LEIPZIG TRIALS.

After World War I, the victorious Allies brought criminal proceedings for war crimes against a number of Germans. Allied bitterness over Germany's conduct of the war precluded the kind of amnesty typical of peace accords prior to 1919. But the trials, which began in Leipzig in 1921, failed to deliver either punishment or peace.

In Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, known as the War Guilt Clause, the victors of World War I (1914–1918) declared that Germany was solely responsible for the conflict: "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies." Total war, it was felt, called for total responsibility, and this must include punishment in the name of justice, democracy, and morality.

The treaty thus ordered "penalties" for and "reparations" from the main defeated party, Germany, starting with the German emperor, who had abdicated and taken refuge in the Netherlands: "The Allied and Associated Powers publicly arraign William II of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor, for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties. A special tribunal will be constituted to try the accused, thereby assuring him the guarantees essential to the right of defense.… In its decision the tribunal will be guided by the highest motives of international policy, with a view to vindicating the solemn obligations of international undertakings and the validity of international morality. It will be its duty to fix the punishment which it considers should be imposed" (Article 227). "The German Government recognizes the right of the Allied and Associated Powers to bring before military tribunals persons accused of having committed acts in violation of the laws and customs of war. Such persons shall, if found guilty, be sentenced to punishments laid down by law" (Article 28). "Persons guilty of criminal acts against the nationals of one of the Allied and Associated Powers will be brought before the military tribunals of that Power" (Article 229).

The treaty sought to supply a legal basis for Germany's responsibility, notably with respect to the violation of Belgian neutrality, and so justify the demand for full reparations for all damage inflicted. But the Germans were not mistaken in discerning moral condemnation in the treaty, hence their hatred of the articles quoted here in particular and of the Treaty of Versailles in general.

Of the four Allied leaders, it was British Prime Minister David Lloyd George who, unlike U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, pressed for these judgments; Georges Clemenceau of France and Vittorio Orlando of Italy went along, despite the difficulty of achieving consensus on an international law that did not in fact exist. As for the requested extradition of William II, the Dutch had no judicial basis for acceding to it. This caused many problems, summed up by a contemporary Frenchman as follows: "I see no need to turn the ex-Emperor into a martyr.… I see any action that might tend to remove him from his present wretched and despised condition as nothing but a cause of difficulty." The Netherlands refused to extradite, and William II eventually died there in 1941, at a time when the country was once again occupied by Germany.

Dealing with other "war criminals" was far more difficult. Who was to be placed on the list? How could Germany be persuaded to arrest and try them? Even the Allies became concerned, fearing that the immense public hostility to such measures might overwhelm the young Weimar Republic if it complied with their most drastic requirements.

Nevertheless, by February 1920 lists had been drawn up naming 888 accused individuals. These included princes, officers charged with battlefield or prison camp atrocities, and submarine commanders who were held responsible for attacks on civilian and hospital ships. Fritz Haber, winner of the 1919 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was among those indicted for his part in developing poison gas, as were former chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and the popular Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. Eventually this roster was winnowed down to forty-five individuals, who were to be tried by the German high court in Leipzig.

Proceedings began on 23 May 1921 and rapidly turned into a farce. The accused were treated like heroes by the German public, and all but seven were acquitted; these seven received light sentences, which were never served. The trial did much to boost nationalist and revanchist sentiments in Germany, further weakening an already fragile Weimar democracy, which was trapped between Allied demands and a public that damned the government for accepting Versailles's humiliating conditions, among which was the trial itself. The idea of German guilt, so dear to the Allies, was widely derided within Germany.

All the same, it was at the Leipzig trials that wartime acts were subjected to postwar legal judgment for the first time in history. For the first time the questions were raised: what was a war crime and how does it differ from other crimes? Thereafter, the idea that war crimes should not go unpunished took on increasing importance. It figured in the thinking of the United States in 1941, when it intervened in World War II, and it led to the war crimes trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo after 1945. What these proceedings also had in common with the Leipzig trials was that only the defeated were accused of war crimes.

See alsoHaber, Fritz; Hindenburg, Paul von; Nuremberg War Crimes Trials; Versailles, Treaty of; World War I; World War II .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Becker, Jean-Jacques. "Les procès de Leipzig." In Les procès de Nuremberg et de Tokyo, edited by Annette Wieviorka. Brussels, 1996.

Hankel, Gerd. Die Leipziger Prozesse: Deutsche Kriegsverbrechen und ihre strafrechtliche Verfolgung nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Hamburg, Germany, 2003.

Schabas, William. An Introduction to the International Criminal Court. New York, 2004.

Annette Becker