Atrocity on the Atlantic by Nate Hendley

Author:Nate Hendley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press

Chapter Six Disappearing from Memory

The German Supreme Court in Leipzig held two more war crimes trials after ruling on the Llandovery Castle case. Both trials featured figures from the Allies’ abbreviated list of war criminals.

Dr. Oskar Michelsohn, accused by France of causing hundreds of deaths in a prisoner of war camp by deliberately withholding medical assistance, went on trial in June 1922. Over a dozen French witnesses were ready to testify, but they never got the chance. The French government ignored the trial, convinced it was impossible to achieve true justice at the proceedings in Leipzig. The only witnesses who testified spoke for the defence, and Dr. Michelsohn was acquitted in July.

In November 1922, the German Supreme Court met to ponder the fate of a German soldier named Karl Gruner, who was charged with theft and plunder. Gruner was acquitted of theft but convicted of plunder and sentenced to two years in jail. A month after presiding over the Gruner trial, the German Supreme Court dropped nearly one hundred additional cases from the broader Allied war-criminals list. The court claimed there wasn’t enough evidence to prove these figures broke German law. It was a clear signal that Germany considered the war crimes trials to be over.

While Great Britain’s response to the end of the trials was muted, authorities in France and Belgium were outraged — an understandable reaction given that most of the fighting on the Western Front took place in these countries. France and Belgium launched their own judicial proceedings against German officials, as was their right under the Treaty of Versailles. These trials took place in France and Belgium in absentia (that is, without a defendant present). Since the Allies didn’t fully occupy Germany, defendants couldn’t be tried in-person without German cooperation, which wasn’t forthcoming. France conducted hundreds of symbolic prosecutions while Belgium held about eighty proceedings. Multiple convictions were obtained, but the sentencing was meaningless since none of the defendants were in the courts. This alternative system of justice petered out in 1926, as former enemy nations tried to normalize relations.

The German public remained indignant about the supposed injustice of the Leipzig War Crimes Trials. After the trials concluded, judicial authorities in Germany suspended hundreds of cases against other accused German war criminals. In July 1926, German defence lawyers asked the Supreme Court to reopen proceedings against Ludwig Dithmar and John Boldt. The two lieutenants might have escaped from jail, but both were still convicted criminals — a status their supporters wanted to rectify. A hearing was held, and in May 1928, the lieutenants were acquitted — a foregone conclusion given Germany’s efforts to gloss over its recent past.

While he was never put on trial, U-86 Commander Helmut Patzig also benefited from the push for leniency. On July 19, 1926, Patzig’s arrest warrant was suspended by the Reichsgericht.

The postwar political climate in Germany “produced a groundswell of nationalist sentiment. Patzig no longer had to fear extradition or a lengthy prison sentence if he were to stand trial in Leipzig.

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