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ruthlessly and mindlessly imposed death penalties on men whose only
crime was not to want to die in the last months or weeks of Hitler's
war. If these accounts were true, they disqualified Filbinger from serving
in high office in a democratic society.
Some of those most interested in these revelations were the sympa–
thizers of the dead terrorists. To them, it was obvious that the same Fil–
binger who was responsible for having frightened young men executed in
the name of last-ditch loyalty to Hitler had also in some way caused the
deaths of the terrorists on 1977. Thus, allegations about the past con–
firmed convictions about the present. The West German left's constant
argument since the 1960s that the FRG was implicitly authoritarian, that
its democratic facade concealed repressive urges, received apparent and
dramatic confirmation.
Hochhuth fired the first shot, and
Die Zeit
spent sixty-five large pages
on Filbinger over the next four months. The most effective campaign
against him was waged by another Hamburg publication, the news–
magazine
Der Spiegel.
It was, and is, run by Rudolf Augstein, who de–
voted sixteen editions and sixty pages to the public moral execution of
Filbinger, whom he defined at one point as a "Nazi by conviction," on
the grounds that although Filbinger had never been a member of the
National Socialist Party, his alleged behavior as a Navy judge was Nazi–
like in character. Although neither
Die Zeit
nor
Der Spiegel
endorsed the
suspicion that Filbinger had reverted to old habits in procuring the
deaths of the terrorists, their campaign clearly implied that Filbinger was
unfit to hold office. He should go. And he went.
A triumph for democracy and investigative journalism? Only if you
ignore facts. One such fact is that Filbinger's alleged excesses as a Navy
judge, on examination, disappeared into thin air. The most serious alle–
gation against him was that, only a few weeks before the German forces
in Norway surrendered, he had condemned to death a midshipman who
had deserted. Filbinger's attackers did not mention and probably did not
realize that this midshipman had meanwhile defected to neutral Sweden,
and so there was no way that the sentence could be carried out. Fil–
binger, of course, knew this and imposed the death penalty only as an
exemplary disciplinary measure.
Another alleged inhumanity of Filbinger's concerned a midshipman
who deserted, was recaptured, convicted, and executed. Again, the 1978
tales ignored critical facts about the case. They claimed that the man was
a highly decorated veteran of the Eastern front, implying that he was a
brave soldier who was simply expressing his justified disgust with fanatical
plans for last-ditch defense. In fact, he was a thief in civilian life who had
