Talk:The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939–1945

message: Soviet Union was German ally in 1940, when it killed more than 20 000 of Polish POWs (Interned miltary personel?) and civilians. It's possible that the crime was based on Soviet-German agreement. Somoene caimed in the article that Katyn was an Ally crime - it was a crime on Polish Allies. Xx236 15:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Soviet Union was German ally in 1940

message: Professor Dieter Fleck noted in Archiv des Völkerrechts, the leading German international law journal:
"This well-written book, which is based on thorough research of original sources, was first published in Germany in 1979. It triggered a broad discussion in the country and has seen several German editions. The present abridged and updated English version facilitates international participation in a debate on some historical aspects of a topic which is of ever increasing importance.  It is timely and necessary to discuss the legal, sociological and psychological problems involved in the investigation of war crimes during and after armed conflicts ...Both this interesting publication and the open questions it leaves provide a strong argument in favour of international fact-finding, for which an adequate legal framework is now available under Article 90 of Protocol I (Additional to the Geneva Conventions).  Efforts towards establishing a permanent international tribunal on war crimes and crimes against humanity should benefit from the experience documented here."
Professor Otto Kimminich wrote in the German Yearbook of International Law:
"Jurisprudence and history work together as auxiliary disciplines in reciprocal relation to each other. For the historian, laws and judicial decisions are valuable sources of information which he explaoits with his own tools.  The lawyer must know the history of the laws and regulations which he applies, a task which requires extensive knowledge. In fortunate cases a single author has full command of the methods of both disciplines. A book written by such an author is mor easily accessible for scholars of the different branches of knowledge as well as to the general public... The author of the book ... hold degrees in law and history and has worked successfully in both fields. His main concern is human rights (he has been working for more than 10 years with the UN Center for Human Rights in Geneva). He combines the experience of two continents which have been desperately in need of a greater understanding in the post-war world.  An Americn, de Zayas has spent many years as a highly respected scholar in Europe. Dr. Walter Rabus, a Dutch expert in intrnational law who earned his degree in Paris, has helped him be performing research covering both continents ...The high praise which the German editions have received is even more appropirate for the English version, which constitutes the apex of concision and accuracy. "An academic job well done" was the verdict in the Netherlands International Law Review" (1990, p. 300) "This is an excellent book" Christopher Greenwood claimed in the Cambridge Law Journal (1990 p. 148). One cannot top such eulogies, but one can affirm them." 
Professor R.P. Dhokalla, Secretary-General of the Indian Society of International Law, wrote in a review article for the Indian Journal of Intrnational Law, vol. 29, pp. 214-219
"The book ...is a pioneering study which describes in meticulous details the orgnization and work of a little known German Bureau ... which was purely an investigating agency of the Third Reich, similar to such Allied units as the UN War Crimes Commission or the parallel American, British, French or Russian agencies...Dr. de Zayas has made a significant contribution to the literature on war crimes...It is the responsiility of scholars and lawyers from the Third World in particular to focus attention, if not on the prevention of war itself, on preparing the ground for a better observance of the provisions of humanitarian law in armed conflicts. This scholarly contribution of Dr. de Zayas will undoubtedly be read with special interest as it has successfully attempted to fill a gap in the literature on war crimes bz providing not only informtive and reveling material, but also pursuing a convincing and objective analysis.  The exposition is augmented by an excellent bibliography for the readers to undertake futher in-depth studies." 
"A pioneer study that describes the organization and work of a little-known German Army branch that was responsible for investigating war crimes charges by the allies against the Germans agd by Germans against Allied nationals ... Every victim of inhumanity, regardless of race, or creed, should be entitled to the equal protection of the law. The stated primary purpose of this interesting and well-written work is to help minimize the violations of international law in any future armed conflicts. If that goal is to be achieved, it is not enough merely to know that the rules are often broken by all sides. Americans learned that lesson at My Lai. There mustr be continuous improvment in the codes in order to meet the changing modes of warfare. There must be inculcation and acceptance of humanitarian values, even in time of war. Most important, there must be a more certain, objective, and effective judicial machinery, national and international, to improve the enforcement of international law and the rules of war. The de Zayas book sheds light on a problem that has not yet been resolved." Ben Ferencz, former US Nuremberg Prosecutor, in the American Journal of International Law. 
"In his important book, Dr. de Zayas writes of the bureau staff members' belief that 'the German armed forces were fighting honorably, in compliance with the Hague and Geneva Conventions'...he points out that during the war years many were living in a moral and intellectual vacuum, professionally confined to their daily lawyer's tasks. The members of the Gladisch Committee were far more conscious of the gulf between Nazi theories and practice on the one hand, and the demands of international humanitarian law on the other. Some were to die for their beliefs." Professor L.F.E. Goldie, in the American Journal of International Law, vol. 85, pp. 748f
"Dr. de Zayas' book is an excellent analysis of a topic that is not discussed as much as it should be. This topic is Allied war crimes committed against Germany prior and during World War II. While most historians document German atrocities during the World War, Dr. de Zayas painstakingly researched 226 volumes of records left by the Wehrmacht-Untesuchungsstelle (Geman Army Bureau for the Investigation of War Crimes) in order to "... evaluate these records, to examine the establishment, function, and methods of the German bureau of investigation, and try to draw the line between historical events and mere propaganda.
In order to distinguish between propaganda and historical fact, Dr. de Zayas traced the stages of various documents in order to find contradictions or fabricated evidence. He fothermore interviewed more than 300 victims, witnesses and judges and verified the Bureau's records by cross decomentating with other German record groups and also the relevant American, British, French and Swiss files. Finally, as Dr. de Zayas notes, the bureau was influenced by its chief, Johannes goldsche -- who was not a member of the National Socialist Party and had no sympathy for Nazis or their methods ...
Dr. de Zayas' book is excellent. It is easy to understand, and present sinformation in an objective manner. Any one interested in obtaining unbiased information about an obscure aspect of World War Ii should read this book." David Rubin in Comparative Juridical Review, Voilume 27, 1990, p. 140..
Professor G.C. Bekhoff, leyden University, noted in the Netherlands International Law Review:
"The facts were painstakingly researched by the author. Archives were consulted and cross-checked and survivors interviewed. It is an academic job well done, and a must for students of small islands of sanity in the ocean of madness called war. Professor Howard Levie states in his foreword: 'It can be said without fear of contradiction that this book opens a new dimension in the study of war crimes committed during World war II. It should generate much discussion and encourage other students of that period to further research, not only into the legal and historical, but also into the sociological and psychological aspects of this facet of that conflict'. I fully agree." Netherlands International Law Review, 1990, p. 300.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.3.224.20 (talk) 12:55, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Reviews

message: Still only? Xx236 14:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The de Zayas book is the first (and still only) scholarly book on war crimes by non-Germans (primarily Soviets) during World War II 

message: With all due respect to German tragedies - the III Reich planned, started and implemented genocidal WWII in Eastern Europe. Don't start genocides if you don't like to be exterminated. Germany exterminated Soviet POWs, why should have the Soviets feed the German ones?Xx236 15:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This book raises many issues that await further research by American, British, French, German, Polish, Russian historians.  It is surprising that 28 years after the publication of the first German edition, no dissertation has been written on the Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle nor on the work of its director, the old Berlin judge Johannes Goldsche.  Anyone who has read the hundreds of footnotes in The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau knows that de Zayas identified important areas of research that require further investigation, including the role of SS Judge Georg Konrad Morgen, whose testimony at the Nuremberg Trials remains of great relevance to understand the atmosphere of terror, denunciation and intimidation prevalent among German civil servants, soldiers and officers during WWII.  It seems that the taboo that 1945-1975 prevented other historians from investigating these issues continues in place, notwithstanding the positive academic reception of the book and the ground-breaking work by de Zayas.  Dr. JvA 193.239.220.249 13:31, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Although the German Historischer Zeitschrift, the German Yearbook of International Law and the Archiv des Völkerrechts reviewed this book quite enthusiastically and noted its significance for future research, German historians and international lawyers did not rush into this terra incognita. As Dr. JvA notes, there are many surprises hidden in the footnotes of this book, and 62 years after the war it is time to conduct scholarly research into these issues.  The privately funded Reemtsma Exhibit on "Verbrechen der Wehrmacht" (crimes by the Wehrmacht) 1996-99 did not at all mention the existence of the German War Crimes Bureau or its 226 extant files.  It was a Polish historian, Bogdan Musial, who in an article in the Viertelsjahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte discovered that a photograph used by the Reemstma Exhibit was wrongly labeled in the exhibit, and that the same photo published by de Zayas in "Die Wehrmacht Untersuchungsstelle" did correctly identify the victims as nationalist Ukrainians killed by the NKVD in Lemberg and surrounding villages -- and not by the Germans.  This book thus contributed to the debate on crimes by the Germans and crimes by the NKVD.  The consequence of the Musial article was that the Reemtsma exhibit was closed and generally cleaned up of many other photos that were wrongly labeled. It reopened without the picture, but no document from the files of the Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle was reproduced or commented. A future exhibit could perhaps take this up.  It would also have been interesting if the records of the Wehrmacht Untesuchungsstelle had been available to the prosecution and defence teams at Nuremberg.  Unfortunately, these important files were classified as captured enemy records and kept in the Washington Army Archives -- out of reach by lawyers and researchers for 30 years.  De Zayas was the first researcher to see them after declassification and return to the Bundesarchiv in Freiburg i.Br.  The book was a sensation when it came out, as noted in a 5-page interview with de Zayas in DER SPIEGEL in January 1980.  Although the book has had 7 editions and every edition has been enriched by the addition of new research by de Zayas, there has been no follow-up by the international guilds of historians.  This book certainly would have justified a "Historikerstreit" as took place in Germany 1986-87 over Ernst Nolte's "Der Europäische Bürgerkrieg".  Johanna Müller85.3.222.33 13:43, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

text:  Reading this book is like getting a very cold shower -- the Germans in the role of victims! For us Dutch peoples it is not at all what we're used to. And yet, whoever has read Erich Maria Remarques "All Quiet on the Western Front" knows that Germans can be victims too -- and what makes the de Zayas book so important is that it reminds us that we are all capable to commit crimes, that the ultimate crime is indeed the crime against peace (Robert Jackson at Nuremberg). de Zayas manages to give an enormous amount of information without pathos and without polemic. The book should be taught in high schools and universities. 82.217.225.209 (talk) 06:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

text:  This book is a stupendous piece of research.  Why haven't other historians continued research in this field?  Why hasn't the history channel taken this up?  The book has wide implications. It is not just the fact that Allied soldiers also committed war crimes -- we know this from Vietnam and Irak too. What is interesting is that here were a bunch of German military judges who evidently thought they were "the good guys" and that the Allies were violating the Hague and Geneva Conventions right and left. This raises interesting historical, psychological and sociological issues. 210.82.92.237 (talk) 15:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

text:  Xx236 added a "sources" warning.  Why? This article makes reference to the ICRC book of Marco Sassoli/A.Bouvier "How does Law Protect in War" (2nd edition 2006), which reproduces part of "the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau".  The article also mentions the reviews in SPIEGEL, ZEIT,Cambridge Law Journal etc. These are all legitimate sources.  Maybe the administrators could glean out of the discussion page some additional sources, e.g. Weingartner.193.239.220.249 (talk) 12:40, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical context 

message: The article contains a text in German. Please translate it into English or remove it. Xx236 (talk) 12:56, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry Xx236. A translation, unless it is an official translation, risks being challenged as inaccurate. It is always better to bring the original in German. Besides, the topic of this article is a German bureau and all the records are in German.  Here, for instance, is an excerpt from the excellent review in Der SPIEGEL, in the original:  "Um nicht noch im nachhinein nationalsozialistische Propaganda aufzusitzen, prüfte de Zayas 'die innere Folgerichtigkeit der Akten' und verglich die darin geschilderten Vorgänge mit einschlägigen Materialien in Bonner, Londoner, amerikanischen und schweizerischen Archiven. Er machte Hunderte von Zeugen ausfindig, darunter rund 150 ehemalige Herres- Marine- und Luftwaffenrichter, die er nach dem Zustandekommen der Dokumente befragte...
Ob es sich mal um Kopflosigkeit, mal um Tucke haldelte -- was immer die Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle prüfte und de Zayas in deren Akten fand, erreichte, 'bei aller Grausamkeit im Einzelfall', doch nirgends 'die Ebene des organisierten Völkermords', wie Professor Dietrich Rauschning, Direktor des Göttinger Universitäts Instituts für Völkerrecht, an dem de Zayas arbeitete, in einem Vorwort festhielt: 'Ein Vergleich mit dieser Dimension verbietet sich.' Auch de Zayas will seine Veröffentlichung keineswegs als 'Anrechnung gegen Holocaust' verstanden wissen und wendet sich vorsorglich gegen 'Beifall von der falschen Seite'. Aber: 'Wenn das nun mal alles so stimmt, muss man auch darüber reden können." Der Spiegel Nr. 4/1980, S. 77-81
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14318865.html .193.239.220.249 (talk) 07:46, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with 193. And I just discovered in the de Zayas site a relevant document that has not been mentioned in this discussion page, and, as far as I know, has never been published.  It is the closing report on the project to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany's most distinguished scholarly foundation, which primarily funds major academic projects) on the Project "Wehrmacht Untersuchungsstelle", which de Zayas directed 1975-79. The report is dated September 1979 and includes a wealth of information unavailable elsewhere. http://www.alfreddezayas.com/Law_history/dfgschlussbericht 85.0.19.214 (talk) 16:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

text: What are the implications of this book?  Many.  First, that we are all capable of committing crimes, that war crimes and genocide are not the exclusive domain of the Nazis; second, that notwithstanding the fact that the Nazis did commit horrendous crimes, it remains necessary and legitimate to test Allied compliance with the Hague and Geneva Conventions; third, that the German bureau on war crimes was not a propaganda organ, but a judicial investigative body, not unlike parallel institutions in the Allied countries, such as the US and British War Crimes Commissions; fourth, that consistent with the principle audiatur et altera pars, the German allegations should be heard and not dismissed out of hand; fifth, that the German judges were serious professionals, that the Bureau was in fact an island of law in a lawless ocean; seven, that the Soviet from of total war did not develop in the course of the war, but was there from 21 June 1941, that the shooting of German POWs following interrogation was widespread; eighth, that there has been almost total impunity for Allied soldiers -- whether Soviet, Polish, Yugoslav, French, British or American; ninth, that historians have hitherto neglected to study alliied war crimes and contented themselves with beating a dead horse.  Much of Second World War history is deadly boring -- always more of the same.  This book offers vast opportunities for further research and doctoral dissertations, e.g. over the jurisprudence of the German military courts to protect the civilian population of occupied territories (see chapter 4 of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau); about the war crimes trials conducted by the Germans against Polish, French, Soviet and Yugoslav soldiers (see chapter 9); about the function of the protecting power and diplomatic protest notes (chapter 8);  about the use of forensic doctors to investigate cases of torture and mutilation (chapter 6); about Wehrmacht conceptions of post-war international law (chapter 12).  As Oxford Professor Norman Stone wrote in the London Times, this is indeed "an important book".  It is amazing that British, American and Canadian universities have not followed-up on the pioneering research of de Zayas.  It would help us develop a more balanced view of the Second World War -- and of war in general.  But most of our journalists and historians seem to prefer to deal with caricatures and stereotypes.  This is a challenging and extremely well researched book. Valorum (talk) 16:39, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is an English Wikipedia 

message: I am copyediting the article to remove an excessive use of long quotations, excessive use of his name, repeated non-specific praise from the book-reviews, and excessive links to other notable people and institutions. I'm also going to work on decreasing the duplication with other related articles.  Wikipedia is not promotional; the purpose of our articles is to describe the subjects. This includes describing their significance, but we show it, not say it. 
In my several years of experience here as an administrator, I have seen many articles on controversial subjects  get attacked and sometimes emasculated or even deleted  because they adopt a tone of promotion or public relations handout or publisher's blurb.  The protection against such attack is to write a modest and straightforward article, perhaps even understated a little. I strongly urge people, especially anyone with a COI as a strong supporter of de Zayas work, to not reinsert the material I remove. I specialize a little in articles on academic subjects and academic books, and I know how to get them to fit our sometimes idiosyncratic standards.   
And I think I need to point out that the talk page is for discussing the article, not the subject.     DGG ( talk ) 05:09, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Dear DGG.  That makes a lot of sense.  I just added 3 critical reviews from the Polish press in 1979-80.  You are probably right that de Zayas has kind of a "fan club" -- but this may be because no one else seems to want to tackle these difficult issues seriously, and there is a perceived need to approach contemporary history with an open mind, prepared to be shocked or upset.  De Zayas has a web site where he has uploaded many reviews of his books, including his recent human rights publications. I found this review of Wehrmacht by a Colonel Fisher in ARMY, May 1991, quite revealing: "If ever a book graphically described the horrors associated with war, this is it... The author has thoroughly and skillfully researched these documents to present a moving and disturbing record of investigations by a small group of German military lawyers remakably untainted by membership in the Nazi Party. The author quotes one member of the Bureau as saying: 'During my entire career as an army judge until the end of the war...I was never subjected to any influence fromt he party, nor for that matter from the commanders...' The author, in his efforts to establish the bureau's credibility, learned that many opponents of National Socialism had come together in the bureau. Moreover, nothing in the files gave a priori reason to doubt the integrity of the bureau members. The author found no comments in the bureau's internal correspondence that would indicate adherence to Nazi ideology, no anti-Semitic observations and no jaded remarks. What became obvious from the author's study of the unfortunately incomplete internal correspondence is that the bureau members had a subjective conviction that the Allies, mostly the Soviets, were grossly violating international law in their crimes against German soldiers.
For American and British readers, this allegation may come as quite a shock, turning the tables on them and forcing them to see the other side. Many readers, however, might ask how the Germans could fault Allied behavior when at the same time Einsatzgruppen had been shooting thousands upon thousands of Jews, and in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Lublin-Majdanek and Chelmo, additional millions were being gassed.
The author's ultimate answer is that they did not know. Hitler's Order No. 1 seems to have played an important role in effectively limiting the number of people who knew about the Holocaust. This order, which a bureau member stated hung in every office and was taken very seriously, assured that only a very few knew what was happening. 
Historians must yet decide what to believe about the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, about the reliability of its records and about the reasons it never investigated the greatest crime against humanity in this century. Only the discovery of additional files can shed light on the uncertainties that prevail concerning this aspect of the bureau's work." Col. Ernest F. Fischer Jr., Ph.D., USA retired, in ARMY, May 1991, p. 69." Animus63 (talk) 20:44, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Zayas has just published a kind of follow-up to "Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau".  The book came out with a Munich publisher called Olzog, and thus far it is only in German:  "Voelkermord als Staatsgeheimnis" or genocide as state secret.  Zayas uses the records of the Wehrmacht Bureau and his interviews with German judges as well as other archives to illustrate how the Nazis tried to keep awareness of the Holocaust to a minimum, how they has a whole machinery to dissimulate the killings, destroy the traces, deny rumours etc. In the process he uncovers a lot of unknown or little known Nazi crimes and addresses the issue of Wehrmacht opposition to Hitler and the attempts on Hitler's life. Prof. Arnulf Baring, Berlin, gave it a pretty good review in the Tagesspiegel of 11 September, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/staatsgeheimnis/4598806.html.66.104.252.226 (talk) 15:46, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

text: CORRECTED THE ISBN NUMBER OF THE 7TH GERMAN EDITION -- IT IS NOT , BUT .  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Animus63 (talk • contribs) 17:07, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: copyedit

message: I propose removing the passage that references Kerr -- it's incited, and also sounds promotional to a certain extent. It's also possibly non-notable to be included in the article. Please let me know of any feedback. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:45, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kerr