Berlin
Re: Executions by the Police and Expediting of Penal Procedure Without Order.
Inclosure: 1 copy of report
About 3 weeks ago 6 chief agents (partially German) were hanged by the police in connection with the destruction of a treasonable organization of 350 members in Tarnowitz without notification of the ministry of justice. Such execution of criminal agents in the Bielitz district have already been made before also without the knowledge of the proper authority for criminal persecution. On 2 December 1941 the head of the state police at Kattowitz, chief councillor to the government Mildner, reported orally to the undersigned that he had ordered as necessary immediate action, with authority from the Reich-leader of the SS these executions by public hanging at the place of the crime; and that deterring measures would also have to be continued in the future until the criminal and actively anti-German powers in the occupied Eastern territories have been destroyed, or until other immediate actions, perhaps also by the courts, would guarantee equal frightening effect. Accordingly, 6 leaders of another Polish organization guilty of high treason in the district in and around Sosnowitz were to be hanged publicly today as an example.
About this procedure the undersigned expressed considerable doubts.
Besides the fact that such measures have been withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts and are contradictory to the laws not put out of effect, a justified emergency for the exceptional proceedings by the police alone cannot, in our opinion, be lawfully recognized.
The penal justice in our district within the limits of our jurisdiction is quite capable of fulfilling its duty of immediate penal retribution by means of a special form of special judicial activity (establishment of a so-called rapid special court). Indictment and proceeding could be speeded up in such a way that between turning the case over to the public prosecutor and execution no more than 3 days would elapse if the practice of pardoning is simplified and if the decision, if necessary, can be obtained by long distance call. This was expressed yesterday to the head of the state police at Kattowitz by the undersigned.
We cannot believe that execution by the police of criminals, especially German criminals, can be considered more effective through shattering the sense of justice of many German countrymen. In the long run they might, in spite of public terrorizing, lead even more to further brutality of minds, which is contrary to the intended purpose of pacifying. These deliberations, however, do not apply to future lawful competence of a drumhead court-martial for Poles and Jews.
According to a recent report of the head of the Kattowitz state police to the district leader [Gauleiter] Bracht, the cases of 540 persons accused of high treason from the Kattowitz district have already been forwarded in December 1940 by the police to the board of arraignment of the people's court in Berlin without any sentences having been passed there as yet. This situation, which became known in the various branches of interested party circles and administration departments, injures the reputation of justice in general as well as the concept of the effectiveness of justice in the occupied Eastern territories especially because, with the exception of the court, the exclusive competence of the people's court for the sentencing of matters of high treason is not sufficiently known.
We are not informed as to how far the described situation of non-settlement is true.