Nacht und Nebel
(German for "Night and Fog" – a direct reference to a "Tarnhelm"
spell, from Wagner's Rheingold) was a directive (German: Erlass)
of Adolf Hitler on 7 December 1941 that was originally intended to remove all
political activists and resistance 'helpers', "anyone endangering German
security" (die deutsche Sicherheit gefährden) throughout Nazi
Germany's occupied territories.
I will post the
information on this directive from Wikipedia.
Hitler's War Directives 1939-1945 [PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hitlers-war-directives-1939-1945-hugh-trevor-roper/1006629115?ean=9781843410140]
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Commemorative plaque
of the French victims at Hinzert concentration camp, using the
expressions "Nacht und Nebel" and "NN-Deported"
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Nacht und Nebel (German for "Night and Fog" – a direct
reference to a "Tarnhelm"
spell, from Wagner's Rheingold) was a directive (German: Erlass)
of Adolf
Hitler on 7 December 1941 that was originally intended to winnow out all
political activists and resistance 'helpers', "anyone endangering German
security" (die deutsche Sicherheit gefährden) throughout Nazi
Germany's occupied territories. Three months later Armed Forces High Command Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel
expanded it to include all persons in occupied countries who had been taken
into custody and were still alive eight days later; they were subsequently
handed over to the Gestapo. The decree was meant to intimidate local
populations into submission by denying friends and families of the missing any
knowledge of their whereabouts or their fate. The prisoners were secretly
transported to Germany, vanishing without a trace. In 1945, the seized Sicherheitsdienst
(SD) records were found to include merely names and the initials NN (Nacht
und Nebel); even the sites of graves were unchronicled. To this day, it is
not known how many thousands of people disappeared as a result of this order.
The
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg held that the disappearances
committed as part of the Nacht und Nebel program were war crimes which violated
both the Hague Conventions and customary international law.
Background
Even
before the Holocaust
gained momentum, the Nazis had begun rounding up political prisoners from both Germany and
occupied Europe. Most of the early prisoners were of two sorts: they were
either prisoners of personal conviction (belief), political prisoners whom the
Nazis deemed in need of "re-education" to Nazi ideals, or resistance leaders in occupied western Europe.
Up until the time of the "Night and Fog" decree, prisoners from
Western Europe were handled by German soldiers in approximately the same way
other countries did: according to national agreements and procedures such as
the Geneva Convention. Hitler and his upper level
staff, however, made a critical decision not to conform to what they considered
unnecessary rules and in the process abandoned "all chivalry towards the
opponent" and removed "every traditional restraint on warfare."
Heinrich
Himmler in 1942
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On
7 December 1941, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued the
following instructions to the Gestapo:
After lengthy consideration, it is the will of the Führer that the measures taken against those who are guilty of offenses against the Reich or against the occupation forces in occupied areas should be altered. The Führer is of the opinion that in such cases penal servitude or even a hard labor sentence for life will be regarded as a sign of weakness. An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only by the death penalty or by taking measures which will leave the family and the population uncertain as to the fate of the offender. Deportation to Germany serves this purpose.
On
12 December, Keitel issued a directive which explained Hitler's orders:
Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal.
He
further expanded on this principle in a February 1942 letter stating that any
prisoners not executed within eight days were
to be transported to Germany secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place here; these measures will have a deterrent effect because - A. The prisoners will vanish without a trace. B. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.
The
Night and Fog prisoners were mostly from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark,
the Netherlands, and Norway. They were usually arrested in the middle of the
night and quickly taken to prisons hundreds of miles away for questioning,
eventually arriving at concentration camps such as Natzweiler, Esterwegen or Gross-Rosen,
if they survived. Naztweiler concentration camp in particular, became an
isolation camp for political prisoners from northern and western Europe under
the decree's mandate. Up to 30 April 1944, at least 6,639 persons were captured
under the Nacht und Nebel orders. Some 340 of them may have been
executed. The 1955 film Night and Fog, directed by Alain
Resnais, uses the term to illustrate one aspect of the concentration camp
system as it was transformed into a system of labour and death camps.
Rationale
The
reasons for Nacht und Nebel were many. The policy, enforced in
Nazi-occupied countries, meant that whenever someone was arrested, the family
would learn nothing about the person's fate. The people arrested, sometimes
only suspected resistors, were secretly sent to Germany and perhaps to a
concentration camp. Whether they lived or died, the Germans would give out no
information to the families involved. This was done to keep the population in
occupied countries quiet by promoting an atmosphere of mystery, fear and terror.
The
program made it far more difficult for other governments or humanitarian
organizations to accuse the German government of specific misconduct because it
obscured whether or not internment or death had even occurred, let alone the
cause of the person's disappearance. It thereby kept the Nazis from being held
accountable. It allowed across-the-board, silent defiance of international
treaties and conventions – one cannot apply the requirements for humane
treatment in war if one cannot locate a victim or discern that victim's fate.
Additionally, the policy lessened German subjects' moral qualms about the Nazi
regime, as well as their desire to speak out against it, by keeping the general
public ignorant of the regime's malfeasance and by creating extreme pressure
for service members to remain silent.
Replica of a Holocaust
train boxcar used by Nazi Germany to transport Jews and other victims
during the Holocaust.
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Treatment
of prisoners
The
Nacht und Nebel prisoners' hair was shaved and the women were given a
convict costume of a thin cotton dress, wooden sandals and a triangular black
headcloth. According to historian Wolfgang Sofsky, "Prisoners of the Nacht
und Nebel transports were marked by broad red bands; on their backs and
both trouser legs was a cross, with the letters “NN” to its right. From these emblems,
it was possible to recognize immediately what class a prisoner belonged to and
how he or she was pigeonholed and evaluated by the SS." The prisoners were
often moved apparently at random from prison to prison such as Fresnes Prison in Paris, Waldheim near Dresden, Leipzig, Potsdam, Lübeck and Stettin. The deportees were sometimes
herded 80 at a time with standing room only into slow moving, dirty cattle trucks with little or no food or
water on journeys lasting up to five days to their next unknown destination.
An
average day for the prisoners was to be awakened at 5:00am and made to work a
twelve-hour day with only a twenty-minute break for a scant meal. When the Allies
liberated Paris and Brussels, the SS decided on revenge while they still could
and many of the Nacht und Nebel prisoners were moved to concentration
camps such as Ravensbrück
concentration camp for women, Mauthausen-Gusen
concentration camp, Buchenwald
concentration camp, Schloss Hartheim, or Flossenbürg
concentration camp.
At
the camps, the prisoners were forced to stand for hours in freezing and wet
conditions at 5:00 every morning, standing strictly to attention, before being
put to work all day. They were kept in cold and starving conditions many with
dysentery or other illnesses and the weakest were often beaten to death, shot,
guillotined, or hanged, while the others were subjected to torture by the
Germans. When the inmates were totally exhausted, after having worked for 12
hours a day, or if they were too ill or too weak to work, they were then
transferred to the Revier ("Krankenrevier", sick barrack) or other
places for extermination. If a camp did not have a gas chamber of its own, the
so-called Muselmänner, or prisoners who were too sick
to work, were often killed or transferred to other concentration camps for
extermination.
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Results
The
result, even early in the war, was the facilitating of execution of political
prisoners, especially Soviet military prisoners, who in early 1942
outnumbered the Jews in number of deaths even at Auschwitz. As the transports
grew and Hitler's troops moved across Europe, that ratio changed dramatically.
The Night and Fog Decree was carried out surreptitiously, but it set the
background for orders that would follow and established a "new dimension
of fear." As the war continued, so did the openness of such decrees and
orders. It is probably correct to surmise, from various writings, that in the
beginning the German public knew only a little of the insidious plans Hitler
had for a "New European Order". As the years passed, despite the best
attempts of Goebbels and the Propaganda Ministry with its formidable
domestic information control, there can be little doubt from diaries and
periodicals of the time that information about the harshness and cruelty became
progressively known to the German public.
Soldiers
brought back information, families on rare occasion heard from or about loved
ones, and allied news sources and the BBC were able to get through sporadically. Although captured
archives from the SD contain numerous orders stamped with "NN" (Nacht
und Nebel), it has never been determined exactly how many people
disappeared as a result of the decree. Hesitant if not outright skeptical at
first to believe reports coming in about the atrocities being committed by the
Germans, Allied doubts were pushed aside when the French entered the
Natzweiler-Struthoff camp (one of the Nacht und Nebel facilities) on 23
November 1944 and discovered a chamber where victims were hung by their wrists
from hooks so as to accommodate the process of pumping Zyklon-B gas into the
room. Keitel later testified at the Nuremberg
Trials that of all the illegal orders he'd carried out, the Night and Fog
Decree was "the worst of all." In part because of his role in
carrying out this decree, Keitel was hanged in 1946.
The body of Wilhelm Keitel after being
hanged, Oct. 16, 1946.
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Text
of the decrees
Directives
for the prosecution of offences committed within the occupied territories
against the German State or the occupying power, of 7 December 1941.
Within
the occupied territories, communistic elements and other circles hostile to
Germany have increased their efforts against the German State and the occupying
powers since the Russian campaign started. The amount and the danger of these
machinations oblige us to take severe measures as a deterrent. First of all the
following directives are to be applied:
I. Within the occupied territories, the adequate punishment for offences committed against the German State or the occupying power which endanger their security or a state of readiness is on principle the death penalty.II. The offences listed in paragraph I as a rule are to be dealt with in the occupied countries only if it is probable that sentence of death will be passed upon the offender, at least the principal offender, and if the trial and the execution can be completed in a very short time. Otherwise the offenders, at least the principal offenders, are to be taken to Germany.III. Prisoners taken to Germany are subject to military procedure only if particular military interests require this. In case German or foreign authorities inquire about such prisoners, they are to be told that they have been arrested but that the proceedings do not allow any further information.IV. The Commanders in the occupied territories and the Court authorities within the framework of their jurisdiction, are personally responsible for the observance of this decree.V. The Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces determines in which occupied territories this decree is to be applied. He is authorized to explain and to issue executive orders and supplements. The Reich Minister of Justice will issue executive orders within his own jurisdiction.
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