Related Research Articles
The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals held following World War II by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.
A court-martial or court martial is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment. In addition, courts-martial may be used to try prisoners of war for war crimes. The Geneva Conventions require that POWs who are on trial for war crimes be subject to the same procedures as would be the holding military's own forces. Finally, courts-martial can be convened for other purposes, such as dealing with violations of martial law, and can involve civilian defendants.
Victor's justice is a pejorative term referring to the prosecution of the defeated party's acts in a conflict by the victorious party. Victor's justice generally involves excessive or unjustified punishment of defeated parties and light punishment or clemency for offenses committed by victors. Opponents argue that the difference in rules amounts to hypocrisy and revenge under the guise of retributive justice, leading to injustice, and targets of the label may consider it derogatory.
The pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the Third Reich at the outbreak of World War II but collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war. Hence, this article does not cover former members of the NSDAP and their fates after the war.
Wilhelm Josef Franz Ritter von Leeb was a German field marshal and war criminal in World War II. Leeb was a highly decorated officer in World War I and was awarded the Military Order of Max Joseph which granted him the title of nobility. In the Invasion of France, he commanded Army Group C, responsible for the breakthrough of the Maginot Line.
Hero City is a Soviet honorary title awarded for outstanding heroism during World War II. It was awarded to twelve cities of the Soviet Union. In addition, the Brest Fortress was awarded an equivalent title of Hero Fortress. This symbolic distinction for a city corresponds to the individual distinction Hero of the Soviet Union.
Franz Halder was a German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942. During World War II, he directed the planning and implementation of Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Halder became instrumental in the radicalisation of warfare on the Eastern Front. He had his staff draft both the Commissar Order and the Barbarossa Decree that allowed German soldiers to execute Soviet citizens for any reason without fear of later prosecution, leading to numerous war crimes and atrocities during the campaign. After the war, he had a decisive role in the development of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
The Charter of the International Military Tribunal – Annex to the Agreement for the prosecution and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis was the decree issued by the European Advisory Commission on 8 August 1945 that set down the rules and procedures by which the Nuremberg trials were to be conducted. This then served as a model for the Tokyo Charter issued months later against the Empire of Japan.
A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice are sometimes included, but the term generally refers to capture, accusation, and execution all conducted within a very short period of time, and without any trial. Under international law, refusal to accept lawful surrender in combat and instead killing the person surrendering is also categorized as a summary execution.
During World War II, the Germans' combined armed forces committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labor, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. While the Nazi Party's own SS forces of Nazi Germany was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of the Holocaust, the regular armed forces of the Wehrmacht committed many war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front in the war against the Soviet Union. According to a study by Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, the majority of the Wehrmacht soldiers deployed to the Soviet Union participated in war crimes.
The war crimes which were perpetrated by the Soviet Union and its armed forces from 1919 to 1991 include acts which were committed by the Red Army as well as acts which were committed by the NKVD, including acts which were committed by the NKVD's Internal Troops. In some cases, these acts were committed upon the orders of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in pursuance of the early Soviet Government's policy of Red Terror. In other instances they were committed without orders by Soviet troops against prisoners of war or civilians of countries that had been in armed conflict with the USSR, or they were committed during partisan warfare.
Capital punishment in Finland has been abolished de jure.
The Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices and the Damage They Caused to Citizens, Collective Farms, Public Organizations, State Enterprises and Institutions of the USSR (ChGK) was the state commission of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. The commission was formed by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on November 2, 1942.
Collective punishment is a form of retaliation whereby a suspected perpetrator's family members, friends, acquaintances, sect, class, political affiliation, neighbors or entire ethnic group is targeted. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions. Historically, occupying powers have used collective punishment to retaliate against and deter attacks on their forces by resistance movements.
The Supreme National Tribunal was a war-crime tribunal active in Communist-era Poland from 1946 to 1948. Its aims and purpose were defined by the State National Council in decrees of 22 January and 17 October 1946 and 11 April 1947. The new law was based on an earlier decree of 31 August 1944 issued by the new Soviet-imposed Polish regime, with jurisdiction over "fascist-Hitlerite criminals and traitors to the Polish nation". The Tribunal presided over seven high-profile cases involving a total of 49 individuals.
The Leipzig war crimes trials were trials held in 1921 to try alleged German war criminals of the First World War before the German Reichsgericht in Leipzig, as part of the penalties imposed on the German government under the Treaty of Versailles. Twelve people were tried, and the proceedings were widely regarded at the time as a failure. In the longer term, they were seen by some as a significant step toward the introduction of a comprehensive system for the prosecution of international law violations.
The Borkum Island war crimes trial involved the prosecution of ten German soldiers and five German civilians accused and found guilty of war crimes committed on the island of Borkum against seven American airmen during World War II. The airmen had been deliberately exposed to harassment and subsequently executed.
Some Soviet prisoners of war who survived German captivity during World War II were accused by the Soviet authorities of collaboration with the Nazis or branded as traitors under Order No. 270, which prohibited any soldier from surrendering.
During World War II, the Barbarossa decree was one of the Wehrmacht criminal orders given on 13 May 1941, shortly before Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The decree was laid out by Adolf Hitler during a high-level meeting with military officials on March 30, 1941, where he declared that war against Soviet Russia would be a war of extermination, in which both the political and intellectual elites of Russia would be eradicated by German forces, in order to ensure a long-lasting German victory. Hitler underlined that executions would not be a matter for military courts, but for the organised action of the military. The decree, issued by Field Marshal Keitel a few weeks before Operation Barbarossa, exempted punishable offenses committed by enemy civilians from the jurisdiction of military justice. Suspects were to be brought before an officer who would decide if they were to be shot. Prosecution of offenses against civilians by members of the Wehrmacht was decreed to be "not required" unless necessary for the maintenance of discipline.
Hitler's War in the East, 1941−1945: A Critical Assessment is a 1997 book by the German historians Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär. It surveys the literature on the Soviet–German war of 1941−1945 from the German perspective. Writing in the introduction to the 2002 edition, Gerhard Weinberg describes the book as providing a broad coverage of the conflict, by "stressing ideological and political as well as more specifically military aspects". The book has been updated in subsequent editions, the latest having been issued in 2009.
References
- ↑ Müller & Ueberschär 1997, p. 249.
- ↑ Müller & Ueberschär 1997, pp. 249–250.
- Müller, Rolf-Dieter; Ueberschär, Gerd (1997). Hitler's War in the East 1941−1945: A Critical Assessment. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-84545-501-9.
 | This Soviet Union–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |