death penalty news--USA/GERMANY

[Rick Halperin <rhalperi@post.cis.smu.edu>]

Monday, March 2, 1998--




USA/GERMANY:

On a chilly hillside near a military prison, Wally Chilcoat places red 
silk flowers on 14 graves, those of the only German prisoners of war 
executed on American soil.

Now 69, Mrs. Chilcoat has performed her ritual a few times each
year since 1991, remembering POWs convicted of murdering fellow
Germans considered traitors to the Nazi cause.  Mrs. Chilcoat lived
in Germany during World War II.  Her father died in a prison camp
in Russia, having been drafted into the German army after speaking out 
against the Nazi government.  She doesn't excuse the Nazi horrors, but 
she does believe the German POWs deserve to be remembered.

"These boys were just doing their job.  I know we were enemies, but
they were soldiers," said Mrs. Chilcoat, of Bean Lake, Mo.  "They
killed one of their own, a traitor."

Apart from her visits, the POWs are largely forgotten, buried in
the back of the cemetery for American soldiers who were executed,
or who disgraced their uniform and died behind bars, and had no
one to claim their remains.

All 14 German POWs had been court-martialed and found guilty of
murder.  On July 10, 1945, after Germany's surrender, 5 were hanged
in an old warehouse elevator shaft at the US Disciplinary Barracks.
They were convicted in Oklahoma for a murder at a POW camp there.
Within a week, 2 others were hanged in the same shaft.  7 others
were executed on Aug. 25, after World War II had ended with
Japan's surrender.

Why were they executed?  Perhaps due to the times as much as to
their deeds.  "It was a bad time in 1945," said Col. Karlheinz
Ammann, the German Federal Armed Forces liaison at Ft. Leavenworth.
"The Allies had found the concentration camps, and there was no
desire to show mercy for the Nazis at that time.  And that is
understandable."

The POWs "were educated in the Third Reich.  They were convinced
the guys they killed were traitors.  They had no chance to learn
differently," said Ammann, 1 of several foreign military men
working with US officers at the Army's Command and General Staff
College here.

1 executed soldier echoed that, across the decades. "What I did
was done as a German soldier under orders," Rudolf Straub said
just before his execution.  "If I had not done so, I would have
been punished when I returned to Germany."  In 1944, Straub and
another German soldier had beaten Horst Guenther to death at a
POW camp in Aiken, S.C.

In another case, 7 captured submariners beat, choked and hanged
Werner Dreschler, an inmate who had given the Americans information
about German U-boat tactics.  They believed Dreschler's action had
caused the deaths of their comrades at sea.

The executions were delayed until Germany surrendered because the
Nazis had threatened to execute American POWs in retaliation,
said John Reichley, a historian at Fort Leavenworth.

In 1944, President Roosevelt refused to commute the death sentences
of the first 5 executed.  President Truman did the same after he
took office in 1945.  But Truman spared one German soldier.  Edgar
Menschner was given a 20-year sentence for the beating death of a
fellow POW at Camp Chaffee, Ark. "It gave hope to the other 14,"
Reichley said, "but not for long."

The historian also noted some speculation that Truman saw rough
times ahead with Soviet leader Josef Stalin.  "I think he wanted
to prove the point to Stalin that you don't want to mess with the
United States."

Ammann cited several reasons to keep the graves at Ft. Leavenworth.
"It's not a bad place to stay, this little cemetery," he said,
noting a lack of burial space in Germany.  And Nazis remain outcasts
in Germany, the party officially banned.  But, he said, a right-wing
minority still supports Nazi concepts, and any effort to repatriate POWs 
buried in the United States could make the situation worse.

"There are German graves all over Europe and no place to bring them 
back," Ammann said.  "Why would you bring them to Germany?"

(source:  Associated Press)





Rick Halperin
AI-Texas

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