I’d like to thank “Tom Szymkiewicz” from Twitter (X) for providing me with some inspiration. I had not heard of “Gnadenerlass nach dem Polenfeldzug” (Pardon after the Polish campaign), and the idea of giving blanket amnesty to soldiers for war crimes and atrocities sounded out of character for the NSDAP party. So I looked into it.
Why did it sound out of character? Let’s take the story of Karl-Otto Koch. It’s no secret he was arrested and executed for “embezzlement and concealing of funds and goods in an amount of at least 200,000 RM,” and the “premeditated murder” of three inmates. Holocaust fabulists will make all sorts of copes for this, but Koch did get in trouble for killing Jews.
That’s not all. Hermann Florstedt was charged with embezzlement and arbitrary killing of prisoner witnesses and Martin Sommer was arrested and charged with embezzlement and committing unauthorized murders in Buchenwald. You can find more examples on the Wikipedia page of Konrad Morgen. Morgen was a German SS Investigating Judge and Reich Police Official who investigated members of the SS for corruption and murder. Unfortunately, after the war Morgen went along with the Allied WW2 narrative by acting as witness against Germany. Because of this he escaped punishment and was able to continue practicing law.
Back to the matter of the “Gnadenerlass nach dem Polenfeldzug”. The Wikipedia entry on this subject is quite short, here is most of it:
After a little unpacking we can see that this was not a formal legal immunity statute codified in public German law, rather it was a “secret decree”. This decree was reprinted in “Führer-Erlasse” 1939-1945″, and the source of the document was the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, so take that with a big grain of salt (see below). Not all of the decrees attributed to Hitler found within this book were implemented. So how do they know this particular one was?
First there is post-war testimony from the Nuremberg trials, which is freely available for anyone to look at. However, this testimony is highly unreliable as all testimony from the Nuremberg testimony from the Germans can be considered to be coerced. There are many reasons for this. Most importantly, the trail was conducted by Germany’s former wartime enemies and the alleged crimes of the Germans were considered fact before the trail even began (see below).
The documental evidence is more elusive. It is claimed that names of individuals that were pardoned cannot be provided. This is because they claim the pardon was given before any trials and he records of any crimes that may have existed [been created] during the Polish campaign were destroyed. Convenient. To add to frustration, any German documents that are claimed to refer to the decree are not freely available for anyone to look at.
Although I have reached an impasse in my research I am of the mind that the claim of Tom Szymkiewicz that Hitler “pardoned all Wehrmacht soldiers for war crimes&atrocities committed during invasion&early occupation of Poland-granting total impunity for mass shootings, executions&looting” is incorrect. Especially since even orthodox historians state that crimes of selfishness were not pardoned. However, without access to primary German documents I cannot discern the extent of the pardons.
Before we go, let’s look at some Allied military officers that were pardoned for their crimes.
On 14 July 1943, near the Biscari airfield in Sicily, Sergeant Horace T. West (of A Company, 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division) was ordered to escort a group of surrendered Italian and German prisoners of war to the rear for questioning. During the march, West halted the group, took a Thompson submachine gun, and executed thirty-seven unarmed POWs at close range. This incident is one of two killings of what is known as the Biscari Massacre. After serving only 14 months of a life sentence he was paroled by Eisenhower and returned to active duty.
The second killing was committed by Captain John T. Compton, who ordered a firing squad to execute roughly 36 Italian prisoners. Since he convinced the tribunal that he believed he was following orders his case was acquitted. If you’ll recall, the excuse of just following orders isn’t valid when it came to the Germans.
The Chenogne massacre occurred on 1 January 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge, when elements of the U.S. Army’s 11th Armored Division killed German prisoners of war after they had surrendered near the Belgian village of Chenogne. The incident took place amid intense combat conditions and a climate of retaliation following earlier alleged German atrocities in the campaign. No U.S. soldiers were prosecuted or punished, and the killings were not pursued through formal courts-martial or publicly addressed in wartime accounts. I.e.- they tried to cover it up. Decades later, historians and journalists reconstructed the episode using declassified military records, unit documentation, and veteran testimony. Their findings indicate actions that would constitute violations of the laws of war and showing that no accountability was imposed.
It almost makes one think that the accusation against the Germans is pure projection.