The United States of America v. Wilhelm List, et al., commonly known as theHostages Trial, was the seventh of the twelve "Subsequent Nuremberg trials" forwar crimes andcrimes against humanity after the end ofWorld War II between 1947 and 1948. The accused were 12Wehrmacht generals of theBalkan Campaign charged with ordering thehostage-taking of civilians, wanton shootings of these hostages, thereprisal killings of civilians, and the execution without trial of captured "partisans" (both real and suspected) perpetrated by German troops in occupiedGreece,Albania andYugoslavia. The defendantLothar Rendulic was further charged for usingscorched earth inFinland during theLapland War in 1944.
The Hostages Trial was held byUnited States authorities at thePalace of Justice inNuremberg in theAmerican occupation zone before USmilitary courts, not before theInternational Military Tribunal. Two were found guilty of 3 counts, four of 2 counts, and two of 1 count, receiving prison sentences ranging from seven years tolife imprisonment, and four wereacquitted of all charges.Franz Böhme committed suicide before thearraignment, andMaximilian von Weichs was severed from the trial for medical reasons.
The judges in this case, heard before Military Tribunal V, wereCharles F. Wennerstrum (presiding judge) fromIowa,George J. Burke fromMichigan, andEdward F. Carter fromNebraska. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution wasTelford Taylor, the chief prosecutor for this case wasTheodore Fenstermacher. Theindictment was filed on May 10, 1947; the trial lasted from July 8, 1947, until February 19, 1948.
Nazi Germany launched aninvasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, establishing theGerman Military Occupation zone inSerbia, propping up theIndependent State of Croatia as apuppet state, and dividing the remainder of Yugoslavia to beannexed by neighbouringAxis countries. TheWehrmacht occupation force and theircollaborators faced resistance from the various anti-Germanpartisan organisations. German commanders responded to partisan attacks with extremely harshreprisal attacks against civilians. One of the tactics used was taking groups of civilians ashostages, who would then besummarily executed in the event of a partisan attack.
Lothar Rendulic was additionally charged for his use ofscorched earth tactics inFinnish Lapland during theLapland War in the winter of 1944. Rendulic was accused of ordering the destruction ofRovaniemi, allegedly as revenge againstFinland for making a separate peace with theSoviet Union.
The accused faced four charges of having committedwar crimes andcrimes against humanity:
All defendants were indicted on all counts and all pleaded "not guilty".
The judges were all from theMidwestern United States and represented a moreconservative perspective on the Nuremberg trial proceedings from that taken by theEast Coast judges who had presided over earlier trials in the series.[1] In particular the judges were inclined to treat theprosecution case with considerable suspicion. The judges ruled that captured partisan orguerrilla resistance fighters could never expect to be given the protected status of prisoners of war, and could lawfully be executed without trial.[2] Furthermore, the judges departed explicitly from theNuremberg Principles established in theInternational Military Tribunal, in ruling that the killing of hostages and reprisal killings of innocent individual civilians might be lawful if undertaken by an occupying power as a response to resistance forces engaging in partisan warfare, albeit subject to stringent constraints.[2] Following the judgement, JusticeCharles F. Wennerstrum gave an interview to theChicago Tribune in which he accused the prosecution of failing "to maintain objectivity aloof from vindictiveness, [and] aloof from personal ambitions for convictions" and dismissed the whole Nuremberg exercise as "victors justice".[3] He proposed that many of theGerman Jewish emigrants employed in the prosecution office were of suspect loyalty to the United States; "The whole atmosphere here is unwholesome.... Lawyers, clerks, interpreters and researchers are employed who became Americans only in recent years; whose backgrounds were embedded in Europe's hatreds and prejudices."
| Portrait | Name | Function at time of offense | Charges | Sentence | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ||||
 | Wilhelm List | Field Marshal, Commander in Chief South-East 1941–1942, head of the German12th Army in 1941 | G | I | G | I | Life imprisonment; released in December 1952 for medical reasons; died in 1971 |
 | Maximilian von Weichs | Field Marshal, commander of the German2nd Army during theBalkans Campaign with the rank of aGeneraloberst | I | I | I | I | Removed from the trial due to illness; died in 1954 |
 | Lothar Rendulic | Generaloberst, Commander of the2nd Panzer Army in Yugoslavia 1943–44; from 1944, Commander of the20th Mountain Army and all German troops stationed in Finland and Norway | G | I | G | G | 20 years; commuted to 10 years; released in 1951; died in 1971 |
 | Walter Kuntze | General der Pioniere, successor of List as Commander in Chief South-East and head of the 12th Army as of October 29, 1941 | G | I | G | G | Life imprisonment; released in 1953 for medical reasons; died in 1960 |
 | Hermann Foertsch | Generalmajor, Chief of Staff of the 12th Army | I | I | I | I | Acquitted; died in 1961 |
 | Franz Böhme | General of theXVIII Mountain Corps (1940–43), successor of Rendulic in 1944 | I | I | I | I | Committed suicide on May 30, 1947 (before thearraignment) |
| Hellmuth Felmy | General der Flieger; commander in southern Greece | G | G | I | I | 15 years; commuted to 10 years; released in 1951; died in 1965 | |
 | Hubert Lanz | General of theXXII Mountain Corps (1943–45) | G | I | G | I | 12 years; released in 1951; died in 1982 |
 | Ernst Dehner | Generalmajor, corps commander under Rendulic | G | I | I | I | 7 years; released in 1951; died in 1970 |
 | Ernst von Leyser | General der Infanterie, corps commander under Rendulic and Böhme | I | I | G | G | 10 years; released in 1951; died in 1962 |
 | Wilhelm Speidel | Generalmajor, military commander in Greece 1942-44 | G | I | I | I | 20 years; released in 1951; died in 1970 |
 | Kurt Ritter von Geitner | Generalmajor, Chief of Staff of the military commanders in Serbia and Greece | I | I | I | I | Acquitted; died in 1968 |
I — Indicted G — Indicted and found guilty
The tribunal had to deal with two pressing questions:
On the question of partisans, the tribunal concluded that under the currentlaws of war (theHague Convention No. IV from 1907), the partisan fighters insoutheast Europe could not be considered lawful belligerents under Article 1 of the convention even though most had worn distinctive military insignia in combat (aRed Star sewn onto a uniform cap) and many had fought in military uniform of one form or another, as most fought as guerrillas and as such could not consistently conform to all the conditions of belligerency laid down in the Hague Regulations forregular forces. Irregular forces who engaged in guerrilla warfare - even if they did so in uniform and carried their arms openly in combat - could not be lawful combatants if they subsequently concealed their weapons, resumed everyday clothing, and mingled with non-combatant civilians. For the tribunal, all forms of civilian armed resistance to occupation forces were unlawful, and consequently captured partisans who had hidden within or behind civilian populations could lawfully be executed as war criminals without formal trial.[4]
German soldiers were the victims of surprise attacks by an enemy which they could not engage in open combat. After a surprise attack, the bands would hastily retreat or conceal their arms and mingle with the population with the appearance of being harmless members thereof."[4]
... guerrillas may render great service to their country and, in the event of success, become heroes even, still they remain war criminals in the eyes of the enemy and may be treated as such. In no other way can an army guard and protect itself from the gadfly tactics of such armed resistance."[4]
On List, the tribunal stated:
We are obliged to hold that such guerrillas werefrancs tireurs who, upon capture, could be subjected to the death penalty. Consequently, no criminal responsibility attaches to the defendant List because of the execution of captured partisans...[4]
Regarding hostage taking and the retrospective killing of civilians in reprisal for guerrilla actions, the tribunal came to the conclusion that under certain circumstances, hostage taking and even reprisal killings might constitute a lawful course of action as an effective deterrent against guerrilla attacks. In the tribunal's opinion, taking hostages against armed civilian resistance (and killing them should guerrilla attacks continue) could be legitimate, subject to several conditions.[5] The tribunal observed that both theBritish Manual of Military Law and the U.S.Basic Field Manual (Rules of Land Warfare) permitted the taking of reprisals to deter a civilian population threatening continued armed resistance. (The British manual did not mention killing, but the US manual included killing as a possible reprisal.[6]) Nevertheless, the tribunal still found most of the accused guilty on count 1 of the indictment because it considered the acts committed by the German troops to be in excess of the rules under which the tribunal considered hostage taking and reprisal killings lawful; in particular that a clear connection between the populations from whom hostages had been taken and the populations within which guerrilla forces were continuing to shelter, had not been established through some form of judicial hearing; and also that, as deliberate policy the numbers of civilians killed in reprisals by troops under the command of the defendants had disproportionately exceeded the numbers of deaths due to guerrilla action in the occupying forces.
As in the case of the taking of hostages, reprisal prisoners may not be shot unless it can be shown that the population, as a whole is a party to the offence, either actively or passively. In other words, members of the population of one community cannot properly be shot in reprisal for an act against the occupation forces committed at some other place. To permit such a practice would conflict with the basic theory that sustains the practice in that there would be no deterrent effect upon the community where the offence was committed. Neither may the shooting of innocent members of the population as a reprisal measure exceed in severity the unlawful acts it is designed to correct.[4]
Notably, the tribunal refused to take any regard at all for the Nuremberg principles established previously in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal; where it had been stated at Article 6 that the killing of hostages was itself a war crime. "War crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." The prosecution case had advanced these principles as establishing the inherent criminality of hostage killing; and in rejecting these arguments the tribunal must be considered to have been asserting that the Nuremberg principles could and should be overruled in the circumstances of this case. Nevertheless, even though the tribunal maintained the potential legality of hostage killing, this did not lead them to dismiss the charges of mass murder against the defendants - with the possible exception of von Leyser.
.. an examination of the judgment shows that the Tribunal’s conclusion that the killing of hostages and reprisal prisoners may in certain circumstances be legal has not been the reason for a finding of not guilty regarding any of the accused in the trial with the possible exception of the defendant von Leyser, of whom the Tribunal said : “ The evidence concerning the killing of hostages and reprisal prisoners within the corps area is so fragmentary that we cannot say that the evidence is sufficient to support a finding that the measures taken were unlawful. The killing of hostages and reprisal prisoners is entirely lawful under certain circumstances. The evidence does not satisfactorily show in what respect, if any, the law was violated. This is a burden cast upon the prosecution which it has failed to sustain.”[4]
One common line of defense of the accused was thePlea of Superior Orders: they stated that they were only following orders from higher up, in particular fromHitler and Field MarshalKeitel, demanding multiple deaths of civilians in reprisal for every German casualty. The tribunal recognized this defense only for some of the lower-ranked defendants, but concluded that in particular the highest-ranking officers, List and Kuntze, should have been well aware of the fact that these orders violated international law and thus should have opposed the execution of these orders, even more so as they were in a position that would have allowed them to do so.
The Tribunal considered the question of whether the Independent State of Croatia was asovereign entity capable of acting independently of the German military, with Germany recognising the Croatian government on 15 April 1941). It concluded that Croatia was not and that military occupation depended not on the physical deployment of troops, as they could be redeployed into the territory at will, but on the control exercised by the occupying power. It followed that as the area remained under the control of the occupying power therefore "Logic and reason dictate that the occupant could not lawfully do indirectly that which it could not do directly".[7]
