TRIAL OF NAZI COMMANDERS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25638, 29 October 1948, Page 7

TRIAL OF NAZI COMMANDERS

VERDICTS GIVEN AT NUREMBERG ACQUITTAL ON CHARGES OF PLOTTING WAR LONDON, October 27. An American war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg to-day found FieldMarshal von Leet/ guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Nazi-occupied territories, and Field-Marshal Hugo Sperrle not guilty on all the charges against him. Sperrle’s immediate release was ordered. * Field-Marshal Georg von Keuohler and General Hermann Hoth were also found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They will be sentenced to-morrow after the verdicts are given on charges against others accused. • * The Court’s judgment was that von Keuchler and Hoth knew-of the mass executions of insane persons and Jews by Himmler’s extermination squads in the territories under their command. The judgment added that both had issued orders “which speak Hitler’s language and show sympathy with Hitler’s ruthless exploitation of the population.” The Court earlier acquitted 13 of Germany’s top commanders of plotting to launch the Second World War. The three-man Court, completing the nine months’ trial of three field-marshals, four generals, five lieutenant-generals, and an admiral, added that they were not policy makers. The judgment stated: “The acts of commanders and staff officers below policy level, in planning campaigns, preparing means for carrying them out, moving against a country on orders and fighting a war after it has been instituted, do not constitute the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of war or the initiation of an invasion that international law denounces as criminal.’’ List of Accused The defendants were Field-Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb, commander of the northern group of armies in Russia; Field Hugo Sperrle, commander of the German Legion in Spain and of the air fleet which bombed London in 1940; Field-Mar-shal von Keuchler. who ' commanded the German 18th Army in the invasion of Holland, and later succeeded von Leeb in Russia; General Hoth. commander of the 15th Motorised Corps in the invasion of Poland and Holland; General Hans Reinhardt, who commanded the 4th Panzer Division in the invasion of Poland; General Hans von Salmuth. chief of staff of an army group in the West; General Karl Hollidt. Admiral Otto Schiewind, chief of the Navy Armament Office: Lieutenant-General Karl von Roques: Lieutenant-General Hermann Reinecke, chief of the High Command’s National Socialist indoc* trination staff; Lieutenant-General Walter Warlimont, chief of the Department of National Defence; Lieu-tenant-General Otto Woehler. Com-mander-in-Chief of the Southern Armv Group in Russia: LieutenantGeneral Rudolf Lehmann. Judge Ad-vocate-General of the German arrned forces.

A fourteenth defendant. General Johannes Blaskowitz. conqueror of Poland and occupation commander in France in 1940. committed suicide the day the trial opened last February. "No Line Judicially Drawn” The tribunal said that no matter how absolute his authority, Hitler alone could not formulate a policy of aggressive war and alone implement that policy by preparing, planning, and waging such a war. Somewhere between the dictator and the supreme commander of the military forces of a nation and the common soldier was the boundary» between criminal and excusable participation in the waging of an aggressive war by an individual engaged in it. The Court noted that no definite line had been judicially drawn, since there had been no other prosecution of defendants in the same category. “The world has not arrived at a state of civilisation which is such that it can dispense with fleets, armies, and air forces, nor has it arrived at the noint where it can safely outlaw war in anv and all circumstances and situations. Inasmuch as all war cannot be considered outlawed, then armed forces are lawful instrumentalities of a State which have internationally legitimate functions.”

Trial in Bucharest— The trial has begun of 12 persons charged with having plotted with American and British representatives in Rumania to overthrow the Rumanian Popular Republic. They are also charged With organising terrorist organisations, sabotage, and spying on the country’s national economy. It is alleged that thfee members of the British Embassy and five United States diplomats were given State secrets. —Bucharest. October 27.