American prisoners of war, should on recapture be
handed over to the SIPO and SD. This order was distributed by the
SIPO and SD to their regional offices. These escaped officers and
NCO's were to be sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen, to be
executed upon arrival, by means of a bullet shot in the neck.
In March 1944 fifty officers of the British Royal Air Force, who
escaped from the camp at Sagan where they were confined as prisoners,
were shot on recapture, on the direct orders of Hitler. Their bodies
were immediately cremated, and the urns containing their ashes were
returned to the camp. It was not contended by the defendants that
this was other than plain murder, in complete violation of
international law.
When Allied airmen were forced to land in Germany, they were
sometimes killed at once by the civilian population. The police were
instructed not to interfere with these killings, and the Ministry of
Justice was informed that no one should be prosecuted for taking part
in them.
The treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was characterized by
particular inhumanity. The death of so many of them was not due
merely to the action of individual guards, or to the exigencies of
life in the camps. It was the result of systematic plans to murder.
More than a month before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the
OKW were making special plans for dealing with political
representatives serving with the Soviet Armed Forces who might be
captured. One proposal was that "political Commissars of the
Army are not recognized as Prisoners of War, and are to be
liquidated at the latest in the transient prisoner of war
camps." The Defendant Keitel gave evidence that instructions
incorporating this proposal were issued to the German Army.
On 8 September 1941 regulations for the treatment of Soviet
prisoners of war in all prisoner of war camps were issued, signed by
General Reinecke, the head of the prisoner of war department of the
High Command. Those orders stated:
"The Bolshevist soldier has
therefore lost ah claim to treatment as an honorable opponent, in
accordance with the Geneva Convention . . . . The order for ruthless
and energetic action must be given at the slightest indication of
insubordination, especially in the case of Bolshevist fanatics.
Insubordination, active or passive resistance, must be broken
immediately by force of arms "bayonets, butts, and firearms) . .
. . Anyone carrying out the order who does not use his weapons, or
does so with insufficient energy, is punishable . . . . Prisoners of
war attempting escape are to be fired on without previous challenge.
No warning shot must ever be fired . . . . The use of arms against
prisoners of war is as a rule legal."