HITLER'S DESERTERS: When Law Merged With Terror

During World War II around 50,000 German soldiers deserted from their units, of whom around 20,000 were executed by shooting, beheading or hanging. The British Army in World War I had executed 306 deserters, some as young as 16, young boys who panicked in the face of fire, and the author traces a direct link between this barbarity and the German judicial executions for desertion in World War II. He tells the poignant stories of many young men who were executed, but principal sources are the experiences of three who survived and suffered ostracism and discrimination for the whole of the rest of their lives. Their legal position remained equivocal because although the Nazi party was defeated and condemned, the execution of deserters had happened under the rule of law, even though these were the increasingly paranoid laws enacted by Hitler. Those who were unfit to serve through illness were executed as being a burden on the state, and the law did not allow for conscientious objection. 270 Jehovah's Witnesses were executed on account of their religious beliefs. In 1938 the statutes were tightened to allow no appeal. Only a handful survived to see the half-hearted rehabilitation law passed by the Bundestag more than half a century later. Peter Schilling, who at first embraced Nazi ideology, escaped to Switzerland over the border and was relegated to a refugee camp. Ludwig Baumann deserted from the French navy base in Bordeaux in June 1942 with his friend Kurt, stealing weapons and ammunition, but a border patrol picked them up. Tortured during interrogation they were condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted and Ludwig spent the war in military prison, suffering from diphtheria and forced to watch daily executions. Objector Helmut Kober was shocked by Hitler's book-burning and the complicity of the Nazi bishops. Following the war, former Nazis were elevated to high positions while those who had resisted faced a continuing stigma. 173 pp, case histories, photos.