 THE
Foreign Secretary
[left, Anthony
Eden] has now prepared lists of
major German and Italian war criminals.
The lists are confined to individuals
whose position or reputation is such that
public opinion will not object to their
guilt being taken for granted without
being established by any form of legal
proceedings. The assumption is that they
will be punished by some form of "summary
action" based solely on their
identification: this is understood to mean
summary execution by the first allied
authority into whose hands they fall. The
likelihood is that the task will fall to
some military authority. The individuals
in the lists have not been chosen solely
because they hold high posts of a certain
character, but because they personify the
worst and most extreme features of Nazism
and Fascism.
The lists contain the name of only one
professional soldier, namely
Field-Marshal Keitel. He ranks as a
Reich minister and holds what in this
country would be a Cabinet appointment.
Other high ranking Service officers are
excluded, because in their case it would
be practically impossible to distinguish
between general political responsibility
and the responsibility of professionals
who are merely carrying out the regime's
orders. This is no doubt a sound
principle, because it would be an entirely
new doctrine that a soldier carrying out
the orders of his Government was ipso
facto guilty in the same sort of sense as
his political masters. The lesser service
authorities will, of course, remain liable
to be tried for particular war crimes and
will where possible be left to be dealt
with by the individual country concerned
on the basis of the general war criminals
procedure envisaged in the Moscow
Declaration.  As
regards Field-Marshal Keitel,
[far left, with
Göring, Dönitz, Himmler and
Bormann] it would presumably be
made clear in advance that he has
forfeited any right to be treated as a
prisoner of war, which would otherwise be
his status. 'To take the case of Germany alone, in
addition to Field-Marshal Keitel on the
one hand, and the probably small number of
professional Service men chargeable with
particular war crimes, there be a large
body of Service men against whom there
appear to be no proposed sanctions for
good behaviour at all. In the case of
those who do not see fit to commit
suicide, the officers of high rank and
ability will either stay in their own
country and become leaders of
para-military activity; or else they will
go abroad and probably hire their services
to foreign Governments as military
advisers. Presumably the first of these
two classes will have to be kept under
"Commission control"; the second class
might possibly be eliminated by making it
an "unfriendly act" for the Government of
any country to employ the services of a
German military adviser in any capacity.
The Foreign Secretary (in para. 8 (b))
refers to "our express aim to extirpate
Prussian militarism". If the matter is
left simply to legal process, there will
be very wide opportunities for Prussian
militarism to keep itself alive, and to
preserve its professional and technical
ability. (Sanctions such as that suggested
against German military advisers fall
outside the scope of this paper, but the
subject does not appear to be under
separate consideration.) 22nd June, 1944. See:
"Draft
of a suggested telegram to be sent by
the President and the Prime Minister to
Marshal
Stalin,"
September 17, 1944. FDR Library. |
write to David
Irving