Crimes of kreta

Objective research on factual information regarding German military related warcrimes.
phylo_roadking
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Post by phylo_roadking »

From MacDonald, "The Lost Battle: Crete 1941"

"The actions were endorsed by Goering, who demanded the 'severest counter-measures', including the possible execution or deportation of all male Cretans. On 31 May, Student issued his own order, calling for a policy of 'exemplary terror' against partisnas, including the shooting of hostages, total destruction of villages by burning and 'extermination of the male population of the area in question'. According to Student, such steps must be taken quickly and without legal formalities: 'In view of the circumstances the troops have a right to this and there is no need for military tribunals to judge beasts and assassins.' His order confrred approval on the reprisals already taken and constituted an incitement to commit war crimes. This contradicts later claims that Student disapproved of the indiscriminate execution of civilians and shows how far the barbarization of warfare had already gone in a German Army shaped by nazi ideology. At his post-war trial Student was evasive on the subject, claiming that 'these reprisals were not some sort of illegal reprisals but that they took place within the framework of the Hague Convention', a statement that conveniently overlooked his dismissal of any form of tribunal."

The problem with Student's statement is that by directly tying a need for military tribunals - or not - TO the judging of "beasts and assassins" in his statement - he was indeed breaking the Hague Conventions...which he WOULD have been just within if he'd directed the FJ to simply take and shoot hostages punitively! Unfortunately, Hague is quite clear that IF these shootings were in reprisal for the two killings, as Student says, then the population of Kondomari SHOULD have been examined by courts martial for the killing of uniformed combatants.

If he simply hadn't mentioned the words "tribunal" and "judge" and JUST told them to shoot francs-tireurs - he would have remained technically in the right, as opposed to being questionably in the wrong.
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Post by phylo_roadking »

(Unfortunately, circumstances have robbed us of a very interesting thread in AHF about an almost identical situation in Norway in 1940, when armed civilians were summarily executed without trial for killing invading Germans soldiers. The outcome of the discussion - with reference to the later 1948 "Hostages Trial" - was roughly this IIRC...

1. "franc-tireurs" armed civilians - can be legally summarily executed for killing armed uniformed combatants. BUT they have to be tried, no matter how quickly or slowly, by court martial, or else how do you know if you're shooting the right people?

2. Invaders/occupying forces COULD legally take and shoot hostages as reprisal killings and "pour encourager les autres".

BUT the two are two separate processes. The first case is the operation of military law against civilians who have broken military law in a wartime/battlefield absence of civil law applying. The second case of hostage and reprisal killings is a separate process.

Student in his order was applying what few rules and customs there were for Case Two, onto the circumstances of Case One - simply by saying "There is no need to judge...assassins" Yes there actually was, unless you are 100% certain you have captured francs-tireurs - and according to Peter Weixler who took the pictures, and later witness statements, there was NO attempt to identify who among the villagers had killed the two German soldiers.

If he had said "kill Cretans in reprisal for the killing of German soldiers, and to stop others doing it again", he would have been in the right, according to the later judgments of the Hostages Trial - as long as they were not "...in excess of the rules under which...(the tribunal considered) hostage taking and reprisal killings lawful.")
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
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Post by phylo_roadking »

These are of course very fine legal points - but they resulted in people dropping the long drop on the hangman's noose after the war or walking free.

And it shows how precise we have to be about the use of the term"War Crime" and "Not a War Crime". They are finely-tuned legal terms, established by trial and precedence, not just commonly-used reference terms.
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tixodioktis
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Post by tixodioktis »

First I want to you to clarify
That I do not ascribe responsibilities for all the units in Crete

However, Germans were those where they attacked in Crete
And how they waited for them they receive?
They were defended the homeland,
Now if they have become extremities to the Germans, I cannot him justify.
However it is not this reason You enter in the more near village and for executing in the chance meetings in your street

Image

Image


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tixodioktis
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Post by tixodioktis »

Paddy Keating

Post by Paddy Keating »

phylo_roadking wrote:Student in his order was applying what few rules and customs there were for Case Two, onto the circumstances of Case One - simply by saying "There is no need to judge...assassins" Yes there actually was, unless you are 100% certain you have captured francs-tireurs - and according to Peter Weixler who took the pictures, and later witness statements, there was NO attempt to identify who among the villagers had killed the two German soldiers.
All fair points, to be sure, but it is worth pointing out that Peter Weixler was arrested by the German security services because of his persistence in taking potentially compromising photographs and served eighteen months in prison so he probably cannot be considered an unbiased witness. Apart from possible disapproval on his part at the time of the actions, he may well have felt bitter about his arrest and imprisonment and the apparent failure of his comrades and his commanders to help him.

The photographs would appear to show that the killings were not indiscriminate. The Germans seem to have carefully selected a few men of "military age" whilst sending older men, children and females away. In one of the images, after the opening volleys, German solders can be seen with weapons at the ready, facing away from the scene, as if concerned about possible attack. This is conjecture, of course, but the fact remains that nobody seems to have been punished for what happened in Kondomeri that day - the killing of Bruno Brauer in 1947 aside - and the general feeling appears to be that the Fallschirmjäger were justified in their retaliatory actions against Cretan civilians in May and June 1941.

It is very easy to be shocked by these images of well-armed paratroopers mowing down a group of ordinary-looking blokes from a country village but one wonders how readers might feel had a photographer been on hand to record the fate of the Germans murdered in that village in the sort of clinical detail provided by Weixler's images. Some of the worst killers I met in the Balkans in the 1990s were very mild-mannered, ordinary-looking blokes. Such people tend to reserve the other side of their nature for those who are not in a position to fight back. To give you a better handle on the cultural divide in relation to the Germans and Cretans in these photographs, the Greek authorities only managed to eradicate honour killing of women in Crete in the 1950s. Many of the men, women and children in photos of Crete from this period enthusiastically condoned the killing of "wayward females" - and males - by various means ranging from shooting to stoning so unarmed, helpless German soldiers would have ranked as rare and special entertainment, as the few contemporary photographs of murdered Germans indicate.

Doubtless some innocent Cretans were rounded up and shot, which is regrettable, but war is an unpleasant business and things like that happen, especially when very different cultures collide. Like many Mediterranean people, Cretans are very nice as long as they are well-disposed towards you but they have a very dark, cruel side under certain circumstances. I suppose we all do, but in cultures like that, wanton cruelty is considered something of a virtue.

PK
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tixodioktis
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Post by tixodioktis »

Dear my you do not draw conclusions for the Cretans from what you read in various books
from that you see in the television, it can also you went
For tourism in Crete, the Cretans it should to them you know for big time interval
In order to them you characterize, and not you believe that because I say these reasons I am Cretan,
No I am not, from Thessalonica, their shoulder I have lived for big time interval
When I was officer in the parachutists

My personal experience of as many other,
I saw in the German cemetery of parachutists citizens of big age
leave flowers and they attend the graves,
them we asked to also us they said,
most of these lads do not have no one and their mothers are long.

of course before two,, three years, I do not remember well, certain with political motives
they made certain things which do not suit,
shoulder their we knew and you I inform that almost all it was not from Crete
and almost all Crete condemned this action .

in the aystralian military museum exists a table
it portrays a German parachutist in the earth and a Gero* Cretan from on him
with a Stone in his hand him it strikes ,
the table him it painted certain Greek I do not remember his name
the incident him saw the himself and it says afterwards that to him said the old Cretan .

as soon as him I killed also him removed the helmet saw a beautiful blond lad as the cold the waters,
ached a lot of my heart, I felt sorrow very, no because him I killed he was enemy and could not make differently
I felt sorrow because big that dominate send so much new children to be killed
Paddy Keating

Post by Paddy Keating »

I did not presume that you were Cretan. I would not say that all Cretans had primitive social attitudes and customs in the 1940s. Nor do I base my statements entirely upon what I have read in books. I have spent a lot of time in Greece and I have been to Crete several times. When I refer to the dark side of the Cretan character, I speak as an Irishman, from a nation with a very dark and violent side to its character indeed! People are not monsters. People can sometimes do monstrous things.

Most of us, if placed in the position of the Fallschirmjäger in the Weixler images, would find it quite easy to shoot those men. Hell, I would kill someone for kicking my motorcycle over if I thought I could get away with it. I kid you not. That's why we have laws. To stop us from killing and maiming one another as a primary resort. The Germans in these photos were told that they could retaliate with impunity. No rules applied. So they rounded up some likely-looking men from a village and shot them. They left the other villagers alone that day. So they were still quite disciplined about it.

Human nature stinks, which is why the majority of our religious belief systems are always exhorting us to "be good". Because we are fundamentally bad. The Ten Commandments were as much an indictment of God's screwed-up experiment as they were rules by which to live. Most of us, if we're honest, live according to the eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught breaking the first ten!. If you think about the membership here, ask yourself how many of the people with whom you interact steal, cheat, lie, commit adultery, sell drugs, take drugs, abuse children, beat their wives, murder prostitutes or, to be topical, murder civilians in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wanna see monsters? No need to download 1941 photographs from the Bundesarchiv: just go and look in the mirror.

PK
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Commissar D, the Evil
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Post by Commissar D, the Evil »

Human nature stinks,
Kind of says it all, doesn't it? Add to that a war......

And judge not, and ye shall not be judged... (Luke, 6:37)

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~D, the EviL
Death is lighter than a Feather, Duty is heavier than a Mountain....
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tixodioktis
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Post by tixodioktis »

A good book that I have read has been the Crete: The Battle and the Resistance
Writer the Antony Beevor
Him I have it proposes also in the user Annelie
and it cannot claim no one that he is not reliable
It reports a lot of makes that we have discussed
As I read the Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943
And the Berlin. The Downfall 1945
And I liked very a lot of
phylo_roadking
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Post by phylo_roadking »

Been doing a bit more reading in the last 24 hours. It appears the Germans first of all rounded up ALL the villages - SOP in Crete, for starting very soon after that any such action would be accompnaied automatically by house ransacking and looting, and finally the houses of the dead burned, or the whole village, the latter more so from late 1943 onwards - then selected male villagers at randon from ages 12 to 90. They were segreated in an olive grove for some six hours - during which Franz-Peter Weixler doesn't remember any appeal for the killers of the two soldiers to be turned over. Late in the afternoon a truck with a second party of FJ arrived, who leapt off the truck, took up firing positions and executed the prisoners...

Here things diverge from the brief versions included in Beevor and MacDonald; it appears as both parties then packed up, the entire village attacked the FJ with stones, and they had to shoot their way out of the village. A total of some 45 further villagers were killed in the firing, or died of their wounds afterwards. So it's rightly regarded as one of the bigger massed killing of Cretans during the occupation, but when discussed postwar it was Weixler's photographic record that focused attention on the first set of killings that day.

I think Kondamari was revisited the day after and the village burned, but there were no casualties on the second day. Certainly there's mention of the killings and the first burning being part of "the same incident" but there was no burning on the first day.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
Paddy Keating

Post by Paddy Keating »

Image

Image

I haven't tried to match any of the rank and file in the firing parties to the men guarding the prisoners in the olive grove but the officer apparently giving the firing orders is the same man in earlier photos. These two images are thirteen frames apart, according to the BW filing reference, which is probably based upon the original PK/KB system, but the images do not seem to support the contention that one or two lorryloads of Fallschirmjäger arrived, debussed, herded the prisoners into the middle of the grove and opened fire 'just like that'. Furthermore, the young man in the first image appears to be answering questions. It seems as if the Germans showed him something, which he examines whilst responding to them. He did not survive, as he can just be seen in a photograph of the Cretans before the first volley. I just don't buy the story that no questions were posed to these men before someone decided to shoot them. Nor am I very comfortable with this story of some other paratroopers arriving from nowhere and killing the prisoners. More likely scenario: time is dragging on. The prisoners are telling their captors that they know absolutely nothing about the killing of the German paras. The Germans want to be out of there before nightfall. An example must be made. They're not feeling very charitable anyway. However, the officers decide to call up another group of paras to carry out the execution for reasons possibly related to morale, assuming the story about a second group to be true. Prisoners shot. Villagers go berserk. Germans withdraw. A further example must be made in order to show natives that they cannot throw rocks at Germans with impunity. Village burned down the next day. Just an unfortunate episode in a campaign not remembered for its cleanliness from any participants' viewpoints.

PK

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Post by phylo_roadking »

Franz-Peter Weixler's statements AND the one surviving casualty of the original shooting party both confirm the arrival of the lorry with the actual firing party in the afternoon...for when the villagers attacked, the firing party and Trebbes' original party didn't go back to check the bodies or deliver the traditional coup de grace. The survivor lived after some months' nursing. And IIRC there was actually a THIRD acount that I can't turn up - in the confusion Weixler had helped a SECOND hostage escape - hence TWO survivors and 19 killed out of the original seizure of 21 men.

Weixler, being in the grove, couldn't confirm if any actual questioning of the rest of the villagers was carried out, but they were given ONE hour to turn over the killers of the two soldiers at the beginning of the incident. Certainly the hostages were held a LOT longer than the mandated one hour. When the shooting happened, the Germans were first attacked by a crowd of women and children who had gathered outside a cordon uphill of the grove. So there were actually THREE parties under restaint - the hostages, the women and children - and somewhere else the rest of the men of the village. Therefore it's quite realistic that Trebbes simply requested more manpower. There's no indication that there was any unrest PRIOR to the shooting - or rather, recorded unrest, as there's no record of what was happening with the rest of the men - and the lack of trouble at the shooting site is confirmed by the photographic record of the "relaxed" circumstances" in the grove before the shooting.

It's not every day you get mutually-confirming statements from both sides of a massacre like this.
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Andy H
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Post by Andy H »

Does anyone have deatils about the specific reprisals the Germans took after the SOE spirited General Kreipe's from Crete in 1944?

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