313 E—3 a 3376
To: The Chief Public Prosecutors, for information
Munich, 7 March 1944
The Attorney General
By Order:
[Typed] signed: Keidel
Chief Public Prosecutor
1. Definition of cases of “Undermining” [Military Efficiency] and cases of “Malicious Political Acts”[512]
The relations between the law on malicious acts against State and Party, article 2, paragraph 1, and the decree concerning special penal law in wartime, has changed during the fourth and fifth year of the war. The development was speeded up by the events at Stalingrad and in Italy. This found its outward expression in the following measures: setting up a special committee for cases of undermining the morale—for serious and acute attempts at undermining morale—in the Reich Ministry of Justice, a corresponding agreement with the Reich Security Main Office, by taking steps concerning the distribution of work at the People’s Court and by a press campaign. A number of Special Court districts and also certain criminal divisions with the district courts of appeal have not yet followed the new practice. The severity of their sentences does not agree with the penalties of the sentences at the People’s Court. Conditions are to be made clear by this report and by a Judges’ Letter.[513] The temporary defensive attitude at the front means a burden for the home front. The enemy is looking for weak spots, and thinks he has found them in the will for self-assertion of the inner front, as it was 1914–1918. Since the Italian events he has been intensifying this attack. The not very numerous cases of defeatism resulting from it have led to a new line in the administration of justice in cases of undermining of military efficiency, which is to be organically followed in the treatment of cases concerning malicious political acts. The following cases dealt with by the Reich Ministry of Justice, are intended to illustrate this line.