Lanz pretended to have heard "for the first time here in Nurnberg" about such a distinction between political commissars and other members of the Russian Army.
He was even more astounded when he was shown an enclosure, dated 12 August 1941, to the Ic activity report of his very division. That enclosure was a graphic description of the capture of 18,000 Russian prisoners. The Court will recall the dramatic exposition of the singling out of a political commissar from the rest of the prisoners and his subsequent three-hour interrogation. Then, according to the account, he was "taken aside to a place from whence only the crack of the report" came back, "not, however, the faint cry."
General Lanz believed that account was an entirely fictitious product of some war correspondent's imagination. He went so far as to suggest that the story was wholly inaccurate, a figment of a scriptwriter's brain intended for consumption on the homefront. Lanz could not explain how the correspondent knew such details as the insignia of the commissars, and their well-advised tactic of discarding it after capture in chance protection from the prescribed fate.
Lanz even went so far as to intimate that political commissars were not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention because they oftentimes shot their own troops to prevent desertion. What relevance this completely unsupported accusation has to international law is beyond our comprehension.
Nothing whatever can be said in mitigation of Lanz's shameful record. His Baedeker of crime is as complete as that of any of his colleagues.
General Helmuth Felmy is no stranger to a method of thinking which holds military commanders responsible for the acts of their subordinates. In January 1940, one of his lesser officers in the air corps was forced down just inside the western boundary of Holland and Germany. The pilot had with him plans for the invasion of the Low Countries which was in fact to occur four months later. The plans were, of course, confiscated by the Dutsch authorities. Felmy, in spite of his exalted rank and his great reputation as a builder of the German Luftwaffe was held negligent and dismissed from his high post in the Luftwaffe.
Felmy returned to his home in Brunswick and, with plenty of time to ruminate both about his fate and the destiny of western civilization, decided in September of that year to join the Nazi Party. A few months thereafter he returned to active service, but he denies that his membership in the party had anything to do with his reinstatement. If Felmy was not, as he asserts, being an opportunist, he must have joined the party because he believed in its principles and the practical application of its ideology.
After heading what proved to be a still-born political-military commission in Irak, an assignment on which he was sent by Hitler and Ribbentrop personally, Felmy, in June 1941, was appointed Commander Southern Greece subordinate to Field Marshal List as Commander-in-Chief of the Twelfth Army and Armed Forces Commander Southeast.
When List went on leave during July and August 1941, Felmy, as the senior ranking commander in the Southeast, was named his deputy. The practice of appointing the senior officer as acting commander-in-Chief during the latter's absence was standard and customary procedure in the German Wehrmacht and Felmy is not at all reluctant to concede that was the motivating cause for his appointment on the first occasion of List's absence.
If it is suggested that Felmy was also named List's deputy during the interregnum between List's retirement to the hospital and Kuntze's arrival, when the two mass executions at Kraljevo and Kragujevac took place, Felmy is against at the idea.
There is nothing in the documents naming Felmy as List's deputy at any time, and it therefore seems reasonable to assume that if Felmy, as senior ranking commander, automatically became acting commander-in-chief of the 12th Army in July and August, the same thing happened in October 1941. Felmy insists, however, that he was specifically named to the post of deputy in July 1941, and urges Foertsch's testimony as confirmation. This is an interesting testimonial interchange. Felmy tries to extract Foertsch from his embarrassment by saying that the leadership of the 12th Army from October 16 until October 27 rested with the individual commander, and not with the Chief of Staff. The quid pro quo is that Foertsch must give Felmy a hand by testifying that no specific appointment of Felmy had been made. The very fact that Felmy denies any knowledge of either of the three Serbian massacres which occurred in October 1941 is most indicative of his general credibility.
Shortly after he took over as List's deputy, Felmy issued, on 29 July 1941, an order stating that death sentences for sabotage were to be carried out by hanging and that, additionally, "all means of intimidation which are customary with the residents of the country be employed". Felmy, understandably enough, could not explain what he meant by "all other means of intimidation" - but in the light of such evidence, would it be too much to assume that he meant concentration camps, deportations, and the rest of the gamut of crimes which have been discussed so often in this proceeding? On the same day, Felmy received a report that 100 Jews had been shot to death in Belgrade in reprisal for the throwing of a bottle of gasoline on a German motor vehicle four days earlier. Felmy, of course, has no recollection whatever of the incident, though he admits that Foertsch, as a competent and dutiful Chief of Staff, must have informed him about it. On the 15th of August 1941, it was reported to the office of the Armed Forces Commander Southeast that the village of Skela had been burned and 50 "communists" hanged in retaliation for an attack upon a police car on the previous day.
Of such type were the incidents which occurred during the period General Felmy acted in Field Marshal List's stead.
After serving as Commander Southern Greece from June 1941 until August 1942, Felmy left Greece for a brief interlude in North Africa. He returned in June 1943 as Commander of the LXVIIIth Corps, a post he held until the evacuation of Greece in October 1944. Felmy's major task, of course, was the combatting of the Greek partisans. Whereas the EDES partisans operated for the most part in General Lanz's territory, Felmy's major opponents were the ELAS units, the so-called "communist" group of Andartes. As early as 5 July 1943, the Military Commander of Southern Greece, then General Speidel, wrote a very comprehensive report on the nature and size and leadership of the ELAS organization. It was reported to be 40,000 strong, with all manner of weapons, an efficient general staff, and a centralized direction in the hands of English officers subordinate to the Allied Middle East Command with headquarters in Cairo. As might be expected from such a large organization, uniforms were worn by practically all and readily identifiable insignia by everyone. Though the last factor is extremely difficult for Felmy to accept, even his own Ic officer, Colonel Kleykamp, admitted that the Soviet star was uniformly worn.
Of course, Felmy gave the same lurid testimony regarding partisan violations of the rules of war as the rest of the defendants. In his case such testimony is particularly untrue. The war diary of his subordinate 1st Panzer Division shown that on the 2nd of October 1943 twelve hostages were seized and threatened with execution if missing German soldiers were not returned by the bands. The entry in the war diary for the following day states that the soldiers were in fact turned over. As if this example were not enough to support the Prosecution's contention that the partisans did not violate the Geneva Convention, there is not a single entry in the entirely translated war diary of Felmy's LXVIIIth Corps for the period January - June 1944 which mentions or even hints at the killing and mutilating of German prisoners by the partisans. If such practices were usual.
and as widespread as Felmy and his affiants have asserted, why is there not one indication in the whole war diary to that effect?
Felmy's partisan opponent was particularly powerful on the Peloponnesus peninsula, so powerful in fact that the German occupation there was utterly ineffective. In repeated requests to higher headquarters for additional troops, vernings appear that the northwest part of the Peloponnesus was entirely dominated by the bands "except for the coastal areas dominated by the Germans" and that "only a few coastal sections and the ports of Tripolis and Sparta remain in German hands." The partisans controlled more of the Peloponnesus than the Germans during 1943 and 1944.
To meet the challenge of the partisans, Felmy resorted to the firingsquad technique which had been characteristic of the German occupation since April 1941. "Danger" hostages were a common-place. The entry in the war diary for 5 June 1944 states that as a counter-measure for sabotage the railroad line Athens-Lamia, hostage coaches would be used. Two months later, on 5 August 1944, it was reported that during an attack on the railroad Corinth-Tripolis, cars were derailed and the "18 hostages taken along" shot to death.
But even more widespread then "danger" hostages was the taking and eventual execution of "security" hostages. In the use of the latter type, Felmy was an old and experienced master hand. When he was still Commander of Southern Greece, he reported that on 5 June 1942, "in reprisal for murders committed in the Messara region, 12 hostages were shot on 3 June 1942." The report also mentioned that in reprisal for a plot against the railroad track Liessia-Athens a German firing squad had that morning shot 8, and an Italian squad 2, hostages. Though more than one of these defendant had tried to place the blame on the Italians for reprisal measures carried out in Greece prior to Italy's surrender in September 1943, one of Felmy's own witnesses, the representative of the German Foreign Office in Greece, Dr. Gunther Altenburg, stated flatly that the railroad lines in and about Athens were completely in the hands of the Germans.
Felmy refused to even hazard a guess as to the number of hostages executed by units of the LXVIIIth Corps while it was under his command. All Felmy would say was that reprisal measures were not carried out for every hostile attack upon the German occupation power. When it was pointed out that the Loehr order of 10 August 1943 demanded that each attack or act of sabotage be retaliated for by hanging hostages and burning villages, Felmy seemed insulted; he said that he was "not a high school boy" and had not been treated as such by General Loehr. He insisted that he had not been allowed a good deal of latitude by General Loehr in carrying out all orders. That was rather an unusual, not to say inconsistent, statement for one who makes superior orders an important aspect of his defense to advance.
Although Felmy refused to estimate the number of hostages his corps executed, his witness, the Balkan "authority" Professor Stadtmueller, was not so laconic. A radical in matters historical but a conservative in things mathematical, he opined that between 1500 and 2000 hostages had been killed by the LXVIII Corps, a figure which he himself volunteered did not include the Greek lives lost in the Klissura and Distomon blood baths.
There were so many, repetitious and even contradictory, hostage orders that it was impossible for him to recall them individually, Felmy said. He did remember receiving, through List, the Keitel directive of 16 September 1941, a copy of which he passed on to the Commander of Crete who was at that time subordinate to him in his capacity as Commander Southern Greece. Felmy, always content to assume the lawfulness of orders emanating from his superior officers, saw nothing criminal about the hostage figures mentioned in the Keitel directive, and went so far as to assert that the directive was "necessary" at the time. For one who repeatedly insisted, following a party line which List and Kuntze had established, that Greece was quiet and peaceful until late 1943, Felmy's assertion that the Keitel directive was a military necessity seems peculiarly incomprehensible.
General Felmy, like General Winter, was unable to recall any orders mentioning individual hostage figures which he might have issued to his subordinate units. But the Tribunal will remember that on 9 December 1943, Winter, as Chief of Staff of Army Group E, addressed a conference of chiefs of staff in which he specifically stated that the minimum hostage ratio had become the maximum, namely, "1:50 if there are dead, 1:10 if there are wounded". Is it credible that Felmy's Chief of Staff was not at Winter's lecture or that a corps commander of Felmy's importance was not schooled on reprisal quotas? Felmy's remarkable memory having been previously demonstrated in his direct examination, it is not easy to believe that he could have forgotten such figures.
Felmy denies having himself issued a single hostage order, a statement which the testimony of the witness Willy Finger flatly contradicted. Shortly after the death of the German General Krech, Finger said that he saw posters, signed by Felmy, which mentioned 100:1 and 50:1 retaliation ratios.
The hostage incidents which occurred within the area of the LXVIIIth Corps are so numerous that in total number of hostages executed, Felmy's record puts him in fifth place behind List, Kuntze, Foertsch and Geitner. On 22 August 1943 the 1st Panzer Division reported that ten hostages had been seized in retaliation for the beating up of a corporal. The division asked and received the express permission of the corps to execute those hostages. A short time later, on 12 September 1943, Army Group South Greece which Felmy then commanded, reported that ten Greeks had been hanged in retaliation for the death of a German soldier.
The number of hostage executions which took place in the three-week period between 25 November and 16 December 1943 is representative of the entire period during which time Felmy commanded the LXVIIIth Corps. On November 20, "20 communists were shot to death in retaliation for an attack at Aighion"; on the 29th of that month 100 hostages were hanged in retaliation for an attack on the road Tripolis-Sparta; on 5 December the corps reported that 50 hostages had been shot at Aighion; on 6 December 50 hostages were shot in retaliation for an attack on the railroad South of Tripolis; and on 8 December, in retaliation for an attack southwest of Gythion, 25 hostages were executed.
During that short span of time 245 hostages were killed - 245 murders for which Felmy must answer.
It is difficult to single out for particular attention any one of the several atrocities which occurred during Felmy's tenure as commander of the LXVIIIth Corps. But in total number of persons killed, the butcheries and devastation which took place during "Operation Kalavritha" takes first place. Twenty-four villages were totally destroyed and more than 1400 persons killed before German vengeance had run its course. Even Felmy admit that Kalavritha was a German "excess", and "excess" which, oddly enough, the Army does not even try to attribute to the SS. But it was an "excess," according to Felmy, not because of the ratio of Greek to German dead but simply because the devastation and murder involved was so indiscriminate. It was because Kalavritha was allegedly a nest of bands, and because 78 German prisoners had supposedly been murdered by those bands that General Felmy gave permission to General LeSuire, Commander of the 117th Light Infantry Division, to stage the whole reprisal action. Since the operation had previously been cleared with Felmy, it is no surprise that, even though now Felmy condemns the result, he did not reprimand LeSuire when the undertaking had been completed. Felmy tries to excuse his failure to dismiss LeSuire or even to instigate his court martial by admitting that the OKW would just not have countenanced such an action.
But a few days after the Kalavritha enterprise, Loehr's order of 22 December 1943 effectuated radical change in German reprisal policy. In recognition of the unfavorable impact of reprisal measures upon the Southeastern political situation, fixed reprisal quotas were rescinded and Minister Neubacher was charged with German political leadership in the entire area. Since actions like LeSuire's were precisely the kind which were intended to be prevented in the future, it is more than likely that Neubacher would not have opposed any application on the part of Felmy, and his superiors, General Loehr and Field Marshal von Weichs, to have LeSuire replaced. But Felmy did not try to replace LeSuire: he recommended him for promotion to leadership of a corps, and in due course the promotion was made.
The severe reprisal measures taken by the LXVIIIth Corps continued unabated throughout the year 1944. It has been constantly emphasized throughout this case that the Prosecution's excerpts were one-sided and give a distorted picture of events as they occurred in Southeast. Felmy's completely translated war diary proves that suggestion to be unfounded. Even looking at all of the tactical details contained in the war diary, the reprisal measures stand out in full focus. On 17 January 1944, 20 communists were executed in retaliation for an attack upon an officer; on 7 February 1944, 3 villages and 100 communists were executed in retaliation for an attack upon an officer; on 7 February 1944, 3 villages and 100 communists were executed in retaliation for an attack near Skala, on 23 February 200 hostages were ordered executed in retaliation for 2 attacks. With respect to the last incident, General Felmy was eager to point out that from the war diary the number of German dead from those two attacks - 24 dead, 19 wounded and 3 missing -- could be ascertained. Felmy seemed proud of the restraint displayed by his troops in this instance. On 11 March 1944 the war diary shows that in retaliation for an attack upon a convoy German losses were 18 dead and 44 wounded.
Two hundred people from the hostage camps at Tripolis, Sparta and Corinth were ordered executed in reprisal. Felmy admits that LeSuire asked and that he gave permission for the carrying out of that action, though he hastens to add that, "from what I have been able to gather from the Prosecution documents" not 200 but only 141 hostages were actually executed. According to the entry in the corps war diary, the executions themselves were to be carried out "by members of the Greek Volunteer Units under German supervision", an observation which will become particularly significant in the light of General Felmy's testimony regarding the executions carried out in retaliation for the subsequent death of General Krech.
On 27 April 1944, a German convoy was attacked. General Krech, Commander of the 41st Fortress Division and three others were killed, five German soldiers were wounded and two vehicles destroyed. The entry in the war diary of 1 May announced that in retaliation, "335 communists and suspected guerillas were shot", an apparent application of a 50:1 ratio for the persons killed and a 25:1 ratio for those wounded, plus 10 extra hostages shot for good measure. Felmy shifts the blame for this execution to the leader of a Greek "Volunteer" unit, a mythical Colonel Popagondinos, who, he claims, rounded up and shot 100 hostages. Felmy himself claims no knowledge whatever of the execution of an additional 200 hostages which were reported as having been executed in Athens in retaliation for the same attack.
In view of what has already been said concerning the relation of indigenous forces to the Whermacht, no extended statement need be made here on General Felmy's testimony, especially since the documents explicitly state that the executions by Greek volunteer units were done under German supervision. Moreover, the witness Finger completely exploded Felmy's explanation of this particular reprisal. Finger himself participated in the arresting of the 100 hostages executed on the Peloponnesus in retaliation for the Krech attack, and himself drove one of the trucks which transported the hostages to the central hostage camp at Patras.
The Tribunal will recall that Finger testified that the entire action was carried out by German troops, members of the 999th Infantry Division, and not by Greek units at all.
Felmy's professed ignorance of the execution of the 200 hostages in Athens as part of the same reprisal action is, of course, entirely understandable. Either Felmy or his colleague, General Speidel, Military Commander of Greece at the time, arranged that detail.
When there are no Italians or Greek quislings around on which to place responsibility for the crimes mentioned in the German reports, Felmy makes the old standby, the SS, the recipient of responsibility. But when it comes to liability for the activities of SS units in Greece, Felmy and Speidel have to be very careful, for in that regard theirs is a narrow gauntlet indeed. Felmy unwarily admitted early in his examination that the Higher SS and Police Leader for Greece was "officially and in the service regulations" subordinate to Speidel, and that the 18th SS Police Regiment received orders for its tactical commitment against the bands from Speidel.
Aware of Speidel's reaction to this and anticipating his own testimony to the effect that even though the 18th SS Police Regiment was operating within his corps area, it was not subordinate or responsible to him for tactical purposes, Felmy stated that reprisal measures had nothing to do with, and formed no part of, tactical operations. In the face of Felber's testimony that reprisal measures could not be divorced from tactical considerations, this unbelievable. Moreover, it is irreconcilable with the Loehr order of 10 August 1943 which expressly states that reprisal measures were matters of tactics.
Finally, General Speidel said flatly that reprisal measures did involve questions of tactics and that orders to take or not to take reprisal measures were no less tactical than orders to attack a given objective or withdraw from a named position.
Felmy and Speidel did, however, effect a compromise of their testimonial feud by throwing the blame for the SS reprisal measures on Army Group E, which has no representative here. We will not get entangled in the intricate web which they spun in order to reach this happy solution. It is plain that the SS regiment got its commitment orders from Speidel and among those orders were instructions concerning reprisal measures. The regiment itself, when it was committed within the corps area of the LXVIIIth Army Corps, was tactically subordinate to Felmy. At any time, he could have ordered the regiment not to take reprisal measures and could have punished the regimental commander for disobeying him. Felmy and Speidel are both responsible for the reprisal excesses which the 18th SS Regiment took during its assignment in Boetia and later on the Peloponnesus.
Only a few of those excesses need be mentioned here, On 1 April 1944, in retaliation for a raid by Greek "bandits" southeast of Levadia in which the regiment suffered 2 wounded, 10 hostages were executed. On 25 April 1944, in retaliation for an attack on a motor convoy, in which 2 officers were killed, and 1 officer and 4 men were missing, 50 communists were shot. On 28 April 1944, 60 additional communists, and on 10 May 100 more communists were shot in retaliation for the very same attack. In all a total of 210 hostages had been executed in reprisal for 7 German losses, a reprisal quota of 30:1.
The Distomen and Klissura incidents throw additional light, not only upon German reprisal excesses, but also upon the much discussed Army-SS disciplinary relationship. In what the German account itself characterized as the "blood bath of Klissura", 217 completely guiltless Greeks were killed and 27 wounded. Though Felmy was serving as Loehr's deputy in command of Army Group E at the time, 5 April 1944, he claims he never even heard of the Klissura affair. Minister Neubacher, however, heard about it and wrote to Weichs that it was "a most serious infraction of an order of reprisal measures issued by the Commander-inChief Southeast with my agreement", a reference to the already referred to Loehr order of 22 December 1943.
Felmy advances the unconvincing explanation that Neubacher heard of the incident from Greek sources while his own sole source of information was the series of official reports which he received from the 7th SS Regiment which committed the crime.
In a parallel incident which occurred two months after Klissura, and which also involved the same 7th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment, 250 to 300 Greek inhabitants of all ages were killed in the village of Distomon. Distomon, along with Kalavritha and Klissura is the third excess to which Felmy has confessed. But it was not because Distomon was an "excess" that General Felmy became concerned. It was because the SS unit had given a false combat report on the affair, stating that the Greek dead had been killed in a combat rather than in a reprisal action.
After Felmy's corps judge had concluded all of his investigations and it was proved beyond doubt that the SS company commander had violated not only every law of humanity but had gone beyond even the harsh Germany Army orders, the SS regimental commander requested of Felmy "that the matter rest with the disciplinary punishment of the case" and that "further measures" not be "directed". Felmy agreed to the suggested procedure. Now if Felmy had no disciplinary jurisdiction at all over an SS unit, just why was his "permission" asked in the first place? And if he could take no steps whatever against an SS leader, why was he asked not to "direct further measures"? Apparently the SS commander was under the impression that Felmy had complete authority in the premises. If Felmy was as outraged by the actions of the SS as he now claims to have been, why did he consent to mere "disciplinary punishment?"
If he had no jurisdiction to act, why was he requested not to do so? Felmy admits that his hand-written note agreeing to the regimental proposal was "illogical" and that, strictly speaking, he should have written that he had no authority to act. Felmy's only explanation for his "illogical" action is that "sometimes one makes mistakes". But the same so-called mistake was made by Field Marshal von Weichs, who in his turn agreed to let the matter rest.
What is even more significant is that the protests of Minister Neubacher against the Distomon outrage were addressed not to Himmler, but to the Army Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal von Weichs. Not only was the SS regimental commander, who certainly ought to have known better, misled concerning the matter of his subordination to the Army, but Minister Neubacher was similarly deceived. The immunity of SS troops from disciplinary measures imposed by the Army seems to be much clearer here in Nurnberg than it was in Greece three years ago.
Felmy is also implicated in the execution of the Commando Order. Though he cannot recall ever having received it -- under oath one must be certain of one's testimony, he points out -- he learned of it, because "one always learns about such things." Incidentally, we recall that List, the fifth ranking Field Marshall in the German Army, testified that he had never heard of the Commissar Order until he came to Nurnberg. Felmy did receive the Commando Order. An entry in the war diary of Army Group E for 15 March 1944 indicates that teletype instructions were sent to the LXVIIIth Army Corps emphasizing the importance of capturing and obtaining information from British commandos and of disposing of them in accordance with the Hitler order. On 18 July 1944, Army Group E reported to the Commander-in-Chief Southeast that one of the commandos wounded during a British Commando operation against the island of Calina, a Sergeant John Dryden, had been flown to Athens on 5 July to be handed over to the SD in accordance with the Fuehrer order. Ever since Speidel's departure from Athens in May 1944, Felmy was in complete charge of all German agencies stationed and operating in that city.
Can there be any doubt that this British sergeant was turned over to the SD through General Felmy's headquarters? Felmy, unlike his fellow defendants, was brash enough to say that he considered the Commando Order perfectly lawful.
Felmy also assisted in the work of the peculiarly-Nazi agencies of the Third Reich. His relationship to the Rosenberg detachment, which was subordinate to him for economic and disciplinary purposes when he was Commander Southern Greece in 1941, has already been touched upon. He believed that the Rosenberg units were simply confiscating subversive political literature, an activity in which he saw no harm. The fact that art treasures were also being looted and that literature written by Jews was the particular object of confiscation had apparently no significance at all in his appraisal of the lawfulness of the activity of Rosenberg's agents.
Only one reference to Felmy's slave labor activities need be mentioned. On 31 October 1943 the 1st Panzer Division reported to the LXVIIIth Corps that it had arrested about 3,000 persons who were going to be sent to the Reich for forced labor. Felmy, of course, pretends to have heard nothing at all about that action though he admits that he sent on to his subordinate units every order concerning deportation which he ever received from higher agencies. He blandly admits that he did not waste time on considerations of the legality or the illegality of orders which he received from his superiors.
Felmy relies in effect upon military necessity in defense of the reprisal measures which he ordered and which were executed by his units. But even his own affiants state that Felmy always made difficulties concerning reprisal measures because in his opinion "they cost more lives of German soldiers". His witness, Dr. Gunther Altenburg, stated that he, Altenburg, considered the German reprisal measures taken in Greece to be criminal, and that they were the motivating cause for his application to Ribbentrop to be transferred from his post as representative of the Foreign Office in Greece.
More than 1400 innocent Greeks were killed at Kalavritha, more than 200 at Klissura, and nearly 300 at Distomon. Three hundred and twenty-five hostages were killed in retaliation for the death of General Krech and several hundred more in the course of retaliations for German wounded in November and December 1943 and the first two months of 1944. Professor Stadtmueller's estimate of the quantum of Felmy's crime leaves no doubt of the diligence and industry with which he worked.
COURT NO. V, CASE NO. VII.
BY MR. FENSTERMACHER:
Mr. Rapp will continue with the Prosecution's closing argument concerning General Speidel.
BY MR. RAPP:
General Wilhelm Speidel described himself as a man set apart from his German colleagues in Greece by his interest and respect for the ancient culture of Attica. He was constantly torn, he says, by a conflict between his own ideals and those of Nazism. There is little doubt, however, where Speidel's true political faiths lay. As early as 15 March 1939, even before the outbreak of war, he was characterized by his then superior in the Luftwaffe, Albert Kesselring, as an officer "who incorporates in himself the ideals of National Socialism".
Speidel was in Greece continuously for almost two years. He served as Commander South Greece from September 1942 until August 1943 when, following the reorganization of the Southeast Command, he was named Military Commander Greece, a capacity in which he served until the end of May 1944.
He was not in Greece long before he executed his first batch of hostages. On 10 July 1943 he reported to the Commander-in-Chief Southeast that he had executed 15 hostages in Athens and 3 on the island of Salamis in reprisal for several sabotage attacks on the island's search light post. On the witness stand his excuse for this was that these attacks were all part of a centrally directed conspiracy against the Germans. The report itself, however, indicates that the attempts were sporadic and unsuccessful and constituted no planned threat to German security.
Speidel had no idea who the hostages were, how they had been chosen, or from whence they had been seized.
Although he vividly remembered their execution, he could not say whether the hostages were from Athens or from the island of Salamis. Speidel of course denied that these particular victims were chosen from a hostage camp. At the time of the hostage executions the actual perpetrators of the attacks were still undiscovered. For all Speidel knew the unsuccessful saboteurs might have been British commandos. He admitted that the hostages had not been seized beforehand; that their names and addresses had not been published; and that no announcement to the population that the named individuals were being held as security against attacks upon a German installation at Salamis had been made. Speidel thus even violated the requirements prescribed by even those few German commentators on international law who say that hostages may lawfully be executed.
Speidel confessed to a second hostage execution while he was Commander Southern Greece. On 5 July 1943, he reported the execution of 10 hostages on the part of the Germans and 9 by the Italians, in reprisal for the explosion of a magnetic mine fastened to the bow of the Italian steamer "Citta di Savona" in the harbor of Pireaeus. The only casualties from the explosion were 69 horses, but General Speidel did not feel that the execution of 19 guiltless individuals was an excessive or disproportionate retaliation. These hostages were executed even while investigations to ascertain the true culprits were still under way. The report mentioned that the mine might have been attached to the ship while it was at Patras. Neither Speidel nor anyone else can explain how the execution of hostages from Athens could possibly be expected to prevent sabotage actions several hundred kilometers away. In this case, too, he admitted that the hostages had been seized only after the attack had occurred.
One of the activities which took up part of Speidel's time was strike-breaking. In a move tantamount to pick out every tenth worker and threatening him with execution, Speidel forced the Greeks to remain at their jobs by taking hostages from their number. Following the execution of the 19 hostages in retaliation for the incident involving the "Citta di Savona", Greek labor staged a sit-down strike. Speidel dealt with that action by issuing a severe antistrike decree, dated 27 June 1943, which threatened harsh reprisals, including the execution of hostages, if there were any additional strikes in the future.
The report of the Military Commander Greece, dated 13 March 1944, seated that partial strikes on railroads and in several plants at the beginning of that month were "suppressed by energetic military measures - 50 communists were shot immediately, while others who were arrested are awaiting their sentences." Speidel pointed out that at the time the 50 communists were actually shot, he was on leave in Germany. That is of no importance. When his deputy, General Pflugradt, ordered the executions, he was merely carrying our Speidel's prior decree, with which he was thoroughly familiar. Speidel himself admitted having sent all of his anti-strike directives to Pflugradt who as Commander of Administrative Sub-Area Headquarters 395 at Saloniki was directly subordinate to him.
Speidel has a peculiar theory of responsibility for acts ordered while his deputy, rather than he, was physically present at headquarters. He maintains that even if his deputy was effectuating Speidel's own orders, the deputy was acting upon his own.
Speidel's credibility is indicated by his entire disclaimer of knowledge of this incident, though the report was dated the day after he returned to his office.
Apparently, the execution of 50 miserable "communists" was not of sufficient importance for him to have discussed it with his chief of staff or for it to have aroused his attention when he saw it mentioned in his own report.
From September 1943 until May 1944 General Speidel, as Military Commander, was given the task of maintaining peace, order and security in Greece. He assigned an area of security to the 18th SS Police Mountain Regiment and served as the channel through which tactical orders for the combatting of the bands in that area were given. Speidel pointed out on direct examination that since the Higher Police and SS Leader in Greece had the right to commit Evzone detachments in combat or for police raids, he had the right to order reprisals for losses suffered by the Evzones in such operations. On his own theory, Speidel is responsible for the reprisal excesses which the 18th SS Police Mountain Regiment committed.
It is for the reprisal measures which were committed by units subordinate to Speidel in the sphere of police functions, as opposed to tactical or combat tasks, however, that the Prosecution's case against General Speidel is largely based. The Higher Police and SS Leader for Greece, General Schimana, was in charge of the organization and training of the Greek police forces but it was Speidel who supervised their establishment, limited their size and was responsible in the last analysis for their performance. It is for the reprisal measures which Schimana took to avenge losses of German and Greek police throughout Greece, and to combat individual acts of sabotage in and around the city of Athens, that we hold Speidel liable. That severe measures of retaliation were taken is clearly evident from Speidel's own war diary.