(Oberlandesgerichtspraesidenten)
and to the Attorney General
in Stuttgart
Subject: Practice [Rechtsprechung] of the District Court of Appeal
(Oberlandesgericht) Stuttgart
in cases of defeatism
For some time now the practice of the criminal senate of the District Court of Appeal Stuttgart has given me cause for grave thoughts with regard to matters of defeatism. In the majority of cases the sentences are considerably too mild, they do not sufficiently bear in mind the thought of the protection of the people which must govern the punishment of defeatism, and are in an incompatible disproportion to the sentences which are in similar cases passed by the People’s Court and by other district courts of appeal. I would refer especially to the following sentences which lately attracted my attention:
1. Criminal case against Friedr. Linder—OJs. 205/43—, sentence of the 2d criminal senate of 7 January 1944 (President of the Senate Dr. Kiefer, District Court of Appeal Counsellor (Oberlandesgerichtsrat) Dr. Stuber, and Hegele, presiding officer of a chamber at the court of appeal (Landgerichtsdirektor)). You made a report under date of 28 April 1944 on this case on the sentence. In view of the danger and of the frequency of the statements made, I must maintain the interpretation already expressed in my decree of 15 March 1944—IV secret I 5045 b/44—that the defendant, a foreigner, deserved a severe sentence of penal servitude. I have therefore directed the files to the Chief Reich Prosecutor at the People’s Court to examine the question whether the extraordinary objection should be applied against the sentence.
2. Criminal case against Karl Unger—OJs. 203/43. Sentence of the 1st penal senate of 22 February 1944 (President of the Senate Cuhorst, Oberlandesgerichtsrat Dr. Stuber, and Oberlandesgerichtsrat Eckert).
The defendant is an old active Communist who apparently remained an activist also after the assumption of power and who has not given up his former opinions. His age and the illness, to which you refer in your statement of 17 May 1944, did not prevent him again to make malicious Communistic oral propaganda at an especially dangerous time. I must, in these circumstances, consider the sentence passed of 2 years’ penal servitude, as being much too mild. I have therefore directed this case also to the Reich Chief Prosecutor at the People’s Court.
3. Criminal case against August Jooss for aiding and abetting the enemy—OJs. 41/44—judgment of the 1st penal senate of 14 April 1944 (President of the Senate Cuhorst, Landgerichtsdirektor Dr. Bohn).
The foul defeatist statements made to the French civilian worker were dangerous to such a degree that even the mentally deficient defendant must have known about the consequences, and they show a frightening measure of lack of national dignity. The sentence passed of 2 years’ penal servitude must in these circumstances be described as inadequate.