Umm, hypothetical scenario. The United States was defeated in WW2 by Japan, *after *committing the atrocities of two nuclear bombings and numerous firebombing attacks. (just go with it, maybe aliens showed up and gave them the weapons to win or whatever)
Japan magnanimously in victory establishes an international tribunal to prosecute the war criminals responsible for these mass casualty attacks.
So the bomber crews were just following orders, right? Is there any defense they could use in court?
My understanding is that the Gestapo as such did not investigate bank robberies or murders; the Gestapo table of organization from Wikipedia doesn’t seem to show any Gestapo departments or other subdivisions for such things. The Gestapo was strictly a “political police”, “investigating” (or persecuting) various dissidents against the Nazi regime. Investigating murders and bank robberies would have been the job of the “Kripo” (Kriminalpolizei; “criminal police” or one might say “criminal investigation police”), who were just the plainclothes detectives of the Nazi police services. And traffic tickets would have been handled by a branch of the “Orpo” (Ordnungspolizei, “order police”) who were Nazi Germany’s regular uniformed cops.
That said, after various reorganizations the Kripo wound up being subordinated to the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA, Reichssicherheitshauptamt); and the Gestapo and Kripo eventually together formed the “Sipo” (Sicherheitspolizei, “security police”) within the RSHA. And the RSHA was part of Himmler’s SS organization; not only that, but Himmler (as not only Reichsführer-SS but also “Chief of German Police”) controlled the various branches of the Ordnungspolizei as well. So, a pre-Nazi ordinary professional law enforcement officer would have basically wound up being part of Himmler’s SS empire without in fact ever having to change jobs. Additionally, the Gestapo itself did include a lot of pre-Nazi professional police officers.
There aren’t that many former Nazi soldiers walking around freely, but that would be because they died peacefully of old age. Very few people suffered consequences for WWII crimes. Only a very small minority of very high ranking or particularly notable people were prosecuted (and those who weren’t executed were freed rather quickly, regardless of the lenght of their original sentence. Only Rudolf Hess actually served a life sentence). More went through the “denazification” process, but on the overall, you shouldn’t worry about the fate of former nazis, including those who had much more responsibility than your hypothetical reluctant soldier.
Basically, you’re asking if someone who was forced at gunpoint (or seriously threatened in some other way) to obey a criminal order could be sentenced for war crime. First, as it has been pointed out, it has been established that those soldiers who refused to, for instance, execute Jews, wouldn’t necessarily (or typically) face the terrible consequences you would expect. See Reserve Police Bataillon 101 on Wikipedia. Its members who declined participating faced no consequence at all (of course, people might still be afraid of possible consequences even if in practice, there’s none). Second, no, I expect that people actually forced to commit crimes wouldn’t suffer any consequence, since this is a valid defence for all crimes. What’s happening is that simply saying : “I was ordered to do it” isn’t a valid defence, on the other hand. You would have to show in court that you had no choice.
I don’t think there has been an example of someone sentenced for involvment in Nazi crimes who actually argued that he was forced to participate, but I might be mistaken. Several, on the other hand, argued that they were “just following orders”.
ETA : I assume that besides Rudolf Hess some nazis probably died in jail soon after the war because they were old/ill, and so that technically they indeed served a life sentence too.
And Hess being imprisoned for Life is very strange.
I mean really, Hess had little to do with atrocities, he was convicted of (wiki)"*Hess had been aware of and agreed with Hitler’s plans to conduct a war of aggression in violation of international law. He declared that as Hess had signed important governmental decrees, including the decree requiring mandatory military service, the Nuremberg racial laws, and a decree incorporating the conquered Polish territories into the Reich, he must share responsibility for the acts of the regime…Hess was found guilty on two counts: crimes against peace (planning and preparing a war of aggression), and conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes. *
Why keep Hess in prison? His “crimes” were minor in comparison to some of the worst.
If you’re interested in this topic, I’d suggest the following book:
These average guys, police officers, security guards, often middle-aged men, were sent to the East to slaughter Jews. They did so willingly, and there were some who didn’t take part in the killing directly. Those people who refused to shoot weren’t punished or killed for not shooting Jews. The Nazis had no trouble finding enough people who were willing to do the shooting. I think peer pressure and hate was enough to make these men mostly fall in line with the request of their superiors.
It’s a chilling look into what humans are capable of doing. Not every one of the killers was an ardent Nazi. Some were just doing it for career “advancement”. Some hated Jews, but not every single one of them. The Germans also relied on killers from other countries, where the population wasn’t raised on a constant drumbeat of antisemitism (ex: Luxembourg).
Early on after WW2, the prosecution of Germans involved in atrocities focused on higher-ups. Later, prosecutions went further down into the ranks. As stated by others above, just being a part of the machine, even if you yourself didn’t kill anyone directly, could be enough to get you prosecuted.
Oh, WAR crimes. I saw the thread title and thought you were asking whether or not the Nazi regime imposed draconian punishment for shoplifting and vandalism and assault and stuff like that.
(I believe they did; it was very much a “law & order” shop)
“Thousands” is a low guess. The number of Germans guilty of war crimes and still alive in 1945 was at least in the hundreds of thousands.
There are, however, practical considerations involved, not the least of which is the simple fact that trying to find, prosecute and punish a quarter of a million people or more would have been an undertaking of truly gigantic proportions. Just prosecuting a few hundred notable Nazis - who, being the ones on top, were the easiest to dredge up evidence against - was a significant and expensive undertaking.
Other countries, upon being liberated, engaged in their own prosecutions, but, again, it wasn’t practical to hang everyone who deserved it.
Absolutely chilling, not because of what they did, but because the men in the battalion were literally ordinary men- they weren’t early twenty-somethings who were all enthusiastic to go fight Bolsheviks, they weren’t hard-core Nazis, they weren’t even necessarily xenophobes or chauvinists. They were just like anyone else- shopkeepers, tradesmen, laborers, etc…
That said, ISTR that the Allied post-war denazification program ended up deciding that people below a certain age, or below a certain level of responsibility were pretty much not considered responsible, so were more or less exempt from de-nazification, although individual war crimes cases were definitely not off the table (look at Irma Grese for an example- woman, 22, low ranking SS guard and despite all that was executed in 1945). De-nazification was an effort to remove former Nazis from positions of responsibility and government in an effort to remove the ideology, not a way to hunt down war criminals.
So unless you were particularly high ranking, criminal or notable, you probably skated at the end of the war.
Yes, the vast majority of those involved in the Police Battalions (the action commandos of ordinary men who slaughtered jews in the east, and who came from very common non-violent backgrounds) were never brought to justice. I think at the end of the war, there was some justice for the higher-ups, and specific cases of less than higher-ups - such as Irma Grise, the female concentration camp guard, as you mentioned. But the Allies main focus was to get Germany back on its feet, and also to stop the spread of Soviet communism into Western Europe. So, the average German, and their collaborators from other countries, was allowed to go back to their lives, and Germany was eventually rebuilt via the Marshall Plan.
I think it’s worth pointing out that in the vast majority of cases, the killers weren’t threatened with their own lives. They weren’t told, “slaughter Jews, or we’ll shoot you in the head”. Most did the killing willingly, with little prodding. It’s absolutely frightening what this says about the ability of humans to commit atrocities.