Sex Crimes under the Wehrmacht

8. Child Molestation and Incest

CHAPTER EIGHT Child Molestation and Incest The Central Documentation Agency’s Eastern Collection contains relatively few case files for processes against individuals molesting children. Therefore, the case files for this chapter were supplemented with child molestation cases handled by air force courts (also contained in the Eastern Collection). The Eastern Collection contains an even smaller number of case files related to incest, so they are analyzed here alongside child molestation cases.1 Only a few individuals in these cases committed crimes against foreign nationals, so it is not possible to analyze the case files on a national basis. Few commonalities in jurisprudence emerge in these case files. However , the documents contain far too many examples of class bias, caste consciousness, and paternalism from the jurists to be ignored. Especially in cases of child molestation, the courts scrutinized the behavior and reputation of the victims and their families in an obvious effort to justify lesser penalties for the perpetrators.2 Molested children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds sometimes received the courts’ sympathies , but they just as often received the court members’ disdain. Sentencing practices, however, varied considerably. Nearly identical crimes committed by individuals with similar records and backgrounds often resulted in widely disparate punishments. Incest Although it is difficult to assess the significance of children in Nazi ideology, there can be little doubt that incest would have been regarded as an exceptional threat to racial purity. In the case file sample , thirty-six individuals were convicted for child molestation, while twelve were convicted for incest. Seven of the twelve individuals convicted for incest had molested a stepchild or legal ward, while only five individuals had had sexual contact with a blood relative. The average prison sentence for an incestuous relationship with a blood relative was approximately 8.25 months. The average prison sentence for nonincestuous child molestation came to sixteen months. The one 170 PA R T I I penal servitude sentence imposed for incest between blood relatives was eighteen months, while the courts handed down penal servitude sentences of 22.5 months, on average, for child molestation. With such a small sample of incest cases, no definite conclusions can be drawn from these statistics. They do, however, suggest the potential for considerable discrepancies in punishments imposed for these two offenses, and at least raise an interesting question. Given the Nazi emphasis on racial purity, it seems significant that the average punishment for incest, even in this smallest of samples, would be so much lower than the average sentence for simple cases of child molestation . If the jurists had exploited their position to conduct societal purification, would they not have considered incest a serious threat to racial purity and therefore dealt with it ruthlessly? Again, the sample is small, but the case files tell a rather interesting story. The court that appeared most outraged by an incestuous relationship, lashing out at the defendant in a long diatribe, imposed the lightest punishment handed down by any court for either child molestation or incest in the sample. The case of Hans L. therefore deserves special scrutiny. Hans L. The Court of the Air Defense Commander–Crete in March 1942 sentenced Nazi Party Motor Corpsman Hans L. to three months’ imprisonment for having intercourse with his teenage sister on several occasions . She gave birth to his child in December 1941. According to the defendant, he could not find a suitable partner in his village and was simply overcome by an “irresistible urge” (unwiderstehlichen Trieb). The Gerichtsherr confirmed the verdict and ordered the punishment completed.3 The court, citing Hans L.’s young age, good conduct, open confession , and clean record, granted mitigating circumstances.4 However, the court also berated the defendant, stating, “To the disfavor of the defendant must be considered his grievous violation of the racial laws raised by National Socialism to a fundamental principle of the state.” The court continued: Because the defendant, as a member of the Hitler Youth, knew fully that children produced by the sexual union of such close relatives as they C H I L D M O L E S TAT I O N A N D I N C E S T 171 represent as brother and sister receive almost always only the bad genes, and later as a consequence of mental and physical hereditary defects that make them incapable of work, these children do not represent useful members...