VON MANSTEIN’S TRIAL

Grey River Argus, 5 November 1949, Page 5

VON MANSTEIN’S TRIAL

BERLIN, JXfov. 3 Field-Marshal Erich von Manstein drew a laugh from the public gallery and a rebuke from the Chief Prosecutor (Sir Arthur Cornyns Carr) at his trial on war crimes charges when he was explaining an order issued to his troops in 1941 calling for the exterminmation of “Jewish Bolshevism.” He said that he meant the liquidation of th e Jewish Bolshevist system, not the extermination of the people, “just as to-day in Germany you are trying to exterminate Prussian militarism.” Germans in the crowded public gallery laughed loudly, but Sir Arthur Cornyns Carr rebuked him for '"trying to be funny.” Von Manstein denied that he was award of Hitler’s policy to exterminate the Jews. He said he was too busy fighting the war to listen to the speeches of a demagogue. He admitted issuing an order for the peasant population of Russia to be driven westward by the German army during the great retreat of 1943. Machinery, cattle, foodstuffs, and livestock were to be removed or destroyed, and communities were to be used as a labour force for the retreating Germans. He said that those measures were necessary to prevent valuable food and labour reserves from falling into Russian hands. Field Marshal von Manstein told the British War Crimes Tribunal that had he and others known of Hitler’s orders to exterminate the Jews they would have overthrown | him.

"I hardly need to remind the court what that would. have meant in time of war,” von Manstein added. He said there was practically no possibility of resisting Hiter’s criminal orders. Had he 1 refused, his successor would have carried them out. "If I had known then Hitler’s criminal commands as they have now been disclosed, I should naturally have resigned,” he said, addmg that for German soldiers to have broken, their oath of allegiance to Hitlei’ would have meant the collapse of the Eastern front and the collapse of the German Reich. "I kept my Gvth of allegiance to the Kaiser, /the Weimar Republic and under Hitler,” he added.