Sex Crimes under the Wehrmacht

11. Conclusion

CHAPTER ELEVEN Conclusion According to Lothar Walmrath, continuity existed in the sentencing practices of naval courts during the interwar period, yet they changed markedly after September 1939. In other words, Walmrath found little change in jurisprudence between Weimar and Nazi Germany up until the war’s outbreak, but he did find drastic intensification of punishments after the war began.1 This change, of course, was not accidental, and the watershed in jurisprudence had little to do with Nazi ideology. The draconian nature of Wehrmachtjustiz, in fact, had been consciously planned well in advance of the Second World War. When Germany again took a stab at world domination in 1939, “decisive measures” had already been taken to prevent a repetition of the revolutionary events of 1918.2 The Wehrmacht was determined that this time around the military administration of justice would be swift, severe, and equal to the demands of total war. Under the mantra of maintaining Manneszucht, commanding officers, with the aid of their jurists, ruthlessly purged those soldiers who obstructed the war effort. The Wehrgemeinschaft, the Wehrmacht’s answer to total war, had to be maintained in order to avoid another stab in the back. Scholars also agree that the intensification of punishments that began in September 1939 continued as the war progressed, with rapidly escalating severity after 1943 when the war turned against Germany. National Socialism provided an environment for the radicalization of all institutions and practices, yet the wartime intensification of Wehrmachtjustiz was a reaction to the war situation and remained relatively independent of the accompanying fascist circumstances. It was not just the unprecedented number of death and penal servitude sentences that made Wehrmachtjustiz such a draconian tool for the war’s prosecution. The associated penal and parole system, the means of carrying out the punishments, also was as a central factor in making Wehrmachtjustiz so brutal. The system of front-parole, which exposed soldiers to enemy fire for the duration, and the special penal 232 C O N C L U S I O N formations, which employed prisoners for the most dangerous assignments , contributed greatly to the military judicial system’s harshness and the Wehrmacht’s reduction of men to human matériel. Many Nazi fanatics undoubtedly entered the military judiciary and sat on the bench, using the courts as a forum for their National Socialist views. Many probably also hoped to implement the führer’s will through the courts-martial. This, however, is neither surprising nor out of place in the chaotic Third Reich, where all institutions swelled with fanatics who attempted to create their own satrapies for the promotion of party (or their own personal) interests. Yet there were too many countervailing forces, primarily the institution of the Gerichtsherr, for fanatics to dispense their own ideological brand of justice. The Gerichtsherren, despite critics’ protestations to the contrary, controlled and indeed dominated the military judicial and penal system. As the individuals responsible for their units’ cohesion , discipline, and military effectiveness, the Gerichtsherren took their legal power as an instrument of command authority very seriously . Harnessing the “law” to serve immediate military interests, the Gerichtsherren sacrificed the needs of the Volksgemeinschaft in favor of the needs of the Wehrgemeinschaft. In doing so, they fielded an effective force of motivated fighters despite a rapidly deteriorating military situation. The willingness of these commanders to sacrifice thousands of deserters in pursuit of this goal is not being challenged here. As Ulrich Vultejus has pointed out, the execution of soldiers for military organizations is “unproblematic.” If the Wehrmacht executed 13,500 servicemen out of an average effective strength of five million men, he explains, the total sacrificed amounted to only 0.27 percent. From a military perspective, the death sentence is the ideal punishment, according to Vultejus, because it provides the greatest possible deterrent with “unusual economy.”3 Indeed, based on the German military’s perceived lessons of the First World War and the Wehrmacht’s perception of the total war that it had unleashed, the commanders and the courts subordinated to them went to any length to purge individuals who obstructed the war’s prosecution. Designed and implemented by right-wing elites, the military administration of justice and its associated penal institu- C O N C L U S I O N 233 tions under Hitler concerned themselves largely with three questions: Will this individual carry a weapon...