One of the excuses frequently used by Nazi era killers was that they had been ordered to kill and if they did not kill then they would be killed themselves. However there is not one solitary example that I know of where this actually happened. That is not to say that the Nazi German military courts were not extremely severe, at least 18,000 German soliders were shot during WW2, compare that to zero in the British army. During the period 7 December 1941, to 22 February 1946, 141 US soldiers were executed, 71 for murder, 51 for rape, 18 for murder and rape and only one for desertion.
Thomas Blatt was born in Izbica, Poland in 1927. In April 1943 he was deported to the Sobibór death camp from where he escaped in the prisoner revolt of 14 October 1943. I spent a great deal of time with him in both Poland and the United States, talking about his experiences during the war. He told me of the case of one of the SS staff who asked for a transfer out of the death camp and when given his transfer out, he even came to say goodbye to some prisoners and shook hands with them.
However there are cases where even killers asked for a transfer. Erwin Shulz was the commanding officer of Einsatzkommando 5 which was subordinated to Einsatzgruppe C. He initially participated in killings in the formely Soviet occupied zone of Poland then in turn occupied by Nazi Germany but when asked to shoot more people in Zhitomir, he asked for a transfer and returned to his old job as commander of the Führerschule der Sicherheitspolizei in Berlin-Charlottenburg. His transfer did not even effect his career, only shortly after leaving the occupied USSR, he was promoted to SS-Oberführer on 9. November 1941 and to SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei on 9. November 1943.
Matthias Graf was attached to Einsatzkommando 6 as a Unterscharfuehrer, that is to say a corporal. After one year he was promoted to Scharfuehrer (sergeant) and when he left the occupied Soviet Union in October 1942 he held the rank of Oberscharfuehrer ( master sergeant). In September 1942 Graf was assigned to be in charge of a sub-kommando, but he refused to accept the assignment. Because of this refusal he was arrested and placed in custody for disciplinary action but this action was dropped after a few days and he was sent back to Germany in October 1942.
Another example is the case of Nikolaus Ernst Hornig who was an officer in a Police Battalion. In June 1941, Hornig was ordered to go on a officer training course for Schutzpolizei. Membership of the SS was expected but he refused and even criticised Nazi policies such as Lebensborn and the existence of the nearby Dachau concentration camp. In mid-October 1941, Hornig was ordered here to Lublin in the General Government of Poland to work with Police Battalion 306. In September 1941, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Kurt Daluege , chief of the Order Police, ordered his unit to shoot Soviet prisoners of war. At the end of October 1941, Hornig himself received the order, as platoon commander of the 2nd company of the battalion, to shoot 780 prisoners of war, soldiers of the Red Army, in a forest near Zamość , who were regarded as political officers or Jews and previously had been chosen by the security police and the SD from Stalag 325 "to be shot". Hornig reported to his battalion commander , Ernst Dreier , that he had to refuse this order as it contradicted international law and also Section 47 of the applicable Military Penal Codethe execution of a criminal order is expressly forbidden. He also requested that disciplinary investigation be taken against himself in order to be able to refrain from such liquidation actions . Hornig referred to this provision of the Military Penal Code:
"If a criminal law is violated by the execution of an order in official matters, the superior issuing the order is solely responsible for this. However, the subordinate who obeys is subject to the participant's punishment [...] if he was aware that the superior's order concerned an act which aimed at a general or military crime or misdemeanor."
His superior's reaction to the refusal to obey orders initially consisted of playing it down. ‘Hornig will certainly acquire the necessary toughness for deployment in the east and will learn to carry out such orders in the near future;, was the general attitude. Hornig assembled his own platoon, explained to the police officers under him why he himself refused to take part in such shootings, and, citing Section 47 of the Military Criminal Code, pointed out that every subordinate had the right to refuse an order that was criminal.
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10 сен 2024
