The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945
Encyclopedia
The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 is a book
by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
. It was published in November 1979 in Germany
by Universitas/Langen Müller under the title Die Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle, and in America in 1989 under the title The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 (University of Nebraska Press). Professor Howard S. Levie
, an expert in international humanitarian law, provided the preface for the American version. The book describes some of the work of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, a special section of the legal department of the Wehrmacht High Command, which collected reports of alleged Allied and German war crimes for purposes of diplomatic protests, war crimes trials, and white books.
. Examples include the murder of Ukrainians in Lviv
by the NKVD
in 1941, the murder of Polish prisoners of war at Katyn
in 1940, executions of German prisoners of war by French irregulars in 1944, and the sinking of the German hospital ship Tübingen by the RAF in 1944. De Zayas was the first researcher to evaluate the extant 226 volumes; about half of the total records, the rest apparently having been burned in Langensalza, Germany, near the end of the war (de Zayas; pp. xiii-xiv). These records, captured by the US Army in May 1945, had been classified documents in the United States for several decades, and had been returned by the US National Archives to the German Bundesarchiv in 1975.
De Zayas was head of a special unit specialising in international humanitarian law, the "Arbeitsgruppe Kriegsvölkerrecht", at the Institute of International Law at the University of Göttingen. Together with a Dutch colleague from the University of Amsterdam, Walter Rabus, he undertook the evaluation of the recently declassified records, as well as related records of the Wehrmachtführungsstab, Fremde Heere Ost, and Kriegstagebücher (war diaries of army units). The project was financed by the University of Göttingen and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Between 1975-1979, the project involved the interviews of hundreds of witnesses who had given testimony before the German military judges in 1939-45, and more than a hundred of the judges who had been involved in the investigations. Two international conferences were held to discuss the project, one at the Institute of International Law in Göttingen, and the other at the Institute of International law at the University of Cologne
. attended by international experts, the Director of the German Bundesarchiv, witnesses, and judges.
The result of the research was a 520-page book in German
, consisting of two parts: a history of the bureau, its members, working methods, etc.; and a second part, consisting of case studies. It became the subject of a television documentary by the ARD
/WDR
in Germany, the broadcast receiving the largest number of viewers on 18 March and 21 March 1983. The 384-page English edition of the book was translated by de Zayas and published by the University of Nebraska Press in November 1989. De Zayas gave a series of guest lectures on the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau at universities in Germany
, the Netherlands
, and the United Kingdom
, including the German Historical Institute
in London
. The German version of the book was heavily criticised by the media of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The book has remained in print for over thirty years and reached the 7th revised edition in Germany and the 4th revised edition in the United States (with Picton Press in Rockland, Maine
).
Professor Howard Levie noted in the preface: "The research for this book, which extended over a number of years, included the review of several hundred volumes of official records of the investigations of war crimes by the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, the existence of which was hitherto unknown to researchers, the review of other original documents (including many in Russian, one of the author's several languages) and hundreds of interviews and correspondence with Germans who were involved in various capacities in the Bureau and in various aspects of those investigations by or on behalf of the Bureau during the course of World War II, as well as with witnesses to the events described ...It can be said without fear of contradiction that this book opens a new dimension in the study of the war crimes committed during World War II. It should generate much discussion and encourage other students of that period to further research, not only into the legal and historical, but also into the sociological and psychological aspects of this facet of that conflict."
, the Soviet Union and elsewhere, about half of the archival records of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau are missing, according to de Zayas, and those extant files concern primarily Soviet war crimes.
De Zayas lectured at All Souls' College Oxford on 17 May 1990 on the Wehrmacht Bureau and published a summary article on the book.
As a follow-up to this book de Zayas published "Völkermord als Staatsgeheimnis" (genocide as state secret), which looks into the question of who knew what, and when, about the Holocaust. As he explains in the new book (and already suggested in "Wehrmacht"), Hitler's Order Nr. 1 of 11 January 1940 imposed secrecy under severe penalties, thus making the passing of information dangerous and the carrying out of investigations practically impossible. Thus, in spite of rumours and occasional BBC broadcasts since 1942, a relatively small percentage of soldiers and civilians were confronted with the reality of the Holocaust during the war. It was not until the Russians overran the camps in the East that the horror became evident, which was then proven in the Nuremberg trials. This book is yet to be published in English.
, Benjamin B. Ferencz
, an American prosecutor at Nuremberg
wrote:
A review by Professor Christopher Greenwood
in the Cambridge Law Journal notes:
Concerning the methodology of this book, Professor Riedlsperger wrote:
The book was positively reviewed in the German Press, including in the Historische Zeitschrift, in the leading weekly DIE ZEIT and in the SPIEGEL.
In the Preface to the first German edition of the book, the Director of the Institute of International Law of the University of Göttingen, Professor Dr. Dietrich Rauschning (subsequently a judge in the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton Accords) wrote about the close supervision of the project by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the experts of the five principal archives where the research was conducted, and about the distance and care taken by de Zayas and the members of his team in evaluating the records of the Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle. See final report to the Deutsche Forschunggemeinschaft, dated September 1979.
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas is an American lawyer, writer, historian, a leading expert in the field of human rights, as well as a former high-ranking United Nations official...
. It was published in November 1979 in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
by Universitas/Langen Müller under the title Die Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle, and in America in 1989 under the title The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 (University of Nebraska Press). Professor Howard S. Levie
Howard S. Levie
Howard S. Levie, , was one of America's foremost legal experts on the law of war and the key draftsman of the Korean Armistice Agreement.-Early life and education:...
, an expert in international humanitarian law, provided the preface for the American version. The book describes some of the work of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, a special section of the legal department of the Wehrmacht High Command, which collected reports of alleged Allied and German war crimes for purposes of diplomatic protests, war crimes trials, and white books.
Research and authorship
The book examines the records of the work of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, a body set up to collect evidence of war crimes committed by both the Allies and the Wehrmacht in World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Examples include the murder of Ukrainians in Lviv
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
in 1941, the murder of Polish prisoners of war at Katyn
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...
in 1940, executions of German prisoners of war by French irregulars in 1944, and the sinking of the German hospital ship Tübingen by the RAF in 1944. De Zayas was the first researcher to evaluate the extant 226 volumes; about half of the total records, the rest apparently having been burned in Langensalza, Germany, near the end of the war (de Zayas; pp. xiii-xiv). These records, captured by the US Army in May 1945, had been classified documents in the United States for several decades, and had been returned by the US National Archives to the German Bundesarchiv in 1975.
De Zayas was head of a special unit specialising in international humanitarian law, the "Arbeitsgruppe Kriegsvölkerrecht", at the Institute of International Law at the University of Göttingen. Together with a Dutch colleague from the University of Amsterdam, Walter Rabus, he undertook the evaluation of the recently declassified records, as well as related records of the Wehrmachtführungsstab, Fremde Heere Ost, and Kriegstagebücher (war diaries of army units). The project was financed by the University of Göttingen and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Between 1975-1979, the project involved the interviews of hundreds of witnesses who had given testimony before the German military judges in 1939-45, and more than a hundred of the judges who had been involved in the investigations. Two international conferences were held to discuss the project, one at the Institute of International Law in Göttingen, and the other at the Institute of International law at the University of Cologne
University of Cologne
The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...
. attended by international experts, the Director of the German Bundesarchiv, witnesses, and judges.
The result of the research was a 520-page book in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, consisting of two parts: a history of the bureau, its members, working methods, etc.; and a second part, consisting of case studies. It became the subject of a television documentary by the ARD
ARD (broadcaster)
ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...
/WDR
Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Westdeutscher Rundfunk is a German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a constituent member of the consortium of German public-broadcasting institutions, ARD...
in Germany, the broadcast receiving the largest number of viewers on 18 March and 21 March 1983. The 384-page English edition of the book was translated by de Zayas and published by the University of Nebraska Press in November 1989. De Zayas gave a series of guest lectures on the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau at universities in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, including the German Historical Institute
German Historical Institute
German Historical Institute are five independent academic research institutes situated in Rome, London, Washington, D.C., Warsaw and Moscow, dedicated to the study of historical relations between Germany and the host countries in which they are based, along with four other institutions, in Paris,...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The German version of the book was heavily criticised by the media of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The book has remained in print for over thirty years and reached the 7th revised edition in Germany and the 4th revised edition in the United States (with Picton Press in Rockland, Maine
Rockland, Maine
Rockland is a city in Knox County, Maine, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 7,297. It is the county seat of Knox County. The city is a popular tourist destination...
).
Analysis
The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 is the first scholarly book on Allied war crimes (primarily Soviet) during World War II.Professor Howard Levie noted in the preface: "The research for this book, which extended over a number of years, included the review of several hundred volumes of official records of the investigations of war crimes by the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, the existence of which was hitherto unknown to researchers, the review of other original documents (including many in Russian, one of the author's several languages) and hundreds of interviews and correspondence with Germans who were involved in various capacities in the Bureau and in various aspects of those investigations by or on behalf of the Bureau during the course of World War II, as well as with witnesses to the events described ...It can be said without fear of contradiction that this book opens a new dimension in the study of the war crimes committed during World War II. It should generate much discussion and encourage other students of that period to further research, not only into the legal and historical, but also into the sociological and psychological aspects of this facet of that conflict."
Aftermath
In the 1990s, the book became controversial in the context of a debate on war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht. While the book mentions investigations of German war crimes in PolandWorld War II atrocities in Poland
Approximately six million Polish citizens, divided nearly equally between non-Jewish and Jewish, perished during World War II. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and their allies. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, three categories were established. These categories...
, the Soviet Union and elsewhere, about half of the archival records of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau are missing, according to de Zayas, and those extant files concern primarily Soviet war crimes.
De Zayas lectured at All Souls' College Oxford on 17 May 1990 on the Wehrmacht Bureau and published a summary article on the book.
As a follow-up to this book de Zayas published "Völkermord als Staatsgeheimnis" (genocide as state secret), which looks into the question of who knew what, and when, about the Holocaust. As he explains in the new book (and already suggested in "Wehrmacht"), Hitler's Order Nr. 1 of 11 January 1940 imposed secrecy under severe penalties, thus making the passing of information dangerous and the carrying out of investigations practically impossible. Thus, in spite of rumours and occasional BBC broadcasts since 1942, a relatively small percentage of soldiers and civilians were confronted with the reality of the Holocaust during the war. It was not until the Russians overran the camps in the East that the horror became evident, which was then proven in the Nuremberg trials. This book is yet to be published in English.
Reviews
In his review in the American Journal of International LawAmerican Journal of International Law
The American Journal of International Law is an English-language scholarly journal focusing on international law and international relations...
, Benjamin B. Ferencz
Benjamin B. Ferencz
Benjamin Berell' Ferencz is a Romanian-born American lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the twelve military trials held by the U.S. authorities at Nuremberg, Germany...
, an American prosecutor at Nuremberg
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
wrote:
A review by Professor Christopher Greenwood
Christopher Greenwood
Sir Christopher John Greenwood CMG QC is a duly elected member of the International Court of Justice. He is a barrister and professor of international law at the London School of Economics...
in the Cambridge Law Journal notes:
Concerning the methodology of this book, Professor Riedlsperger wrote:
The book was positively reviewed in the German Press, including in the Historische Zeitschrift, in the leading weekly DIE ZEIT and in the SPIEGEL.
In the Preface to the first German edition of the book, the Director of the Institute of International Law of the University of Göttingen, Professor Dr. Dietrich Rauschning (subsequently a judge in the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton Accords) wrote about the close supervision of the project by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the experts of the five principal archives where the research was conducted, and about the distance and care taken by de Zayas and the members of his team in evaluating the records of the Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle. See final report to the Deutsche Forschunggemeinschaft, dated September 1979.
Acknowledgements
The book is mentioned in James J. Weingartner, "Americans, Germans, and War Crimes: Converging Narratives from "the Good War"" in The Journal of American History Vol. 94 No. 4 March 2008, pps. 1164-1183.External links
- http://www.pictonpress.com/store/show/896
- http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14318865.html
- http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=4873040