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TWO AMERICAN GENERALS ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN THE WWII NURNBERG & DACHAU WAR CRIMES TRIALS OF NAZI CRIMINALS
GENERAL CLARENCE R HUEBNER & GENERAL J. L. HARBAUGH SIGNED DOCUMENT RELATED TO WWII NUREMBERG & DACHAU WAR CRIMES TRIALS, "C. R. Huebner/Jan 7/49" & "J. L. Harbaugh, Jr.", 8 x 6.5, 3 January 1949, on "HEADQUARTERS, EUROPEAN COMMAND" letterhead, subject: "Inspection of EUCOM Military Prison", reporting the inspection of Military Prison, noting some irregularities corrected and recommending no further action needed. Signed by J. L. Harbagh, Jr., Colonel JAGD, Judge Advocate and then signed as "Approved" by General C. R. Huebner. General Huebner was a highly decorated senior officer of the United States Army who saw service during both World War I and World War II. As the commander of the "Big Red One", the 1st Infantry Division in WWII, General Huebner led the 1st in the assault on Omaha Beach. He signs here as Chief of Staff, Headquarters, European Command, in the American Zone, Berlin, German (a few months later he would become the last Military Governor of the American Zone). General Harbaugh (promoted to Brig. General in 1949) was Judge Advocate, EUCOM, overseeing WWII War Crimes trials in Nurnberg and Dachau, who had been appointed by American General Lucius D. Clay, at the direction of the U.S. War Department, Administration of Justice Review Board In the Malmedy Case, War Crimes Office, to form The Harbaugh Committee to investigate the allegations of judicial irregularities that were claimed to have occurred during the interrogations that preceded the trials of the Nazi-SS soldiers responsible for the WWII Malmedy Massacre. All the defendants were convicted and sentenced to death or life imprisonment. The case was appealed in a petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus filed in the U.S. Supreme Court by the Nazi-SS soldiers prosecuted in the WWII, Battle of the Bulge, Malmedy Massacre War Crimes Trials. The Supreme Court was asked to review the claims of unlawful detention or imprisonment of the Nazi prisoners to the court & request prison officials bring prisoners to court to determine if detention was lawful. The Supreme Court made no decision on the case which then came under the scrutiny of a sub-committee of the United States Senate. Unlike the International Military Trials in Nuremberg that prosecuted the major Nazi war criminals under the jurisdiction of the four Allied Occupying Powers, the Dachau tribunals were held exclusively by the United States military between November 1945 and August 1948. Harbaugh was present, at Berlin and Frankfort Germany, at each meeting of the Malmedy Massacre Investigation in July and August 1948, shortly before the date of this document which is most likely related to the recent controversy surrounding the Nazi-SS prisoners. Under attack by the Senate Subcommittee and all the negative public reporting the generals are covering their bases. This historic document signed by two American generals is in fine condition. with minor age toning and irregular cut top.
The Malmedy massacre was a war crime committed by members of the SS Division Leibstandarte, a German Waffen-SS unit led by Joachim Peiper, at Baugnez crossroads near Malmedy, Belgium, on December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge. 84 American prisoners of war were massacred by their German captors. The bloody deeds produced the most controversial war crimes trial in American history. After the war, the U.S. Army tracked down 74 of the SS men involved in the massacre and other atrocities and put tem on trial at Dachau. All the defendants were convicted and sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Over the following decade, however, a network of Germans and sympathetic Americans succeeded in discrediting the trial. Their anti-Semitic claims that interrogators-- some of them Jewish émigrés--had coerced false confessions. The controversy generated by these accusations would lead to an American congressional investigation in the United States Senate, Investigations Subcommittee which held hearings in 1949 that looked into these complaints. The military prosecutors in the Judge Advocate Generals Office were falsely accused of using various deceptions and torture techniques to elicit confessions. The infamous, Senator Joseph McCarthy, a member of this Senate Subcommittee, would question whether or not The Harbaugh Report gave a true picture of the interrogation techniques used on the Nazi prisoners.
$595 #11697
