Subject: Mild sentences against Poles
Attached: 1 compilation
8 additional copies for the Chief Public Prosecutors
Despite my constant allusions to this matter during conferences and in individual instructions, I am time and again notified of sentences by which Poles in the Reich proper are given entirely insufficient prison sentences for sexual and other serious crimes. Such sentences reveal an incomprehensibly lenient attitude toward the Polish nation which confronts us with implacable enmity. They constitute a danger to the security of the German people and justify the reproach that the administration of criminal law has not proved adequate to the necessities of war.
To make this point clear, the attachment lists a few of such sentences against Polish criminals which have been changed by special instructions or which I had to have altered by way of the nullity plea.
I want to express my firm expectation that the officials of the justice administration will not fail to recognize the serious danger this constitutes for our people; and, last but not least, for the stability of the administration of criminal law. I, therefore, expect that from now on measures will be taken against Polish criminals in the Reich proper with all the necessary firmness and with the heaviest sentences in accordance with article 4 of the decree against public enemies.[345] Elements clearly criminal and sexual criminals of Polish nationality must, as a rule, be punished by death. That the application of article 4 of the decree against public enemies is principally justified in the case of crimes committed by Poles in the Reich proper has been recognized by the Reich Supreme Court in its decision C 258. 41 of 19 June 1941 with the following explanations:
“If * * * it is noted that entire groups of culprits * * * possess fewer inhibitions with regard to certain crimes than the German people in general, the protection of law and order demands greater watchfulness as to the resulting dangers. The demand for retribution and the deterrent effect would be seriously impaired if the administration of justice would grant such culprits any right of obtaining mild penalties.
The established fact that the defendant, a Pole, sexually assaulted a German girl should have caused * * * the court to examine the question of whether or not the characteristics of a crime, as defined in article 4 of the decree against public enemies, were present. There is reason to assume that the defendant in his assault on a juvenile female fellow worker made use of the absence, caused by war conditions, of male workers who might otherwise have been able to come to her aid, and that the circumstances of his crime, in addition, are of such reprehensible kind that they reveal a criminal possessing the essential characteristics of a public enemy * * *.”
In addition to this, it must be considered that Poles are now entering Germany only as a result of the wartime shortage of German labor and that as a result of the decrease of police forces, likewise due to the war, the necessary police supervision over Poles which would have been possible under normal peacetime conditions is no longer guaranteed.
The Acting Minister
[Typed signature] Dr. Schlegelberger[346]