Cholm: Heaps of Skulls*
PAUL HERZOG
An answer to the question: Did we commit these crimes? (Point 3D
of the indictment of the war criminals: Murder and maltreatment
of prisoners of war.)
General Lahousen at the Nurnberg trials: ((You have rav–
aged Poland like the Vandals, you have shot by the millions
or allowed to die of hunger the Russian prisoners who were
to be treated, according to the High Command, not as
soldiers but as <ideological enemies.'"
T
HE PUBLISHED TEXT
of the :harges .against the war criminals
contains in point 3D an indictment of German officers, soldiers, gov–
ernment officials, and party functionaries, as having committed crimes
against the person and life of prisoners of war. The course of the
Niirnberg war-criminal trials itself has the effect of keeping the
indictment always before the public. Objections which might be
raised from the German side against the textual content and theme
of the Niirnberg trials in general are: that the war criminals did
not commit such crimes, that the text of the indictment is false, that
the formulation of the indictment is tendencious and this whole
affair nothing more than anti-German propaganda. Finally it all ap–
pears to be a consolidated attack upon the feelings of innocence of the
German people, in whom the conquerors wish by every means to
implant, with the object of physical and moral emasculation, .an un–
deserved consciousness of
guilt.
This objection to the trials, so widespread, has not been refuted
by the appearance of scattered self-sponsored writings and testimony
from concentration camps, penitentiaries, and prisons. Because a few
I
I
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*
The author of this article is a writer who served in the German army from
1941 to April, 1945, when he was captured by the French, after being transferred
to the western front in 1943. So far as we know, this is the first document of its
kind to appear in this country. Thanks are due to the editors of
Die W.andlung
for
permission to translate this article.-The
Editors.
