Sippenhaft Sippenhaft or Sippenhaftung ( English : " kin liability " ) refers to the principle of families sharing the responsibility for a crime committed by one of its members . It is a form of collective punishment . A relative of the perpetrator could thus be punished in place or in addition to the perpetrator , depending on the circumstances . This legal principle is derived from Germanic law in the middle ages . It has been practiced in some countries until the modern age as well as in communist East Germany and on a larger scale in Nazi Germany towards the end of the World War II . The term " Haft " does not necessarily imply a prison sentence , but can refer to any form of punishment . The same principle is also found in many non - western cultures , including in Japan until the mid 19th century . Nazi Germany . Sippenhaft was a legalized practice in which relatives of persons accused of crimes against the state were held to share the responsibility for those crimes and subject to arrest and sometimes execution . Many people who had committed no crimes were arrested and punished under " Sippenhaft " laws introduced after the failed 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944 . Examples of Sippenhaft being used as a threat exist within the Wehrmacht from around 1943 . Soldiers accused of having ' blood impurities ' or soldiers conscripted from areas outside of Germany also began to have their families threatened and punished with Sippenhaft . An example is the case of Panzergrenadier Leiss , who was accused of desertion on the Eastern Front in December 1942 . After the Düsseldorf Gestapo discovered supposed ' Polish ' links in the Leiss family , in February 1943 his wife , child , two brothers , sister and brother - in - law were arrested and executed at Sachsenhausen concentration camp . By 1944 , several general and individual directives were ordered within divisions and corps , threatening troops with consequences against their family . After 20 July 1944 these threats were extended to include all German troops and in particular , German commanders . A decree of February 1945 threatened death to the relatives of military commanders who showed what Hitler regarded as cowardice or defeatism in the face of the enemy . After surrendering Königsberg to the Soviets in April 1945 , the family of the German commander General Otto Lasch were arrested . These arrests were publicized in the " Völkischer Beobachter " . After the failure of the 20 July plot , the SS chief Heinrich Himmler told a meeting of Gauleiter s in Posen that he would " introduce absolute responsibility of kin . . . a very old custom practiced among our forefathers . " According to Himmler , this practice had existed among the ancient Teuton s . " When they placed a family under the ban and declared it outlawed or when there was a blood feud in the family , they were utterly consistent . . . This man has committed treason ; his blood is bad ; there is traitor ' s blood in him ; that must be wiped out . And in the blood feud the entire clan was wiped out down to the last member . And so , too , will Count Stauffenberg ' s family be wiped out down to the last member . " Accordingly , the members of the family of Stauffenberg ( the one who had planted the bomb that failed to kill Hitler ) were all under suspicion . His wife , Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg , was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp ( she survived and lived until 2006 ) . His brother Alexander , who knew nothing of the plot and was serving with the Wehrmacht in Greece , was also sent to a concentration camp . Similar punishments were meted out to the relatives of Carl Goerdeler , Henning von Tresckow , Adam von Trott zu Solz and many other conspirators . The fact that most of these families belonged to the old Prussia n aristocracy , a class detested by the Nazis , added to the zeal with which they were persecuted . After the 20 July 1944 as well , numerous families , such as von Seydlitz and Paulus , connected to the Soviet sponsored League of German Officers group made up of German prisoners of war were also arrested . Unlike a number of the 20 July conspirators families , those arrested for connection to the League were not released after a few months but remained in prison until the end of the war . Younger children of arrested plotters were not jailed but sent to orphanages under new names : Stauffenberg ' s children were renamed " Meister . " Other totalitarian regimes have used similar practices even if they did not codify them in law . During Joseph Stalin ' s 1930s Great Purge , many thousands of people were arrested and executed or sent to labour camps as " relatives of the enemies of the people . " One well - known example was Anna Larina , the wife of Nikolai Bukharin . Red Army soldiers , particularly before brutal battles such as the one at Stalingrad , were told that relatives of soldiers who surrendered would be killed . Similar practices took place in the People ' s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s . A prominent example is Deng Pufang , the son of Deng Xiaoping .