I have observed for quite some time that the sentences passed and to some extent also the sentences proposed by the prosecution at the Hamburg District Court of Appeal in cases of undermining the military efficiency (offenses under par. 5, art. 1, No. 1, Extraordinary War Penal Ordinance) are dangerously lenient and below the Reich average. With unusual frequency I have had to decide therefore to propose extraordinary objection to sentences pronounced by the District Court of Appeal. Recent sentences submitted to me which appear to be too mild, cause me to draw your attention to the particularly lenient sentences passed in the following cases:
1. O. Js. 184/44 (IV g-23-3118/45) against Bastian u.T.[289]
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The judge in charge as well as the deputy of the attorney general must proceed from the fact that public undermining the military efficiency is punishable by death, according to article 5, paragraph 1 of the extraordinary war penal ordinance;[290] only in less serious cases may the death penalty be waived. Therefore, the death penalty has to be demanded not only if an especially serious case is under consideration, but an offense of average gravity is sufficient to render the provisions of article 5 of the ordinance applicable. Only those cases can be considered less serious, where the gravity of the offense is below average. The jurisdiction of the Reich Supreme Court has developed the principle that a less serious case can be considered as such only “if the facts of the case distinguish it fairly clearly from the usual type of the punishable act in question, in favor of the accused and if the over-all assessment of the circumstances, especially the offender’s personality and the circumstances which might have induced him to commit the offense, justify a deviation from the regular jurisdiction” [handwritten: “usual punishment”]. This principle also applies to cases of undermining the defensive power with the reservation that on account of the particular danger in wartime far less importance can be attributed to extenuating circumstances arising from the personality of the criminal than in connection with other crimes.
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It is justified that the sentences should go by the effect of the remarks. In some sentences remarks can be found like, “Serious harm has not resulted from his action.” I doubt whether in such cases the repercussions of the remarks have been followed up to the end. Their effect on the audience can be determined through their interrogation; however, it is difficult to determine whether this audience has passed on the remarks, and what impression they made on third and fourth persons. Reasons of this type are therefore only justified if extensive investigations with definite results have been instituted.
In the sentences cited above there are among the reasons for the award of punishment, statements about the personality of the offender, the extenuating consequences of which are doubtful, for instance—
“Especially hard life.”
“Uprooted by the Russian revolution.”
“Lets himself go frequently because of his rather surly nature.”