Transcript Formation of Collective Memories in Post-war

Defining Criminals and
Constructing Memories
Sentenced Nazi war criminals in West Germany
1945 - 1970
Susanne Karstedt
Professor of Criminology
University of Leeds
©2010
Collective memories
in post-authoritarian societies
• Collective amnesia
• Divided memories
• Suppressed memories vs. open and public
memories
• Individual vs. collective memories (group,
nation)
• Formal and official transmission vs. informal
transmission
• Myths vs. Truths
Collective Memories in Post-war Europe
‘without … collective amnesia
Europe’s astonishing post-war
recovery would not have been
possible ’
Tony Judt (2005: 61)
Collective memories in post-authoritarian
societies : Whose are they?
Predominantly the voices of the defended - the
victims:
• Testimonies in courts and tribunals
• Testimonies in TRCs
• Narratives, stories, biographies
Stream of public consciousness and memories
Collective memories in post-authoritarian
societies : Whose are they?
Voices of the defeated – the perpetrators
• giving evidence
• Expressing guilt and remorse
• Less visible in public
• Mostly muted
• Restricted to their own communities and
networks
• Subterranean, non-public
Undercurrent of social (group and networkrelated) and individual memories
Voices from the perpetrators
“My critics may have the
chronicle, but history belongs
to me, and that is where the
final verdict will be decided.”
Former Argentina junta
commander Emilio
Massera
Voices from the perpetrators
““History is only
an opinion.”
Defence counsel in the
Touvier trial in France,
commenting on the
testimony of a historian
Formation of Collective Memories
in Post-war Germany
Characteristics of Post-war international/
transitional justice in Germany
• Nearly no victims present and hardly any voices
heard
• Nuremberg Trials were based on documents and
evidence from perpetrators
• Crimes were defined mostly as war crimes and
less frequently as crimes against humanity
• Trials by national courts/ tribunals outside
Germany and Allied courts/ tribunals in Germany
Formation of Collective Memories
in Post-war Germany
Characteristics of Public Opinion in Post-war
Germany
• Continuing dis-allegiance from Nazi leadership
• Vicarious revenge on own leadership in
Nuremberg Trials
• War crimes become the defining element of
the crimes against humanities and the
genocide
Formation of Normative Climate
in Post-war Germany
Characteristics of Public Opinion in Post-war
Germany
• Majority in favour of continuing prosecution of
war criminals, but strong support for closing the
books – divided
• Majority deems it not right to keep Nuremberg
defendants Dönitz, Schirach, Hess, and Speer in
prison, in contrast to those who deemed it
justified in all cases
• Majority against former Nazis returning to high
office in the FRG
Returning from Prison
• No pressures to accept responsibility and guilt,
and to demonstrate “signal changes”
• The judicial procedure is given a different
meaning and significance
• Innocence can be claimed and maintained
successfully, and also becomes part of ones selfperceptions and convictions.
• This needs the support of groups and the wider
public
• Supportive normative climate: no “othering” but
“integration as same”
Returning from Prison:
Perpetrators in Post-War Germany
Spaces of memories
• Their previous communities
• Communities of like-minded people
• Networks (e.g. vocational)
• Institutions
• Semi- public space (e.g. speaker for military
groups
• Public space, media
Three Groups of Nazi Criminals
1. members of the Nazi elite, who were tried at
the International Military Tribunal in
Nuremberg between 1945 and 1946, and in the
follow-up trials in Nuremberg between 1947
and 1949.
2. members of the SS mostly directly involved in
genocidal action. They were mainly sentenced
in the Task Force Trials conducted between
1947 and 1948 in Nuremberg, but also later in
the Federal Republic of Germany.
Three Groups of Nazi Criminals
3. Professionals, doctors and lawyers who had
been involved in atrocities in concentration
camps and had conducted the euthanasia
programme, i.e. the mass murder of mentally
and physically disabled persons; the lawyers
had mainly prepared and were responsible for
the atrocities against the Jewish and the
population of the occupied countries. They
were mainly tried in the so-called Doctors’ and
Lawyers’ Trial in Nuremberg between 1946 and
1948.
The Nazi Elite:
Public and semi-public space
Memoirs by defendants at the IMT:
• Doenitz (former commander of the
navy)
• Raeder (former commander of the
navy)
• Baldur von Schirach (leader of Youth
organisation and governor of Vienna)
• Albert Speer (Secretary for Armament
and Munition)
The Nazi Elite: Karl Dönitz
• Commander of the German Naval Forces in WWII
(1943-1945); successor of Hitler in May 1945
• Sentence: 10 years at IMT, release 1956
Public and semi-public space:
• Publishes his memoir “My fickle life” in 1968
• Sought-after public speaker, travels the country
• His message: He had a purely military role
• He served his sentence
 as his duty as soldier
 as a kind of prisoner of war
The Nazi Elite: Karl Dönitz
Community:
• Community of WW II soldiers/ navy
members of all ranks, Esprit de Corps
• Was revered as former commander of the
Navy
• Sharing of memories between highest and
lowest ranks
• Equality of shared memories amongst the
“defeated”
The Nazi Elite: Albert Speer
• Since 1942 Secretary for Armament and Munition,
responsible for war economy & use of forced labour
• Sentence: 20 years at IMT, released 1966
Public space:
• Publishes two highly successful books, “Memories”,
and “Spandau Diaries”
• Becomes a celebrity after his release
(gentleman Nazi), attracts national and
international attention
• Denies involvement and knowledge
Community:
• Elites of the FRG, media
The space of institutions:
The Lutheran Church
Creating space for perpetrators through
• Support for release/ remission of sentences for
individual perpetrators
• Campaigning
• Support for former church officials (even if
involved in genocide)
• Positions in the church
The space of institutions:
The Lutheran Church
Sandberger, Martin
• SS Leader; as leader of Task Force 1a he had
principal responsibility for the genocide in the Baltic
states.
• Death penalty, commuted to life sentence by US High
Commissioner McCloy, release in May 1958
Community
Support and engagement of numerous
members of the South German
establishment, amongst them the
Bishop of the regional Lutheran Church
The space of institutions:
The Lutheran Church
Biberstein, Ernst
• SS Leader; commander of a Task Force of Group C in
Ukraine (until 1943) responsible for the murder of
3,000 mostly Jewish men, women and children
• Death Penalty, commuted to life sentence, released
in 1958 through remission of sentence, mainly due to
efforts of the Lutheran Church
Networks
• As a former vicar he got a position in the
administration of the Lutheran Church,
dismissed at the beginning of the 1960s.
The space of institutions:
The Lutheran Church
Steimle, Eugen
• SS Leader; worked in the Security Service; leader of
Special Task Forces of the Security Sevices; as such
responsible for mass murder in the Soviet Union.
• Death Penalty, commuted to 20 years imprisonment,
released in 1954
Community
• After his release he became a teacher for
German, history, and civic studies at a
Lutheran grammar school
The space of professional networks
Beiglböck, Wilhelm
• Doctor in Dachau concentration camp; responsible for
human experiments with subnormal temperatures
• Sentenced to 15 years, released in 1951 (remission of
sentence)
Professional network
• he was offered a position by a Member of
the Commission of the German Society for
Internal Medicine
• Since 1952: Head of the Department of
Internal Medicine in a hospital
The space of professional networks
Heyde, Werner alias Sawade, Fritz
• Head of the medical department of the Centre for
Euthanasia; main expert orchestrating the
Euthanasia Programme T4
• charged by the Frankfurt chief public prosecutor with
aggravated murder in at least 100,000 cases
• Heyde fled when he was transferred to the
Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial and went into hiding; he
was arrested in November 1959;
in February 1964 he committed
suicide before the start of his trial.
The space of professional networks
Heyde, Werner alias Sawade, Fritz
Professional networks
• In 1949, he was employed under his new name Fritz
Sawade as doctor for sport by a city in North
Germany. He also became a medical expert for
mental health.
• He had the support of his colleagues who were well
aware of his real identity.
The space of international networks
Albert Kesselring was Field Marshal of the German Army in
Southern Europe and North Africa, finally in Italy
War crime: Responsible for the execution of 365 hostages
in retaliation for an attack on the
German Police by the Italian Resistance Army.
The space of international networks
Trial:
One of the last British War Crimes Trials conducted in Venice in 1947
Sentence:
Death penalty
Commuted to life sentence shortly afterwards
Commuted to 21 years imprisonment
Held in prison in Werl, West Germany
Release: 1952 after being dignosed with cancer
International networks
• Campaign in Britain against death penalty
(including Churchill) immediately after the
sentence
• Rationale: “honest enemy”
• Support from military establishment and
opposition
• Support from US military establishment
(General Lucius Clay)
International politics
• West Germany as prospective ally
• Campaign in Britain (and support in the US) for a
release of all members of the military elite
sentenced for war crimes
• Subdued and cautious campaigning by German
government
• Rationale: it would be impossible to secure the
support of the German public for joining NATO
as long as the military elite was kept in prison
Groups and networks
• President of veterans’ organisation
• Declared himself innocent
• Declared that he had been seminal in
saving Italian heritage from war damage
(they should be “grateful” to him)
• Never dissociated himself from the Nazi
regime or Hitler
The subterranean space
of collective memories
• Perpetrators are not decisive in shaping the public
face of collective memories in the wake of
transitional justice
• They rely less on public and open support but rather
on support in smaller communities, semi-public
spaces and networks
• But: They can rely on a normative climate that is
receptive to justifications, denial of guilt and
acceptance of impunity