The Hostages Trial was held from
8 July 1947 until 19 February 1948 and was the seventh of the twelve trials for war crime

War crime

War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...

s the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 in Nuremberg

Nuremberg

Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...

 after the end of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials

Subsequent Nuremberg Trials

The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials were a series of twelve U.S...

" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).

This case is also known as the "Southeast Case" because the defendants were all German generals leading the troops in south-eastern Europe during the Balkans Campaign, i.e. in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

, Albania

Albania

Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

, and what was then Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

, and they were charged as those responsible for the hostage-taking of civilians and wanton shootings of these hostages and of "partisans" that the German troops committed there in the years from 1941 on.

The judges in this case, heard before Military Tribunal V, were Charles F. Wennerstrum

Charles F. Wennerstrum

Charles F. Wennerstrum was an American lawyer who presided over and sharply criticized some of the Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War II....

 (presiding judge) from Iowa

Iowa

Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

, George J. Burke

George J. Burke

George James Burke, Sr. was one of the judges during the Nuremberg Trials.Burke was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was the prosecuting attorney of Washtenaw County, Michigan from 1911 to 1914. He is interred at St. Thomas Cemetery in Ann Arbor.-External links:*...

 from Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

, and Edward F. Carter from Nebraska

Nebraska

Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....

. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor

Telford Taylor

Telford Taylor was an American lawyer best known for his role in the Counsel for the Prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, his opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, and his outspoken criticism of U.S...

, the chief prosecutor for this case was Theodore Fenstermacher. The indictment

Indictment

An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...

 was filed on May 10, 1947; the trial lasted from July 8, 1947 until February 19, 1948. Of the 12 defendants indicted, Franz Böhme

Franz Böhme

Franz Friedrich Böhme was an Austrian who later went on to become a military officer...

 committed suicide before the arraignment

Arraignment

Arraignment is a formal reading of a criminal complaint in the presence of the defendant to inform the defendant of the charges against him or her. In response to arraignment, the accused is expected to enter a plea...

, and Maximilian von Weichs

Maximilian von Weichs

Maximilian Maria Joseph Karl Gabriel Lamoral Reichsfreiherr von Weichs zu Glon was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves...

 was severed from the trial due to medical reasons. Of the remaining ten defendants, two were acquitted; the others received prison sentences ranging from seven years to lifetime imprisonment.

Indictment

The accused faced four charges of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity:

1. Mass murder
   Mass murder
   Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
   
    of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Greece, Albania, and Yugoslavia by having ordered hostage taking and reprisal killings.
2. Plundering and wanton destruction of villages and towns in Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia.
3. Murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, and arbitrarily designating combatants as "partisans", denying them the status of prisoners of war, as well as their killing.
4. Murder, torture, deportation, and sending to concentration camps of Greek, Albanian, and Yugoslav civilians.

All defendants were indicted on all counts; they all pleaded "not guilty".

The tribunal had to deal with two pressing questions:

1. were partisans "lawful belligerents" and thus entitled the status of prisoners of war?
2. was taking hostages and reprisals against civilians as a "defense" against guerrilla attacks lawful?

On the question of partisans, the tribunal concluded that under the then current laws of war

Laws of war

The law of war is a body of law concerning acceptable justifications to engage in war and the limits to acceptable wartime conduct...

 (the Hague Convention No. IV from 1907

Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)

The Hague Conventions were two international treaties negotiated at international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands: The First Hague Conference in 1899 and the Second Hague Conference in 1907...

), the partisan fighters in southeast Europe could not be considered lawful belligerents under Article 1 of said convention. On List, the tribunal stated

"We are obliged to hold that such guerrillas were francs tireurs who, upon capture, could be subjected to the death penalty. Consequently, no criminal responsibility attaches to the defendant List because of the execution of captured partisans..."

Regarding hostage taking, the tribunal came to the conclusion that under certain circumstances, hostage taking and even reprisal killings might constitute an allowed line of action against guerilla attacks. In the tribunal's opinion, taking hostages (and killing them in retaliation for guerilla attacks) was subject to several conditions. The tribunal also remarked that both the British Manual of Military Law and the U.S. Basic Field Manual (Rules of Land Warfare) permitted the taking of reprisals against a civilian population. (The British manual didn't mention killing, the U.S. manual included killing as a possible reprisal.) Nevertheless, the tribunal still found most of the accused guilty on count 1 of the indictment because it considered the acts committed by the German troops in excess of the rules under which the tribunal considered hostage taking and reprisal killings lawful.

One common line of defense of the accused was the Plea of Superior Orders: they stated that they were only following orders from higher up, in particular from Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 and Field Marshal Keitel

Wilhelm Keitel

Wilhelm Bodewin Gustav Keitel was a German field marshal . As head of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht and de facto war minister, he was one of Germany's most senior military leaders during World War II...

. The tribunal recognized this defense only for some of the lower-ranked defendants, but concluded that in particular the highest-ranking officers, List and Kuntze, should have been well aware of the fact that these orders violated international law and thus should have opposed the execution of these orders, even more so as they were in a position that would have allowed them to do so.

Clarification of military occupation

The Tribunal considered the question of whether the Croatian state was a sovereign entity capable of acting independently of the German military (Germany recognised the Croatian government on 15 April 1941). It concluded that it was not, that military occupation did not depend on the physical deployment of troops (as they could be
redeployed into the territory at will), but on the control exercised by the occupying power. It followed that as the area remained under the control of the occupying power therefore "Logic and reason dictate that the occupant could not lawfully do indirectly that which it could not do directly".

Defendants

Name	Function at time of offense	Charges				Sentence
		1	2	3	4
Wilhelm List	Field Marshal, Commander in Chief South-East 1941-1942, head of the German 12th army in 1941	G	I	G	I	lifetime imprisonment; released in December 1952 due to medical reasons. Died 1971
Maximilian von Weichs Maximilian von Weichs Maximilian Maria Joseph Karl Gabriel Lamoral Reichsfreiherr von Weichs zu Glon was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves...	Field Marshal, commander of the German 2nd army during the Balkans Campaign with the rank of a Generaloberst	I	I	I	I	Removed from the trial due to illness. Died 1954
Lothar Rendulic Lothar Rendulic Generaloberst Lothar Rendulic was an Austro-Hungarian and Austrian Army officer of Croatian origin who served as a German general during World War II. He commanded the 14. Infanterie-Division, 52. Infanterie-Division, XXXV Armeekorps, 2. Panzer-Armee, 20...	Generaloberst, Commander of the 2nd Panzer Army in Yugoslavia 1943-44	G	I	G	G	20 years' imprisonment reduced to 10 years. Released 1951. Died 1971
Walter Kuntze Walter Kuntze Walter Kuntze was a highly decorated General der Pioniere in the Wehrmacht during World War II who commanded the 12. Armee. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross...	General of Engineers, successor of List as Commander in Chief South-East and head of the 12th army as of October 29, 1941	G	I	G	G	lifetime imprisonment. Released 1953. Died 1960
Hermann Foertsch Hermann Foertsch Hermann Foertsch was a highly decorated General der Infanterie in the Wehrmacht during World War II who held commands at the divisional, corps and army levels. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was awarded to recognise extreme...	Generalmajor, Chief of Staff of the 12th army	I	I	I	I	acquitted. Died 1961
Franz Böhme Franz Böhme Franz Friedrich Böhme was an Austrian who later went on to become a military officer...	General of the XVIII Mountain Army Corps (1940–43), successor of Rendulic in 1944	I	I	I	I	Committed suicide on May 30, 1947 (before the arraignment Arraignment Arraignment is a formal reading of a criminal complaint in the presence of the defendant to inform the defendant of the charges against him or her. In response to arraignment, the accused is expected to enter a plea... ).
Hellmuth Felmy Hellmuth Felmy Hellmuth Felmy was a Nazi war criminal, German military officer during World War I, the interwar period, and World War II.-Biography:On 28 May 1885, Helmuth Felmy was born in Berlin in what was then the German Empire...	General; commander of Army Group Southern Greece	G	G	I	I	15 years' imprisonment; reduced to 10 years in 1951. Died 1965
Hubert Lanz Hubert Lanz Karl Hubert Lanz was a German Army officer who rose to the rank of General der Gebirgstruppe during the Second World War, in which he led units in the Eastern Front and in the Balkans. After the war, he was tried and convicted for several atrocities committed by units under his command in the...	General of the XXII Mountain Army Corps (1943–45)	G	I	G	I	12 years' imprisonment; released 1951. Died 1982.
Ernst Dehner Ernst Dehner Ernst Dehner was a highly decorated General der Infanterie in the Wehrmacht during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership. Ernst...	Generalmajor, corps commander under Rendulic	G	I	I	I	7 years' imprisonment; released 1951. Died 1970
Ernst von Leyser Ernst von Leyser Ernst Ulrich Hans von Leyser was a German General der Infanterie during World War II who commanded various Army Corps and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The Knight's Cross was Nazi Germany's highest award for military gallantry and was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield...	General der Infanterie General of the Infantry (Germany) General of the Infantry is a rank of general in the Imperial Army, Reichswehr or Wehrmacht - the second-highest regular rank. The same rank spread to the Imperial Russian Army and the Defence forces of Finland between the world wars... , corps commander under Rendulic and Böhme	I	I	G	G	10 years' imprisonment; released 1951. Died 1962
Wilhelm Speidel	Generalmajor, military commander in Greece 1942-44	G	I	I	I	20 years' imprisonment; released 1951. Died 1970
Kurt Ritter von Geitner	Chief of Staff of the military commanders in Serbia and Greece	I	I	I	I	acquitted. Died 1968

I — Indicted   G — Indicted and found guilty