"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (257 page)

42.
See the letter of July 3, 1941, from the senior public prosecutor at the Posen District Court to the presiding judge of the Posen District Court (State Archive Pozna
,
Landgericht
Posen 14, B1. 127 f.).

43.
Decision of May 19, 1942,
DJ
(1942): 547.

44.
RGBl.
I 52; implementing provisions in the Reich Ministry of Justice decree of August 7, 1942 (Nuremberg doc. NG-744).

45.
Situation report dated March 18, 1941, by the president of the Hohensalza (Inowrocław) Administrative District (Posen University library).

46.
Cf. the report of January 23, 1943, by the presiding judge of the Königsberg Court of Appeal (Nuremberg doc. PS-672; also BA R 22/20993).

47.
Content of the decree reproduced in the report of January 23, 1943 (see the preceding note), and the circular of May 30, 1942, by the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal to subordinate offices (BA R 22/20993).

48.
Report of January 23, 1943 (Nuremberg doc. PS-672; also BA R 22/20993).

49.
Ibid.

50.
This was true at least in Danzig–West Prussia; see the instruction from the presiding judge of the Court of Appeal, Danzig, in a circular to subordinate offices, July 4, 1942 (BA R 22/20993).

51.
Ibid.

52.
Instruction dated April 3, 1940, from the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal to the presiding judges of the district courts and supervisory judges at the municipal courts (ibid.).

53.
The administrative instruction was announced by Reich Minister of Justice Thierack at the meeting of the chief presiding judges and supervisory judges at the municipal courts (minutes, speech by Thierack, B1. 54, BA R 22/4200).

54.
Circular of May 30, 1942, by the presiding judge of the Danzig Court of Appeal (BA R 22/20993).

55.
Instead of the maximum permissible punishment of one year’s imprisonment, up to five or six years’ prison camp was imposed in isolated cases. The Reich Ministry of Justice attempted by way of internal arrangements to limit penal orders to three years’ prison camp (minutes of a discussion of representatives of the Reich Justice Ministry with the executive officials of the Annexed Eastern Territories in Berlin, July 28, 1942, BA R 22/850, 5).

56.
Letter of March 27, 1942, to State Secretary Freisler/Reich Justice Ministry (BA R 22/850).

57.
See Freisler, “Das Deutsche Polenstrafrecht,”
DJ
(1941): 1129 ff.

58.
RGBl.
I 405.

59.
The number of penal proceedings before the courts of appeal did increase, however, as the Polish resistance movement became more effective.

60.
Führer decree of September 3, 1939 (Nuremberg doc. NG-700; also in Broszat, “Zur Perversion der Strafjustiz” [1958], 411 n. 18). As early as May 1941, Greiser had asked the Reich Minister of Justice for such delegation of the right to pardon, referring to the “growing number of sabotage acts by Poles”; see the letter of May 24, 1941, from the Reich leadership NSDAP (Bormann) to the RMuChdRkzlei (BA R 43/1543). See the letter of July 19, 1941, from the Reich Ministry of Justice to the Wartheland Reich governor accompanying the corresponding decree. Delegation was granted to the Reich governor (chief public prosecutor) (BA R 22/850), it being initially understood by the Reich Ministry of Justice to include only
confirmation
of death sentences by the Reich governor; in cases in which the latter approved the commutation of a death sentence to imprisonment, this was to be considered only as a suggestion, which still required the approval of the Führer. Following a complaint by Greiser (letter of November 13, 1941, to the RMuChdRkzlei, BA R 22/850) he was accorded the full right of pardon (letter of December 11, 1941, from the state minister and head of the Presidential Bureau of the Chancellery of the president of the Reich, Dr. Meißner, to the Reich Ministry of Justice, according to which proposals for pardon for Poles and Jews in the Wartheland no longer needed to be submitted to the Führer, BA R 43 II/1549).

Reich Ministry of Justice decree of May 28, 1942 (Nuremberg doc. NG-126). Minister of Justice Thierack expressed strong disapproval of the publication of this decree in the official journal
Deutsche Justiz,
since now all the other Gauleiters demanded the right of pardon for their
Gaue
(discussion between the chief presiding judges and chief public prosecutors on September 29, 1942, in Berlin, BA R 22/850).

Part 2. Section Two. B. III. The Elaboration of Special Law by the Courts

1.
See the report by the Security Service (SD) for domestic questions for November 1941 to December 1943, point 6, pp. 402 ff.

2.
Situation report by the Posen chief public prosecutor, July 25, 1942 (BA R 22/3383).

3.
Full details in Freisler, “Das Deutsche Polenstrafrecht,”
DJ
(1941): 1129.

4.
See sec. 2, Decree on the Implementation of German Penal Law of June 6, 1940 (
RGBl.
I 844).

5.
Some 30% of the verdicts of the Posen Special Court have been preserved and are to be found partly at the Main Commission Warsaw, partly at the Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, and partly at the Main Commission Warsaw (Pozna
Office); the State Archive Bydgoszcz contains the almost complete records of the special courts of Bromberg, Leslau, Hohensalza (Inowrocław) and Thorn (Toru
); the judgments of the Łód
special courts, publication of which is in preparation, are at the State Archive Łód
; those of the Zichenau Special Court, insofar as they remain extant, are at the Main Commission Warsaw. (This was the situation as of 1975.)

6.
For example, see the report “Strafverfolgung und Strafvollstreckung” in the
Ostdeutscher Beobachter
of June 24, 1940, 3.

7.
Beurmann,
DR
(1942) (B): 77 ff. (81).

8.
R. Freisler, in
Ostdeutscher Beobachter,
February 7, 1942.

9.
Some of the judges of the first “detachment wave” had themselves volunteered for detachment (Tautphaeus, “Der Richter im Reichsgau Wartheland” [1941]).

10.
According to a statement by the former general judge of the Luftwaffe, the criminal judges at the
special courts
were culled above all in the Eastern provinces of the Reich, as they were probably considered politically reliable from the start and offered a guarantee for a firm anti-Polish course (information by Dr. Manfred Röder, Nuremberg doc. NG-711).

11.
See letter of February 17, 1942, from the Posen senior public prosecutor to the
Gendarmeriekreisführer
of Schrimm (State Archive Pozna
, Gend. Kreis Schrimm, 197, Bl. 1, 2).

12.
Thus, on September 28, 1940, the chief public prosecutor of Danzig reported to the Reich Ministry of Justice about a suggestion by a government official to mitigate the provision in the Implementing Decree of June 6, 1940, concerning the death penalty for violent acts against Germans on account of their German nationality, “since the death penalty frequently is out of proportion to the mild nature of the act.” He (the chief public prosecutor) did not agree, “given that the attitude of a large part of the population of Polish origin is still hostile to everything German” (IfZ, Fa 75/1).