General Boehme seems to have been temperamentally qualified for his job. On 10 October he issued an order changing the elastic "50 to 100 to 1" Keitel ratio to the flat and arbitrary quota of 100 hostages for each German soldier or Volksdeutsche killed and 50 for each one wounded. List was informed of this improved version of the Keitel directive, but again those humane instincts that he had described here fail somehow to make themselves heard. He never uttered a murmur of disapproval of Boehme's action.
Early in October the incident at Grabovac occurred. The partisans had forced certain farmers there to cut down ten telegraph poles. One of the farmers was released after an interrogation by the police. List opinioned to Boehme that the farmer should not have been turned loose and asked what reprisal measures had been taken against the inhabitants of the village for the damage to the telegraph poles. The response came in two installments, the first of which reported that Boehme had ordered every fifth house in the village to be burned down. This was supplemented later by the information that the whole village had been burned and that 73 inhabitants had been shot. List now says that Boehme was harsher than he intended. We submit that Boehme's only fault was that he was literal-minded. In any case, List did not communicate his misgivings about the correctness of the measure to anyone at the time.
Three more of Boehme's actions are worthy of mention. On 2 October, twenty-one members of a German signal regiment were attacked and killed by a detachment of partisans. Two days later, on 4 October, General Boehme ordered that 2100 Serbs be shot. List now says that the communications between Athens and Belgrade were constantly being interrupted and that he did not hear of Boehme's order until after it had already been executed. He was certainly informed about the attack on the German unit and of the number of German losses.
Boehme had already given sufficient proof of the stuff of which not only his dreams but his actions were made to put any sane man on notice that after an incident of this kind steps should be taken to find out what Boehme intended to do next, especially in view of the orders to Boehme which list had previously issued or passed on.
There was ample time for list to make such an investigation. The report shows that the executions did not begin until 9 October and that only 449 people had been shot by the 11th. List had more than a week to inform himself of this impending slaughter and to stop it. He made no effort to do so and he now puts forth the feeble excuse that he did not hear about the order before 8 October and at that time he went to Crete on an inspection tour and did not got back until October 11th. Who could possibly be convinced by such fanciful makebelieve.
Boehme carried out two massacres during October 1941. He ordered 2200 Serbs to be executed in reprisal for German losses totalling ten dead and twenty-four wounded near Topola and 2300 more to be shot at Kragujcvac for German losses totalling nine dead and twenty-six wounded suffered at Gr. Milanovac. The first incident occurred on the 10th and the second on the 20th. List says that he was sick in the hospital at the time these took place. What we have already said about the holiday-sick leave argument in general is sufficient answer to this. Further, Boehme was List's personal representative in Serbia. He received his directives only from, and was answerable only to List. Not a single one of these butcheries would have been ordered by him if list had expressed his disapproval. On the other hand, there is not a single one of these measures which is not fully authorized and justified by the series of orders which Boehme had received from List. Whether List was physically present in a hospital in Athens, or in his headquarters office, or in the mountains of the moon is completely irrelevant. He put the bomb in the mail box before he left.
The same can be said of the manner in which he seeks to avoid guilt for the two mass executions in Greece on 17 October 1941. In the course of these glorious martial enterprises the entire population of two villages, Ano and Keto Kerzilion, was shot. The martyrdom of these people may not have been well publicized as that of the inhabitants of Lidice. When the Germans had finished, they had done just as thorough a job in Greece as they had done in Czechoslovakia. Again List is bold enough to assert that he was in the hospital when all of that happened.
The Prosecution has charged these defendants with having employed the Army to carry out the anti-semetic ideals of the Third Reich. Like a Brahmin among untouchables, List denied that anything of this sort was done by the troops under his command. Nevertheless, the entire Jewish population of Belgrade was incarcerated in a concentration camp in the summer and fall of 1941. Nor was it accidental that so many Jews were exterminated in the reprisal measures of July to October. For example, all of the victims of the carnage ordered by Boehme on 4 October were Jews. List's capacity for contributing to the richness and depth of the German language by giving ordinary words definitions that are almost startling in their novelty has already been pointed out. The documents repeatedly mention the concentration camps at Sabac, Zasaviza and Semlin. List met this by another performance of semantic alchemy; after the word "concentration camp" had bubbled and glowed in his alembic and crucibles, it came out marvelously refined and transmuted to mean "collecting camp".
The connection between List and the Rosenberg detachments may tend to be forgotten, overshadowed as it is by the other enormities which we have mentioned. The object of these units was to comb Europe for rare books and art treasuries besides Jewish and Masonic literature and to haul the former back to Germany and burn the latter before it could "contaminate" further. List's indignation at being associated with this dacoital organization, like his disapproval of the policy of executing hostages, come a little late.
There is in evidence an order of the XII Army dated on 19 April 1941 announcing that a Rosenberg unit had permission to operate in the area. Four days later Rosenberg informed the Nazi Enoch Arden, Martin Bormann, that Field Marshal List had made it possible for his units to be employed in close liaison with the SD at Salonika, one of the largest Jewish centers in Greece. In May, 1941 the commandant of rear army area #560 ordered his subordinate headquarters to cooperate with and support the Rosenberg units in the execution of their tasks. Their tasks were set forth without apparent shame. In October, List's Chief of Staff, the defendant Foertsch, issued an order assigning a Rosenberg detachment to General Felmy for ration, quarters and discipline. It seems a little superfluous even to suggest that the Rosenberg detachments worked hand in glove with the Army because it is obvious that they could not have gone into occupied territory without the Army's permission in the first place. But these examples merely show the extent to which these three specific defendants -- List, Foertsch and Felmy -- were involved in this robbery. Their denials of any such connection are simply one more indication of the weight which should be attached to their testimony.
Finally, List is charged with having carried out the Commissar Order. He was Commander in Chief of Army Group A in Russia from 7 July to 10 September 1942, and he now says that he never even heard of the order, much less of its execution during that time. The improbability of this is shown very clearly by the testimony of General von Leyser who was only a divisional commander in Russia at that time. When he was asked whether he knew about it, his response was, "Yes, this Commissar Order was generally known and everyone was talking about it." If everyone was talking about it and if corps commanders were discussing it at meetings of their subordinates, it seems unlikely that an armygroup commander, who was also the fifth ranking Field Marshal in one entire German Army, could have been successful in isolating himself from reality to the extent that List claims for himself.
What makes it even more unlikely is that we have introduced in evidence here three examples of reports made by units subordinated to List at that time in which the execution of commissars is described. These denials and confessions of ignorance on List's part are so transparent that it is embarrasing to repeat them.
The details as to the exact time when Field Marshal list ceased to be held responsible by OKW for events within this area of command are a little blurred. During rebuttal we introduced an order signed by List on 30 October 1941, a time when he was supposedly too infirm to know, or to be able to rectify if he cared, about excesses within the army. List's annoyance at the resurrection of a decree which he had long believed would never be discovered was matched only by the vociferousness of his counsel's objections to its admissibility. List was embarrassed not only because of the reflections case upon his credibility but also because the basis of his very own theory of military immunity, in addition to his claim of physical and mental incapacity, was brought under serious fire.
List set the tone for the German occupation of Greece and Serbia. He put in motion the machinery that murdered thousands of innocent people There was no one except Hitler who could alter his course and Hitler did not attempt to interfere. List was given a free hand. He used it to wield the Knout (German: Knute) and the bludgeon, to give the signal to the handman and the firing squad. He is the very source and fountainhead of the misery to which these unfortunate people were subjugated during the German soldiery in the Balkans.
By 30 October 1941, however, General Walter Kuntze was already in Athens. On his way there from Berlin he had stopped in Belgrade for a conference with General Boehme whose blood-letting activities were beginning to reach their peak. Kuntze does not recall whether he and Boehme mentioned the three mass executions involving over 6,000 people which had taken place in a three-week period just prior to their meeting.
Even though there were doubtless more important items on the agenda, one would have thought that this matter would have been warranted at least a casual reference.
A word about Kuntze's relation to Liet. Kuntze was sent to Greece as Deputy Armed Forces Commander Southeast and Deputy Chief of Staff of the 12th Army. He arrived in Athens on October 26 and assumed command the following day. List remained physically in Greece until 6 December 1941 and retained his title as Armed Forces Commander Southeast and Commander-in-Chief of 12 Army until August 1942.
To what extent List was consulted by Kuntze during the time that elapsed before List returned to Germany we do not know. It seems inconceivable that Kuntze should not have consulted with his predecessor at least for the purpose of informing himself as to what policies had been followed up till then and particularly since he didn't anticipate remaining long. At any rate, Kuntze does not attempt to lay the responsibility for events which happened during his period on this. And after List left Greece, it is clear that Kuntze though acting as his deputy had every right and power which his predecessor had ever possessed.
Kuntze admits that he was briefed in detail by Foertsch his Chief of Staff, when he arrived in Athens but his recollection of what took place in this meeting is as sketchy as his memory of the subjects discussed between him and Boehme a day or so earlier. He recalls that Foertsch told him about the revolt in Serbia but he does not think he was given any information about the reprisal measures which were taken by the Germans in order to suppress them.
If you believe this testimony, Kuntzehad no knowledge of the Keitel directive of 16 September until some time in December.
Meanwhile the blood-bath was being continued by the worthy Boehme with undiluted energy. As soon as List passed off the stage and Kuntze stepped into his shoes, then he, of course, became Boehme's chief and responsible for Boehme's action to the same extent as List had been.
The citation of just a few of the orders issued by Boehme between the time Kuntze took over and the time Boechme left Serbia on December 6 will suffice to indicate the nature and extent of the kind of activity which Kuntze condoned:
October 30: 800 hostages are to be shot for the murder of eight German prisoners.
October 31: 200 hostages are to be shot in retaliation for the attack on a railway train in which one German soldier was killed and two wounded.
November 19: 250 hostages reported shot in reprisal for losses of the 3rd Battalion of the 697th Inf. Regt.
November 20: 385 hostages are to be shot in retaliation for losses by the same unit.
Nov umber 29: 100 hostages are to be shot in retaliation for the death of Corporal Bernhard Schmidt.
Boehme of course followed the highest ratio mentioned in the Keitel directive: 100:1 in the case of German deaths and 50:1 in the case of German wounded. Kuntze says that this ratio was repugnant to him and he points with pride, as evidence of his own humane attitude, to the fact that Boehme's successor, General Bader, reduced the quotas to a more 50:1 and 25:1. Kuntze claims, but without offering any documentary confirmation, that this innovation was brought about as a result of bis intercession, itself a denial of the independence of the subordinate field commanders that has been vaunted so much throughout this case.
It is difficult to say that the behavior of the German troops after Kuntze's arrival was worse than it had be before because of the inherent difficulty of applying a qualitative measure to brutality. Let us say then that some new practices, intended to make the German reprisal machinery run more efficiently, began to be accepted as part of the normal order of things. Captured partisans were shot on principle. This applied to the wounded as well.
It is hard to tell what Kuntze's defense is to the proof which we have brought of these practices. He seems to say that no apology need by made for shooting captured partisans because their activities were unlawful in the first place, although he does think it regrettable that the wounded were also slaughtered. On the other hand, he said that some of the reports show that the captured partisans were standrechtlich erschossen which he contended meant "shot after a summary court martial", that is, after a full legal hearing. The expression "shot after interrogation" used so often in the reports, was just another way of saying the very same thing, Knutze blandly remarked. If any ambiguity remained on the meaning of this term in actual practice, it was removed by the testimony of Dr. Lattmann, an army judge at OKH headquarters, who said that the phrase conveyed the meaning that no legal proceedings whatever were taken prior to the shooting. Kuntze permitted the basic reprisal orders of list and Boehme to remain outstanding and and acted upon though he was constantly informed of the terrible harvest being reaped in Serbia as a result of them. But Kuntze's actions wore not only negative in nature. He, too, made certain positive contribution to the German campaign of senseless butchery.
In his order of 6 February 1942 he announced:
"The treatment of prisoners in the course of operations requires application of a more severe criterior. Prisoners taken in combat can not be innocent. People who loiter in the combat terrain and are not in their residence, will be mostly considered as having participated in combat and consequently must accordingly be shot to death. The mild conception of the troops is to be combatted most rigorously in view of the same conception during the past summer and the ensuing consequences!"
On 19 March 1942 he issued an even more brutal order which, to insure wide circulation, he distributed in 100 copies. Kuntze urged, the end of indulgence in "false sentimentality", stating that it was preferable that 50 "suspects" be liquidated than that one German soldier lose his life. Other provisions instructed that partisans and civilians be used to clear up mines, and that villages in the neighborhood of which partisan attacks or sabotage actions took place be destroyed, and the inhabitants sent to concentration camps. Finally, he directed that if it were not practicable to apprehend those who participated in the revolt, reprisal measures of a general nature be taken "For instance, the shooting to death of all male inhabitants from the nearest villages according to a definite ratio.
(For instance, one German dead - 100 Serbs, one German wounded 50 Serbs)."
So much for Kuntze's initiative in Serbia. The reports leave no doubt that Kuntze's effort of 19 March was not just baying to the moon.
The picture in Greece was only slightly less gory than that in Serbia. In Kuntze's report of 3 June 1942, it was stated that 50 hostages had been shot to death in Crete in retaliation for sabotage and attacks on the airport at Iraklion. On 10 June a report, signed by Foertsch, said that hostages had been shot in Athens in retaliation for attacks on armored cars and that a number of hostages had been shot in Crete as a reprisal measure for the murder of officials appointed by the German authorities.
To unravel Kuntze's incomprehensible explanations for this sanguine record is a task which we willingly hand over to his defense counsel. It sterns to be a mixture of lack of knowledge, military necessity, superior orders, plus an argument that more of the reprisal victims were captured partisans rather than innocent civilians. All poured together in no particular proportions nor in any special sequence. He says in one breath that he was forced to do various things because of the heavy pressure which was put on him by the OKW, and in the next that he deserves credit for having circumvented and modified the orders of the OKW.
In the latter connection he said that in order to deceive the OKW, many partisans were reported to be "temporarily arrested". Kuntze says that the High Command assumed that these people were to be shot, whereas in fact they were not. As at least four documents introduced here show that persons in the temporary arrested categories were shot in large numbers, we are inclined to doubt that there was any such deception.
Kuntze also denies that the Army had anything to do with the Jewish extermination program or with the institution of concentration camps, As time and again in his reports we find references to the number of Jews in concentration camps mentioned alongside the figures showing the number of hostages and reprisal prisoners being held, Kuntze' memory appears to be wholly unreliable.
So far as the Commissar Order is concerned, we have introduced a report made by the Field Gendarne Squad attached to the 61st Infantry Division which was subordinate to Kuntze's 42nd corps in Russia. This report enumerates the execution of 18 commissars and politruks over a two-day period alone. The rest of the report is riddled with references to the shootings of additional commissars and politruks. Kuntze, of course, says that his commanding general had instructed him, in spite of the Commissar order, to treat captured commissars as prisoners of war, and that he in turn instructed his subordinate units to the same effect. The reliability of the report as opposed to Kuntze's credibility is the issue before the court on this point.
If the guilt of these men is to be measured by mere statistics, it is true beyond question that Kuntze has the blood of more innocent people on his hands than any defendant in the dock.
FOERTSCH AND GETTNER We turn now to the defendants Foertsch and Geitner.
It is natural to consider them together because within their respective commands they occupied identical positions.
Both were Chiefs of Staff and both attempt to base their defense mainly upon the nature of the powers, duties and responsibilities which were the concomitants and appurtenances of the position of chief of staff. Of all the defendants in the dock these two men stayed longest in the Southeast. The three men who held the position of Commanding General of the 12th Army were List, Kuntze and Loehr. The 12th Army was succeeded by Army Group E and Army Group F commanded by von Weichs. Foertsch was Chief of Staff to all four of these men, which is to say that he occupied the position of Chief of Staff to the highest authority in Greece and Yugoslavia from the beginning of the German occupation until March 1944. It was through him that continuity in the policies of the German Army in the Balkans was preserved.
Geitner occupied the corresponding position on the staff of the German Commanding General in Serbia and later the Military Commander Southeast. He went to Serbia in July of 1942 as Bader's Chief of Staff and continued to serve under Bader's successor, General Felber, until October 1944.
We have already given a few examples of the crimes which were committed in Serbia and Greece during the reigns of List and Kuntze. It is our position that the blame for these murders ought not to rest altogether on them but should certainly be shared by their Chief of Staff. By asking the court to give Foertsch part of the credit for these occurrences, we do not feel that we are causing List and Kuntze any real deprivation. There is enough crime to go around.
Further, it would be unfair not to give Foertsch, the tactical and political high priest of the Southeast Command, some of the credit. We have mentioned the various orders which List and Kuntze either wrote or passed on to their subordinates. Foertsch had a hand in almost every one. He actually forwarded the Keitel order of 28 September 1941, which decreed that persons from all walks of the population be arrested as hostages and shot in the event of hostile actions against the occupation power.
He passed on the OKW order of 7 February 1942 which demanded that fewer partisans be taken prisoner and that brutal police measures be used to break the backbone of the insurgent movement. He advised Kuntze to issue the order of 19 March which has already been mentioned -- the one which stated that it was preferable for 50 "suspects" to be liquidated than for one German soldier to be killed, -and after he had prepared the draft which Kuntze signed, it was Foertsch who passed the order on.
But his activities continued, of course, long after List and Kuntze had departed. It is unnecessary to recapitulate the text of the infamous Commando Order of 18 October 1942. Foertsch passed this on to the subordinate units and ten days later drafted and initialed a supplement to it which General Loehr then signed. When Foertsch originally described this supplement on the witness stand, he said that it in effect countermanded the Commando Order. At that time the document itself was not in evidence. Then a photostatic copy of the supplement was shown to him on cross-examination. He then said that the supplement had no reference to the Commando Order whatever but only applied to the partisans, despite the fact that it sets out in black and white that the method of warfare employed by British and American commandos is unlawful and that those who engage in it are not to be regarded as members of an armed power. No paraphrase could do justice to the vicious language which Foertsch employed. Nor could anything we say about the credibility of his testimony be as damning as a comparison between the actual contents of this order and the explanations which its author gave of it on the witness stand.
Foertsch contends that the Commando Order was never even intended to be carried out in the Southeast and that he went out of his way to advise the commanders of subordinate units to treat captured commandos as prisoners of war.
This is contradicted by the documents introduced during the cross-examination of the defense affiants Colonel von Harling and General Winter, both of whom personally participated in the turning over to the SD of at least three different groups of commandos. Winter, Foertsch's successor as Chief of Staff of Army Group E and later Army Group F, testified that he and Foertsch discussed the question of the treatment of commandos captured during a raid on the Greek island of Alimnia. On 27 April 1944, scarcely a month after Foertsch's physical departure from Army Group F, the Commander-inChief Southeast ordered Army Group E to retain the English radio operator Carpenter and the Greek sailor Lisgaris, captured on the island of Alimnia, for interrogation purposes. The remaining prisoners captured in that particular commando raid were ordered turned over to the SD for interrogation and then final "special treatment", the latter a term whose meaning von Harling's testimony saved from ambiguity. There can be little doubt that tho Winter-Foertsch conversation referred to this very group of commandos. These men, and the many other commandos captured in the Southeast, would never have been murdered if the Commando Order together with its vicious supplement had not been passed on down the line by Foertsch.
So far we have only mentioned acts which were committed by Foertsch in conjunction with his commanding officers, but there is a multitude of iniquities for which he is solely responsible. When General Lontschar was killed in Serbia, Foertsch noted in his own handwriting on the margin of the report, "What counter-measures? Why no hostages in Waljewo?" The burning of Skela and the hanging of fifty inhabitants because they had not warned the Germans ahead of time that a vehicle would be attacked there. This was done by Foertsch's specific order which he gave over the telephone to Colonel von Gravenhorst. The war diary kept at Felber's headquarters contains an entry on 26 November 1942 that the Army chief of staff lead requested by telephone that all mayors who remained passive were to be shot to death.
The report which Foertsch made on 15 December of the same year is still another example of his handiwork. In it he concluded that civilians should be used for the patrolling of railroad tracks and that in case of damage by sabotage the persons assigned to the patrolling measures should be called to account and, if necessary, shot. The report also advises the use of the population "extensively and ruthlessly for the construction of fortifications."
What has been said already about the connection of List and Kuntze with the liquidation of Jews, concentration camps, and the activities of the Rosenberg units applies oven more strongly to Foertsch. It is conceivable perhaps that List or Kuntze were not aware in detail of all the happenings within their area of command. But for a Chief of Staff to plead lack of knowledge is tantamount to an argument by him that he deliberately neglected his duty. It was his business to know the intelligence officers and operations officers who were his immediate subordinates. If Foertsch had been inefficient or ignorant, he would not have remained as Chief of Staff from 1941 until 1944 and have been successively promoted from Colonel to Major General.
It is most significant that Foertsch never once criticized Boehme or Bader to his commanders-in-chief and that he never recommended that any disciplinary measures be taken against Stahl or Buebler or any of the other divisional commanders whose troops had engaged in those murderous orgies. Indeed, it would have been completely incomprehensible for him to have criticized them for having allowed or ordered their troops to do what Foertsch had unceasingly counseled and recommended.
Before we discuss the defenses which Foertsch attempts to use, let us first look at the evidence against Geitner, his counterpart in Serbia. We have already described the bestialities committed by the German troops in Serbia under General Bader. They were continued after Courts 5, Case 7 his replacement by Felber.
Geitner was Chief of Staff to both. The evidence shows that during this entire period, hostages were being killed regularly in numbers based on the standard ratio of 50-to-1 and sometimes 100-to-1. At the same time, villages were being burned, captured partisans shot, partisan suspects thrown into concentration camps and the relatives of partisans given the third degree. The documents show that Geitner interested himself in the management of the Semlin concentration camp, that he requested an increase in the deportation of Serbs to Germany, and was present at conferences on the so-called Croatian labor recruitment program.
The carnage that went on under the aegis of Bader and Geitner is almost indescribable. The orders which they issued excel in brutality even the directives of the OKW. They ordered, for example, that the established reprisal quotas for dead and wounded should be extended to missing German soldiers. Later, the ratios were also applied to Serbian civil servants, although since a Serbian life was less valuable than a German life, the ratios were naturally smaller; only ten hostages were to be executed for each Serb killed and five for each wounded.
Generally, the philosophy behind hostage executions was that if the actual perpetrator of a hostile act were not apprehended, other people would be punished in his stead. Geitner and Bader, however, passed beyond this. For example, on 4 December 1942, two officers were fired upon and wounded by a 20-year-old woman who later shot herself. In spite of the fact that the assailant was known, the division to which the two officers belonged obtained authority to execute 50 hostages in reprisal. When one of the officers later died, they obtained permission to shoot an additional 25 hostages.
The ferocity and obvious senselessness of such measures, from a deterrent standpoint, can only lead one to believe that so far as Geitner and his commander were concerned, the main object of these killings was simply to thin out the Serbian population upon any or no pretext. Geitner himself in an unguarded moment on the witness stand admitted that the main purpose of these executions was vengeance and the extermination of the Serbs.
It goes without saying that Geitner's initials appear on almost all of the orders and reports concerning the carrying out of reprisal measures. One order dated 5 January, 1943, directs that 35 hostages be shot in retaliation for the killing of two village elders and a Serbian border official and for the wounding of a civil servant. Geitner's name is signed to this document. A week later Geitner initialed another order approving the execution of ten hostages for the murder of a Serbian mayer. The citation of further examples could go on almost indefinitely.
Geitner could not even remember the Commando Order but he was absolutely positive that no commandos were ever executed in the Southeast. This must have been an accidental lapse of memory because the proof shows that on 22 May 1944, five British soldiers captured in the course of a commando operation on the Adriatic island of Oljet were turned over by the Army to the SD in Belgrade. The documents which we introduced as Exhibits 651 and 652 make it quite clear that these men could only have been handed over to the SD on orders of Geitner or Felber.
So much for the evidence against these men. We how turn to the defense on which they rely most heavily, the argument that it is legally erroneous to hold a chief of staff criminally liable for acts committed by troops subordinate to the staff. The duties of the chief of staff, they say, are purely ministerial in nature. He is, in fact, nothing more than a combination secretary, proof-reader, office boy and postman for the commanding officer. It is evident as one considers their testimony that any normal 14-year-old boy could have performed this function as well as anyone else, and one wonders at the outset how the German Army could have been so improvident of its money, manpower, and brains as to waste a person of the rank, experience and intelligence of Foertsch and Geitner on such unimportant assignments.
Having established their insignificance and having deprecated their tasks almost to the point of non-existence, they say that it would be a monstrous injustive for them to be allotted any of the blame for the orders which they drafted, for the orders which they signed, for the orders which they read, corrected and initialed, and for the part which they played in seeing to it that these orders were carried out. This necessitates a brief analysis of the powers and duties of a chief of staff in the German Army and his relationship to his commanding officer.
Prior to the Hitlerian era, a chief of staff in the German Army occupied the status of an absolute equal of the troop commander. The most powerful group within the German Army were the members of the General Staff Corps who over a period of years had entrenched themselves as a corps d' elite which had arrogated unto itself powers which were almost unique. The amazing result of such a development was that a chief of staff whether he was attached to a corps, an army or an army group could take exception to anything that the troops commander did, whether it dealt with strategy, tactics, or basic policy; and in case the two could not reach agreement, the chief of staff could take an appeal through a separate channel of command to the Chief of the General Staff of the entire German Army.
This situation continued until 1938 when Hitler, jealous and afraid of this military oligarchy, stripped the General Staff of these extraordinary powers and decreed that the final decision on the issuance of orders in case of a disagreement with his chief would rest with the troop commender.
It is this change in the status of the chief of staff upon which Foertsch and Geitner rely in their effort to exonerate themselves from the charges brought against them here. That the effect of this change was not nearly so radical as these defendants would have us believe is clearly shown by the Rote Esel, or "red donkey", the familiar handbook for General Staff officers which was issued after the change was made. It roads in part:
"At the head of the Staff stands the Chief of the General Staff. He is the first counselor of the Commanderin-chief in all fields. Close relationship and confidence between both are indispensable as an enduring basis for the beneficial labor of the commanding authority.....
"The Commander-in-Chief has to listen to the Chief of the General Staff, if instant issuing of commands is not necessary, before operational and tactical decisions are made. The Chief has the right and the duty of presenting his point of view and making suggestions.....
"The Chief of the General Staff examines all drafts before they are presented to the Commander-in-Chief."
Further, even though the purpose of Hitler's decree was to do away with the command function of the Chief of Staff, even this was not fully achieved, because the handbook went on to say:
"Simultaneous absence of the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the General Staff from the command post should be avoided. If the situation demands a quick decision and the Commander-in-Chief is absent and not to be reached at once, the Chief of the General Staff is required to decide and command....
"Except concerning those soldiers senior to him, the Chief of Staff of an Army Group or an Army has the disciplinary powers of punishment of a divisional commander, the Chief of Staff of a Corps, that of a Regimental commander."
It frequently happened during World War II that a German Chief of Staff would issue orders on his own initiative during the absence of his commander. An example of this kind was discussed during the cross-examination of General Dehner whose Chief of Staff had issued a rather basic and general order concerning the combat of partisans while Dehner was on leave.
We have already mentioned that the Chief of Staff was in change of the administration of intelligence and operations. He received reports from subordinate units; evaluated the enemy position and strength; outlined strategy; suggested, drafted, signed and distributed orders; and forwarded the reports from subordinate units on to higher headquarters. He called conferences of the various commanders; consulted with military, political and diplomatic representatives; and helped to formulate basic policies for the military and civilian administration of the occupied territory. It was a rare commander indeed who was egotistical or reckless enough to make an important decision without first consulting with his Chief of Staff.
The General Staff bible, to which we have already averted, states that a Chief of Staff must feel the pulse beat of his unit at all times and that he be "distinguished by clear creative thinking and logical behavior, determined energy, untiring working power and self-discipline, and physical freshness". These are rather high standards to require of a combination secretary-messenger boy.
We can easily see from Foertsch's own literary production, "The officer of the New Wehrmacht", how likely it was that he restricted his activities to the licking of stamps and the dusting of desk-tops while Chief of Staff to the most powerful men in the Balkans.
In that book Foertsch wrote:
"Soldierly leadership rests on the joy of responsibility. It is one of the finest but also one of the most difficult virtues of a leader. The greatest enemy of true leadership is anonymity. This appears in various forms; at times in the nameless authority of an office, i.e. in bureaucracy; at times in the conscience crawling behind a higher order, law or regulation; at times in the attempt to deny 'responsibility' in the event of failure in a given act."
Since the whole theory of the guiltlessness of the Chief of Staff is based upon a variation of the superior orders plea, the irony in this passage is particularly pointed.
What has already been said should be enough to demonstrate the incongruousness of arguing that because a man was Chief of Staff he ought to be exonerated of all responsibility for the orders which his Commander issued, particularly when he had a hand in their making and at times even issued them above his own signature. Field Marshal Keitel made the same argument before the International Military Tribunal. Keitel was Hitler's Chief of Staff and he testified that as such it was his duty to express his opinions regarding matters upon which Hitler proposed to act. Jodl was Hitler's Ia or operations officer.
Just as the operations officer served as deputy for the Chief of Staff when the latter was away from headquarters, so Jodl acted as Keitel's deputy during his absences. Both men made contentions similar to those being advanced by Foertsch and Geitner here.