1. PUBLIC ENEMIES, ESPECIALLY BLACK-OUT OFFENDERS[286]
Sentences imposed by several courts in the years 1941–1942
1. A 19-year-old laborer who had been employed by the Reichsbahn [Reich Railroad] since 1941, stole, soon after his appointment in the winter of 1941–1942, during black-out hours, luggage and parcels from the luggage vans of long distance trains, and parcels from mail vans. There were in total 21 charges against him.
The Special Court sentenced him to 4 years’ imprisonment as a public enemy.
2. A 34-year-old lathe operator attempted black-out purse snatching at the end of 1941. In the darkness he approached a woman in the street and snatched her handbag off her arm. He was followed and arrested. He has six previous convictions against him, among which was theft, inflicting bodily harm, and killing by negligence. He had been sentenced in respect of the bodily harm, because in 1931 he had together with a Communist knocked down a National Socialist with a fence pole.
The Special Court did not legally appraise the act as street robbery but as theft, because the woman carried the handbag only loose on her arm, so that the culprit did not have to use force. It regarded him nevertheless as a public enemy, and expressed the view, that the community should be specially protected against him. Yet the sentence imposed was but 2 years’ imprisonment.
3. A 29-year-old laborer, who was a shirker and had several previous convictions against him, tried in 1941 to commit black-out purse snatching. He had just been discharged from the hospital as a malingerer and wanted to provide himself with money. He followed two women in the darkness in the street and reached for the purse while passing them, but he could not pull it off, because it was held tightly. In answer to cries for help, some men hurried to the scene and got hold of the culprit.
The Special Court sentenced him to death as a public enemy, and added, that persons needed special protection during the black-out in order to retain the feeling of safety in the country for the people.
4. An 18-year-old culprit W., who had no previous convictions against him raped a soldier’s wife during the black-out in 1941. After having visited an inn, he accosted, about midnight while on the way home with his 19-year-old friend P., a young woman who was going home from work at that late hour. She rejected the men and said that her husband was a soldier at the front and that she wished to go home without being molested. W. hit a man, who was standing nearby and who witnessed the incident, several times in the face without cause. Then he dragged the woman into a lane, hit her, and raped her on a bench, breaking her resistance by pretending to have a revolver on him. P. was waiting nearby in the meantime but did not interfere.
The Special Court sentenced W. as a public enemy to death for rape. P. was convicted to 5 years’ imprisonment for aiding and abetting the criminal.