The Misplaced Affections of Joseph Hallow and the Dachau War Crimes Trials

by C-A. B.

A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - spring 1998)

Author’s Note

Because of the nature of my topic, which mainly concerns the refutation of the warped personal opinions and judgments of a primary witness, Joseph Halow, I have found it necessary to slightly alter the structure suggested in the syllabus, giving more space to the denier’s claims (which I find, for the most part, to be self-damning evidence) and summarizing the events leading up to the setting of the topic in a preface.

PART ONE

PREFACE

Victory. After years of bloody combat on land, on sea, and in air, the Allies finally penetrated the heart of Germany, forcing that nation’s unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945.

In the final months leading up to the collapse and utter defeat of the Third Reich, Allied forces discovered, behind their enemy’s lines, horrors and atrocities; crimes against humanity unparalleled in the history of modern warfare. American, British, French, and Soviet soldiers were confronted with thousands of concentration camps, horrifically over-crowded with myriad abused, malnourished, enslaved civilians and prisoners of war; hundreds of thousands of unburied or partially buried dead; and equally astronomical numbers of stories describing other crimes of the Nazi regime. The Allies were informed of perversions in the German justice system, corruption of hospitals and medical professionals, the use of gas chambers for the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and other peoples hated by Hitler, atrocities against downed American fliers, and other violations of military conduct established by the Geneva Convention.

After making these horrendous discoveries of Nazi war crimes, it was generally agreed among the Allied leaders that some means of retribution had to be designed, in order to punish the massive number of perpetrators responsible for such an array of atrocities. Stalin suggested to Churchill that the top fifty thousand Nazis be immediately taken out and hanged; Churchill, however, responded that the justice- loving people of Great Britain and the United States would never stand for such an action. The necessary, logical course of action was clear: the Nazi perpetrators had to be given fair trials to determine their levels of guilt and, therefore, appropriate punishments.

But war crimes trials on such a grand scale (as would be necessary to try the Nazi offenders) would be, for the most part, without precedent, and thus a set of international laws would have to be drawn up, upon which individual cases could be decided. It was to this end that the Allies held a six week convention (beginning a mere month after V-E Day), successfully completing the abstract legal outline which would be known as the "London Charter," the basis for the International Military Tribunal held at Nuremberg.

After the close of the International Nuremberg trials in 1946, which tried all the major Nazi leaders (who hadn’t committed suicide) and organizations (including the SS [Himmler’s elite forces], Gestapo [secret police], and the Reich Cabinet [government leaders]), the commanders of the military occupation zones were authorized to try lesser war-criminals (within their jurisdiction) at the discretion of each occupying nation. In the United States occupation zone, independent military tribunals were held both at the recent home of the international tribunal--the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg; and at Dachau concentration camp, outside the town of Dachau in Bavaria. The Dachau war crimes trials, or rather the procedures, events, and people associated with these trials, form the focus of this investigation.

Introduction

In mid-April of 1946, Dachau--the first of the many concentration camps created by the SS--became home to the United States military tribunal, and (along with it) several hundred defendants, an equal number of witnesses, a bevy of attorneys, and a crew of court reporters. In total, more than sixteen hundred defendants would be tried here; 1,090 of which would be sentenced; 426 of which would be executed. The Dachau trials were officially concluded on December 30, 1947.

It does not appear to be disputed among historians that there were mistakes made in the process of the Dachau war crimes trials; it is a well established fact, presented clearly to the public by the investigation into one high- profile case--the Malmedy trial--in which it was determined that testimony was forced under duress. As a result of this investigation, all other cases tried at Dachau were also later reviewed and, while a majority of sentences were upheld, some witness testimony was shown to be perjured or in conflict. Because of these weaknesses, the Dachau trials have received the attention of that bastion of Holocaust denial: the Institute for Historical Review. In his book, Innocent at Dachau (published by the Institute in 1992), Joseph Halow (who was a youthful court reporter for the Dachau trials) attempts to relativize Nazi atrocities by drawing a weak parallel between the actions of the nazis during the war and the American trials at Dachau which followed. "The world is, furthermore," he states near the close of his book, "growing tired of hearing of the atrocities, whether real or unreal, ascribed to Germany during World War II, and is perhaps ready to hear of the atrocities inflicted on, rather than by, the Germans." Halow depicts many nazis as victims of terrible injustice, though understandable and forgivable injustice--just as the unjust actions committed by the Nazis are understandable and forgivable. In the course of his narrative, Halow very subtly expresses his anti-Semitism by insinuating that Jews in concentration camps were mostly thieves; after being liberated, the Jews continued to be thieves, but also became liars, as well; and American Jews are shown in a cartoon-like manner as ruthless haters of Germans. The guiding purpose of Halow’s work seems to be to make the Germans appear favorably wherever possible, while simultaneously attempting to slander the Jews, and show the American forces as morally equivalent to the Nazis.

Though the vast majority of Halow’s arguments and insinuations are easily refutable by identification and simple common sense, other of his claims require knowledge of international law and specific information from cases, to be countered. Herein, Halow’s most overt missteps into anti-Semitism, obvious bias, and factual error are identified; where necessary, Halow’s arguments are countered by the trial records and, in addition, studies and articles by reputable historians and authors.

PART TWO

Joseph Halow is a member of a different breed of Holocaust denier: a sort which recognizes many of the atrocious actions of the Nazis, and claims to despise these crimes ("I had lost my elder brother to the Nazis and had never felt anything but revulsion for any totalitarian regime."); but not the perpetrators themselves. The tone of Halow’s mostly autobiographical work can best be described as "honest consideration and innocence"; under this seemingly honest, almost likable veneer, however, lurks a far less innocent agenda--an agenda which becomes all too obvious when Halow falls from his thoughtful consideration mind-set into his clear contempt for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, contrasted alarmingly by his unfailing affection for the men (and women) accused and convicted of Nazi war crimes. Though much of Halow’s argument seems to be based on real concern for the application of justice at Dachau, this only slightly exaggerated component of his statements is far less debatable than the outrageous conclusions he attempts to draw from his observation of the several injustices at the Dachau war crimes trials. In other words, Halow would be a passable historian, were he to remove his prejudices and non-sensical conclusions; unfortunately, these latter seem to be Halow’s inspiration and guiding principles.

Halow begins his story by telling of his Eastern Orthodox Lebanese parents, his birth in Mexico, and his eventual attainment of American citizenship (along with his parents) at the age of eleven. Because of his development of highly efficient secretarial skills, upon being drafted into the army just after the Japanese surrender, Halow was immediately assigned to clerical work, in order to assist in processing the returning GIs. While in his uneventful year of service, Halow made connections which, upon his discharge, allowed him to obtain a civilian position in the war crimes bureau, and was thus sent to Germany. There, after being passed about various installations for several months, Halow was assigned to the court reporting team at Dachau.

Once he brings his narrative to Dachau, Halow begins to insert the products of his ideology into the story. Describing his arrival at Dachau, Halow echoes a standard denier "jumping-off point" argument based upon the early misconception that Dachau was an extermination camp:

My impression was that it had been a camp for exterminating Jews, a canard that lives on in the minds of many Americans victimized by propaganda at the war’s end...After a little thought, I realized that the crematorium was used to dispose of the bodies of those who had already died.

Here also, Halow makes his first statements verging on anti-Semitism, saying of the Jewish displaced persons around Dachau: "...neither more and better food nor improved accommodations appeared to satisfy the Jewish DPs. Many Americans working in Germany were becoming increasingly annoyed with them, despite their earlier feelings of great sympathy due to their tribulations during the war." The clear insinuation being that to know the Jews is to dislike them.

Later on, he seems to make a similar attempt, this time portraying an American Jew as a heartless vengeance seeker:

I recall one Jewish-American translator who, when driving his Jeep through Dachau [town], never missed a chance to hit a puddle at high speed, drenching as many German pedestrians as he could with cold, muddy water...he grinned at me and freely admitted that it was all deliberate, that he thought the Germans had it coming.

He goes on to say that most American Jews shared feelings of hatred for Germany and all Germans, desiring vengeance above all. Here, Halow sets up a principal argument of his narrative: that the Jews were so filled with hate that they would be willing to lie in order to see vengeance accomplished against the Germans. He attempts to demonstrate this in his harsh criticism of one Jewish witness who testified against an SS officer:

If Andor Fried [the Jewish witness] was telling the truth...Petrat [the SS officer] could have been so offended by his accusations, whether exaggerated or outright perjury, he might have called him a juedisches [Jewish] or any other kind of swine. But since a witness who will lie about one thing can be counted on to lie again, it may well be that Petrat never said anything of the kind to Fried.

One group constantly under attack by Halow is the concentration camp victims. He seems to think that the camps were not illegal and disgraceful, but rather legitimate institutions. "The inmate...had been AWOL from the camp for two days, and the kapos were obliged to punish him...such an example, unpunished, would destroy discipline among the camp inmates," he states, seriously concerned over the good order of the camp, even at the expense of the (for the most part, wrongly-incarcerated) inmates’ lives. Because he believes the camps to be legitimate institutions, Halow feels free to criticize and ridicule the starving inmates, blaming the prisoners themselves for the greater part of their misery: "...most of the evil acts against inmates were perpetrated by other inmates, including the kapos, not the SS guards." Later, he states: "The prisoners stole from each other constantly." He further states: "inmates were beaten less by kapos or by guards than by other inmates within the camp, usually for petty reasons." He, in addition, attempts to portray the inmates as lazy, for not wishing to participate in the Nazi war effort: "Many inmates shied from work, and whenever possible would report ‘sick’ to the infirmary to avoid being sent out with a work detail."

Throughout his narrative, Halow constantly attempts to draw a parallel between the Nazi perpetrators and the actions of the American judiciary at Dachau. Reflecting back on his supposedly unfair trial, Heinz Detmers, a former member of the SS, is quoted by Halow as saying of the Americans: "they were doing their jobs, just as were those of us in the camps. It was a time of war and things were not normal." Later he states (rather ironically): "I was learning that the Germans had been exposed to at least as much propaganda during the war as we had, and if we were prejudiced against the Germans, they too were prejudiced against the targets of their propagandists [the Jews]."

He further speaks of a nearly universal abuse of German prisoners by their American captors, citing the killing of guards at the time of the liberation of Dachau by the 45th Division, use of impostor priests to obtain confessions, and a general misuse of prisoners awaiting trial, usually in the form of beatings.

Halow’s final main area of concern involves an attempt to excuse or otherwise downplay the culpability of the Germans for their wartime atrocities. He attempts to accomplish this general acquittal in one of two ways: either by demonstrating that an action for which a defendant was tried in the Dachau trials was not actually a crime; or by simply transferring blame for atrocities either to superior orders or to the invading Allied forces.

By means of the first method of exculpation, Halow attempts to free from guilt the perpetrators of atrocities against downed American fliers, who having parachuted to the ground after being hit by enemy planes or anti-aircraft fire, were beaten and, in many cases, killed. He states: "At most, I judged their ‘crime’ was in taking brutal vengeance on enemies who were bombing and killing civilians." "...had the situation been reversed," he earlier stated, "I would have acted as he did. And I believe that no one who has ever known me would call me reckless or cruel."

By means of the second method of exculpation, Halow attempts to pass off a number of heinous crimes on the grounds of superior orders:

The defense of superior orders was offered by several of the accused. Sergeants Brauny, Koenig, and Wilhelm Simon were accused of taking part in the execution of seven Italian prisoners of war. In response, they contended that the execution had been official, in accordance with an order from Berlin...

Halow later complains: "Appointed camp hangman, [the accused kapo] was now being tried for the murder of all the inmates he had executed, notwithstanding his superior orders."

Halow also attempts to shift the blame for atrocities from the Nazis to the invading Allies. He states: "The frightening conditions the Americans found at Dachau were the result of the American and Soviet advances on all fronts..." This because evacuations forced the Germans to combine large groups of prisoners.

Part Three

In the refutation of Joseph Halow’s claims it must be noted that this man was a primary witness of sorts, and thus much of his testimony is based solely on his observations and opinions, which (fortunately) prove themselves to be colored by prejudice in most cases. Some of his commentary is otherwise irrefutable; ie. Halow is the only one who notes that one of the accused is blushing during testimony; there is no way to discount or verify this. Many of Halow’s outrageous claims, however, fall into the realm of known history and are thus easily refuted.

Halow’s reference to Dachau not being an extermination camp is common knowledge to those with any understanding of the holocaust, and is a fact recognized by scholars universally. His inclusion of this "revelation" is clearly designed to mislead the uniformed into trusting his guidance.

Halow’s many slips into anti-Semitism speak for themselves. The story of the Jewish-American driver viciously drenching the poor Germans clearly seems to be a cartoon-like fabrication, designed to make a point. Halow wishes to prove that American Jews wanted vengeance upon the German people, as was speculated by anti-Semitic isolationists such as Freda Utley, whom Halow quotes several times, calling her work "important." Debra Lipstadt identifies Utley as an "extremist" who "falsely claimed that, for three years after their unconditional surrender, the Allies had kept the Germans on rations that were less than, or, at best, the same as those in a concentration camp." Though he claims several times in his book to be free of anti-Semitism, Halow simply cannot contain his venomous comments, which I have listed in part two.

In regards to the concentration camp victims, which Halow clearly disdains, this warped hatred, contempt, and lack of self-awareness is best summarized by Halow’s statement near the middle of his book:

Zwiener testified to one incident that was not without its humor. One of the Gypsy inmates had attempted to escape but was apprehended and returned to camp. As punishment he was forced to dress in women’s clothing. Wearing a woman’s blouse, pants and hat, and carrying an open parasol, the Gypsy was forced to dance around a tree singing a German classic song, "Das Wandern ist des Muellers Lust" (Travel is the Millers Lust)...He added, however that the Gypsy was hanged several weeks later.

What kind of sick mind could find this humorous?

Furthermore, Halow’s inferred belief in the legitimacy of the camps is shattered by both common sense and by the law. By illegally detaining persons without just cause, Nazi concentration camps are by nature illegal institutions, and were determined to be such by the international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, thus negating all of complaints of prisoner misconduct and the need for order.

Such accusations of thievery and laziness seem to be designed, in any event, to support popular Nazi stereotypes of the Jews and other undesirables.

The attempt to compare American trials of war crimes to the actual war crimes, themselves is a subtle and effective ruse, as Halow really seems to be presenting a completely Germanized perspective, while acting as if in agreement with popular understanding; ie. wow! if you can imagine how much we were made to hate the Germans, just imagine how much the Germans were probably made to hate the Jews.

In regard to the individual instances of Nazi-like force used by Americans in Germany, wee will examine the cases one by one. The force at the liberation of Dachau was by Halow’s own admission accomplished in time of combat among soldiers; not on helpless unarmed civilians. As to the claim that impostor priests were used to obtain confessions from the German accused, this is thoroughly refuted in an article written by Henry F. Gerecke, the chaplain at the Nuremberg trials. According to Gerecke, "The Geneva Conventions specify that our services be made available to all prisoners of war..." Gerecke added that services need not have been given as the officers military status had been removed, but the US had a firm policy of providing religious guidance to prisoners.

As to Halow’s two methods of exculpating Germans from blame for atrocities, both are flawed in reasoning and in law. Simply because Halow would do the same thing in the same situation definitely does not make a war crime correct. The protection of prisoners of war from abuse and wrongful death is a basic principle as described in the findings of the Nuremberg tribunal: "The killing of prisoner of war without due cause is a clear violation of both customary and conventional international law." The claim of superior orders is likewise terminated by international law: "...an accused is entitled under international law to obey commands which are lawful or which he could not reasonably be expected to know were unlawful" and also "If one claims duress in the execution of an illegal order it must be shown that the harm in obeying the order is not disproportionately greater than the harm which would result from obeying the order." Requirements clearly not met by Halow’s Nazi perpetrators and brutal kapos.

CONCLUSION

In his Innocent at Dachau, Joseph Halow expresses his usually subtle, sometimes blatant, anti-Semitism through his experiences as a court reporter at the Dachau war crimes trials. His strong affection for convicted Nazi war criminals is at first confusing, but then understandable, when Halow’s age and experience while in Dachau are considered. When he was in Dachau, Halow was but a boy of nineteen, who had spent an isolated childhood without any friends. The Germans welcomed him; he desired their approval. From what has written, it would seem that young Joseph Halow actually looked-up to the Nazi war criminals in the dock. Basically, it would seem that Halow was a little worm excited by the once powerful Nazis who paid attention to him; asked him for cigarettes; sent him letters.

Halow desires, it seems, just a simple apology from the American people to the Nazi war criminals. His sentiments are best summed up at the conclusion of his book, in which he states: "[The example of the defense attorneys in the Dachau trials] even if not enough to erase the national shame incurred in the Dachau trials, may yet help light the way to genuine reconciliation with the men and women we wronged there, a reconciliation that can only be based on understanding and truth."

Halow’s eventual acceptance of basic denier doctrine, which it seems has anti-Semitism at its very core, is not surprising given his numerous remarks which reflect such a dark, hidden hatred. Thinking of his now released convicted Nazi war criminal friend, Heinz Detmers, Halow remembers a German proverb: "‘Wo man singt, da lass Dich ruhig nieder: boese Menschen haben keine Lieder.’ (Where there’s singing, you may safely settle down: bad men have no songs." We can only presume that the singing he refers to is the singing of Nazi marching songs.

WORKS CITED

Dickler, Gerald Man on Trial. New York: Doubleday, 1962.

Gerecke, Henry F. "I walked to the Gallows With the Nazi Chiefs" The Saturday Evening Post, September 1, 1951.

Halow, Joseph Innocent at Dachau. New Port Beach: Institute for Historical Review, 1992.

Harris, Whitney R. Tyranny on Trial. Dallas: SMU Press, 1954.

Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, vol. xv. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1949.

Lipstadt, Deborah Denying the Holocaust. New York: Plume, 1994.

Weingartner, James J. Crossroads of Death. Berkeley: U of California P, 1979.