so-called Soviet policy towards better treatment of German civilians or POWs are the result of attempts of reducing German stubborness to resist to the very end or if its the basic realisation that it was legally, ethically and morally wrong in the most basic law of humanity

Since these policy reasons compliment and reinforce each other, it's difficult to see why you are phrasing this common sense proposition with an "or," as though the reasoning is so incompatible that no one could consider both possibilities at once.

[Panzermahn]

You also remarked: You had not yet explain whether those changes in the so-called Soviet policy towards better treatment of German civilians or POWs are the result of attempts of reducing German stubborness to resist to the very end or if its the basic realisation that it was legally, ethically and morally wrong in the most basic law of humanity
Since these policy reasons compliment and reinforce each other, it's difficult to see why you are phrasing this common sense proposition with an "or," as though the reasoning is so incompatible that no one could consider both possibilities at once.

Hi David

You had not yet explain whether those changes in the so-called Soviet policy towards better treatment of German civilians or POWs are the result of attempts of reducing German stubborness to resist to the very end or if its the basic realisation that it was legally, ethically and morally wrong in the most basic law of humanity

I was supposed to have meant that whether the changes in the so-called Soviet policy towards better treatment of German civilians or POWs are because of the results of attempts to reduce German stubborness to resist to the very end or is it because the Soviets finally achieved the basic realisation that mistreating human beings such as raping women are legally wrong, ethically wrong as well as morally wrong in the most basic law of humanity

Sorry for the confusion.

[john h]

David the whole point is were the rapists punished or not and i have not yet seen any evidence to say they did Oleg tells everyone the tribunals and sentences were secret so no one has any proof anything was done with these rapists which brings me to another point i along with other posters in this section have been pulled up by you for not giving full sourses so when Oleg says steps were taken against the rapists and yet cannot bring proof of this to the table is not this hearsay and deserves your intervention

[David Thompson]

Panzermahn -- I understood what you said. My question related to why you would use the disjunctive "or" when the premises of your question are not in opposition.

[uberjude]

Panzermahn, you wrote:

I did not say so. I am saying having a bunch of paper trails doesn't mean that it was encouraged in its spirit to act upon unto it. You have bunch of German paper trails that documented the plans for extermination of Jewish people, but after WW2 there are still Jewish survivors because not all Germans believed in those policies.

No, there are still Jewish survivors because the Allies, and particularly, the Red Army, crushed Germany. Its certainly true that not all Germans believed in those policies, but they played very little role in preventing or ending the extermination.

On the subject of the thread, I haven't read all the posts, but it always seems to me that discussions of the subject generally lack context in that they focus only on the behavior of the Red Army during the war, and not on patterns of behavior by Russian armies in other wars. If, for example, Russian troops had a reputation for rape that preceded the war, it could be argued that while what happened in Germany was on a much greater magnitude, it was in keeping with Russian army behavior in the past, and it's magnitude can be explained by the greater magnitude of the war.

The fact is that, certainly in the Boxer Rebellion, Russian soldiers were notorious as rapists; I don't know that anyone ever suggested that this was ordered by the authorities. the fact is also that Russian soldiers in WWII raped a lot of non-German women as well. It seems that what took place in Germany was on the extreme end of a spectrum, but hardly warrants the charge that this was ordered from above, or that this had been planned in advance. If it had been planned, you would think the soldiers would have been given orders not to rape non-German women who had been liberated from concentration camps.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

David the whole point is were the rapists punished or not and i have not yet seen any evidence to say they did Oleg tells everyone the tribunals and sentences were secret so no one has any proof anything was done with these rapists which brings me to another point i along with other posters in this section have been pulled up by you for not giving full sourses so when Oleg says steps were taken against the rapists and yet cannot bring proof of this to the table is not this hearsay and deserves your intervention

I gave you the reports of military prosecutor to his superiors that discusses specific cases and sentences given -how is that not a prove?

[David Thompson]

john h – You wrote:

David the whole point is were the rapists punished or not and i have not yet seen any evidence to say they did Oleg tells everyone the tribunals and sentences were secret so no one has any proof anything was done with these rapists which brings me to another point i along with other posters in this section have been pulled up by you for not giving full sourses so when Oleg says steps were taken against the rapists and yet cannot bring proof of this to the table is not this hearsay and deserves your intervention

I'll break this paragraph down into parts to answer it:

(1)

David the whole point is were the rapists punished or not and i have not yet seen any evidence to say they did

You may have missed the references, but at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 1#p1535401 I quoted from Yaroslav's post earlier in the thread (p. 9) at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 0#p1345400:

in the first months of 1945 for the abuses against the local population had been convicted by military tribunals for more than 4 thousand officers and a large number of rows [ranks]. Several pilot trials ended in the death penalty.

The pages you cited to in Norman Naimark's The Russians in Germany: The Soviet Zone of Occupation (pp. 79 and 92) are reproduced at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 9#p1535389. On those pages Mr. Naimark says that rapists were punished, though the imposition of punishment was spotty and often depended on the unit commanders.

(2)

Oleg tells everyone the tribunals and sentences were secret so no one has any proof anything was done with these rapists

(a) What is the practice in your own country with trials of British soldiers on rape charges in occupied countries, john h?

(b) If you were asked to prove that "anything was done" with accused British military rapists, how would you do it?

(c) Do you not find the basic premise of such a question absurd and insulting? I do, and I'm not British.

(3)

i along with other posters in this section have been pulled up by you for not giving full sourses

This generally applies to claims of fact which aren't common knowledge and cannot be confirmed by a simple Google search within a few minutes. The reason is that the forum's purpose is to provide factual data about historical questions, rather than serve as a bulletin board for posters' notions. Opinions or suppositions which aren't supported by references generally aren't useful for this purpose. See the forum and section rules at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=53962

(4)

so when Oleg says steps were taken against the rapists and yet cannot bring proof of this to the table is not this hearsay

(a) Your initial premise is mistaken. As I have pointed out, there are several references in this thread to steps taken against rapists by Soviet authorities in 1945. Here's another:

In January 1945, on the assumption of the Red Army in Germany in East Prussia and Silesia, the Soviet command had taken serious measures to prevent the mass violence against civilians. January 19, 1945 he was the supreme commander of the signed order on the avoidance of ill-treatment of the local population, which was communicated to all personnel. The relevant orders of the subordinate parts and components have been given to the Military Council of fronts, the commanders of armies, commanders of divisions, etc. For example, the Order of the Military Council of the Belarusian-2 Front (commander Marshal KK Rokossovsky) were required to shoot looters and rapists to crime scene.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 1#p1535401

Furthermore, the source you quoted (Mr. Naimark) references such steps, so it's difficult to understand why you are ignoring it and the previous posts which mention them.

(b) Hearsay has a definition which you can see at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay. All secondary histories, such as the one you quoted, are hearsay. The salient question in history, however, is not whether the statement is "admissible," but whether the statement is accurate.

(5)

is not this hearsay and deserves your intervention

No, since there are already several sources on the subject quoted in this thread which support his factual claim, including your own source.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

Good try but unfortunately, I like to hear what you are going to say about this.

Good try what ? You asked me a question and I gave you the answer. And if you have read the url given to you or even the quote I provided you would have seen that time allowed for the rape were between 5 and 8 years . You quote speaks of 10 and 15 –meaning it was not “reintroduced” – it was made more severe.

It's absurd to say that having official paper trails indicates that abusing German civilians was not a Soviet policy when agitprop maestros like the Soviet-Jew Ehrenburg were allowed to incite Russians to hate or kill Germans by their sub-level eructations in official Soviet newspapers or propaganda organs.

Also there is a German paper trail showing that German commanders ordered their soldiers to follow international law and to prescribe against arbitrary actions that may lower unit discipline in the Eastern Front

Nor it was not - “kill the German was discussed here a million times”. Nice emphases on Jew factor though. Would you feel better if he was an Eskimo? There is no German paper trail promising punishment for execution of Jews -because it was a state policy. So give it up –your analogy is false.

I did not say so. I am saying having a bunch of paper trails doesn't mean that it was encouraged in its spirit to act upon unto it. You have bunch of German paper trails that documented the plans for extermination of Jewish people, but after WW2 there are still Jewish survivors because not all Germans believed in those policies.

More like we did not had enough time to finish it up. But there innumerable evidence showing that it was a state policy. People who tried to do something about it were exception to the rule.

Who knows, there is also a possibility having those paper trails maybe a part of Soviet propaganda tactics to present itself to the Russian people as well as to the international community that it was fighting a "just" war and to show itself as a liberator (of women's modesty in the eyes of the rape victims) to the European people

Well your certainly don’t – if you did you would bring the proof a long time ago.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

I don't know about British practice but here http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... r#p1361035 are quotes from the book that talks about German cases. The author does not use actual names or places and is also rather general with dates.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

Panzermahn, you wrote:

I did not say so. I am saying having a bunch of paper trails doesn't mean that it was encouraged in its spirit to act upon unto it. You have bunch of German paper trails that documented the plans for extermination of Jewish people, but after WW2 there are still Jewish survivors because not all Germans believed in those policies.

No, there are still Jewish survivors because the Allies, and particularly, the Red Army, crushed Germany. Its certainly true that not all Germans believed in those policies, but they played very little role in preventing or ending the extermination.

On the subject of the thread, I haven't read all the posts, but it always seems to me that discussions of the subject generally lack context in that they focus only on the behavior of the Red Army during the war, and not on patterns of behavior by Russian armies in other wars. If, for example, Russian troops had a reputation for rape that preceded the war, it could be argued that while what happened in Germany was on a much greater magnitude, it was in keeping with Russian army behavior in the past, and it's magnitude can be explained by the greater magnitude of the war.

The fact is that, certainly in the Boxer Rebellion, Russian soldiers were notorious as rapists; I don't know that anyone ever suggested that this was ordered by the authorities. the fact is also that Russian soldiers in WWII raped a lot of non-German women as well. It seems that what took place in Germany was on the extreme end of a spectrum, but hardly warrants the charge that this was ordered from above, or that this had been planned in advance. If it had been planned, you would think the soldiers would have been given orders not to rape non-German women who had been liberated from concentration camps.

Know how? Who brought it forward exactly? French army was knowing for raping and looting in Russia both during 1812 (hence the wide spread partisan movement) and during the Crimean war – most notably during the sack of Kerch. Russian authors attributed the later to French inability to shift their mentality from dealing with Africans during the colonial wars. Be it as it may during WW I there the same kind of stories circulating about Russian Army by German propaganda. After the war however the same Germans admitted that it was a fiction.

Comparisons

All important question remains to be answered before the mental worlds of the German soldiers and French and Belgian civilians in 1914 can be examfined. Did other armies during the early part of the war commit comparable violence against civilians, or was German behaviour in the west unique? There are four potential comparisons: first, the Russian invasion of East Prussia in August-early September 1914; second, the subsequent German invasion of the north-western fringe of the Russian Empire (Poland and Lithuania); third, the Russian invasion of Galicia and the Bukovina, in Austria-Hungary, in autumn 1914, followed by the Russian retreat in spring and summer 1915; and finally, the failed Austro-Hungarian invasions of Serbia in August-September and November 1914. Next. to the German invasion of Belgium and France, these invasions produced the main occasions for violence between soldiers and enemy civilians."
Lurid atrocity tales emerged in all four theatres of war which told not only of widespread pillage, physical destruction, and rape by invading soldiers butt of mutilation and Murder by civilians as well. The army and public in Germany were stunned by the rapid Russian mobilization and invasion of East Prussia. "The Cossacks are coming' was the catchword of widespread panic, motivating the German Social Democrats to vote for war credits and impelling a large part of the East Prussian population to flee. By mid-August 1914, stories circulated in the German army and then in Germany at large, of women being raped, mutilated, or murdered by Russian troops."" In Galicia and the Bukovina, from autumn 1914 to summer 1915, stories abounded of rape and brutality by Russian troops, especially Cossacks, and of pogroms against the Jewish population. In Serbia and Bosnia, Serb civilians were held to be mutilating captured Austro-Hungarian soldiers, and Austro-Hungarians to be raping Serb women and decimating whole villages. Intense images of enemy atrociousness accompanied the invasions in eastern Europe as in the west.
Evidence of real civilian resistance and military brutality, however, varied considerably. The German government, in a report published in March 1915, charged the Russians with practising `indisputably barbarous' methods of warfare in Last Prussia, including the spoliation of towns and villages, the murder of `thousands' (including young men of military service age), mass deportation, rape, and mutilation."' But such accusations must be treated with caution. Although in some cases corroborated details were given, in many the evidence was weak; for example, no Russian army units were named. This makes the report's estimate that only 101 civilians were killed during the invasion of East Prussia, in a campaign of the same duration as that of Belgium and the Marne, all the more remarkable. There were two `major incidents', as defined above, at Santoppen, where 19 civilians were executed on 28 August, and at Christiankehmen on 1 1 September, with 14 civilian fatalities."
A more nuanced account emerges from an unpublished collection of reports and diary extracts made with the intention of writing a history of East Prussia during the war. This reveals a varied pattern of Russian army conduct, and also helps explain the motivation for violence. Certainly the Russian troops often had to requisition supplies and this, as elsewhere, led to plunder and destruction, and sometimes casual violence against civilians. "The Russians claimed that they had been fired upon in a number of localities, such as Jusmen (Pillkallen district) on 9 August, where Russian cavalry shot six inhabitants, or Neidenberg on 22 August.11" According to a report to the Ministry of the Interior by the provincial governor of Gumbinnen, where a major battle was fought, there had been numerous cases in which the enemy has burned down farmhouses used by German patrols as shelter and from which they had fired. In most cases the Russians then accused German civilians of unauthorized use of weapons in order to justify their incendiarism. 'The arson committed in the villages GroB and Klein Daguthelen and BartschkUhnen on 17 August had its origins in this cause.'"

The Russians thus appear to have shared the German idea of the illegitirnacy of civilian participation in combat. In fact, the evidence for such resistance on any serious scale is even weaker for East Prussia than for Belgium and northern France. But the Russians seldom intentionally killed civilians in response. Even where there was a civilian militia which they considered illegal, reprisals against civilians did not ensue. Although much remains to be established about the East Prussian campaign, systematic violence against German civilians was not a major constituent of Russian behaviour, even though the same potential for it existed as in the German army's invasion of France and Belgium.
By and large the Russian troops in East Prussia respected international law and the laws of war, as a commission of the Reich Office for Internal Affairs concluded after the recovery of East Prussia. It reported that `Russian atrocities have [...] turned out to have been grossly exaggerated.' The commission
has found that the descriptions of Russian cruelties and the reported devastation of the country are based on falsehood. It is reported that the Russian troops have behaved correctly everywhere towards the inhabitants. If individual towns and villages were burned down, this occurred almost without exception during artillery battles, in some cases also because German patrols fired from houses and the Russians assumed that the civilian inhabitants were involved in the shooting.


This view was shared by no less a person than Erich Ludendorff, who after playing a leading role in the assault on Liege city, was given command with Hindenburg of the East Prussian campaign and masterminded the victory of Tannenberg (26 to 31 August). Ludendorff wrote in 1919 that, lie had been appalled by the Belgian francs-tireurs and the way in which `the Belgian government had systematically organized civilian warfare', whereas by contrast he found that `many of the Russian troops behaved in exemplary manner in East Prussia.' He attributed the `harshness and terror' that undoubtedly did take place to Cossack indiscipline rather than to military policy`" For all the destruction caused by the invasion, the `harrowing' of East Prussia by the Russians appears to be a myth."

German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial by Associate Prof. John Horne, Dr. Alan Kramer, and Alan Kramer

[uberjude]

Oleg, I certainly didn't mean to imply that Russians were unique in this capacity, and the source form which I got my info also cited the French. The book was Diana Preston's The Boxer Rebellion http://books.google.com/books?id=iWxKQe ... &q&f=false

Many of the pages in the chapter are unavailable but on 284, there's a fairly explicit reference to Russian (and other) soldiers engaging in rape on a wide scale.

"Women and girls by the hundreds have committed suicide to escape a worse fate at the hands of Russian and Japanese brutes..."

take out the Japanese, and this would seem to fit in fairly well with descriptions of Russian behavior in Germany. And yet I've yet to see it argued that the rape of Chinese women in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion was the result of anything other than undisciplined soldiers acting criminally. The point is that if similar behaviors are taking place in China as in Germany, it's a lot harder to argue that in the latter case, Russian soldiers were uniquely whipped into an anti-German frenzy.

[john h]

David i apologise if i have upset anyone with the questions i have asked but to answer the questions you put to me there is no transcripts anywhere that i can find of charges brought against british soldiers for rape in ww11 i am not niave enough to think none did it but shall we say none got caught there is plenty of transcripts on french and american trials for rape and as you will know it is well documented about the hangings at shepton mallet the problem i have is our trials are well documented Oleg and yourself will tell me names put to military tribunals and the sentence steps were taken the big difference is our trials are transparent and open to public scrutiny i am sorry but before i call something murder i need to see a body i cannot believe anything was done against russian rapists until i see the trial transcripts and the only answer i have had over the last three days is it was made secret and not open to anyone now i ask you David as an intelligent and fair moderator if these soldiers were put before a military tribunal by there own officers for the crimes they are charged with wouldnt you as an intelligent man have thought they would have made public at least the sentences just to stop people like me raising the question this is begining to sound like the Kennedy assasination lock the answer up for god knows how many years Source OLIVER STONE sorry david finishing on a light note