GENERAL CLARENCE R HUEBNER & GENERAL J. L. HARBAUGH, JR. SIGNED DOC RELATING TO WWII NUREMBERG & DACHAU WAR CRIMES TRIALS, "C. R. Hubner, Geb 1/48" & "J. L. Harbaugh, Jr.", 8 x 6.5, 28 January 1949, on "HEADQUARTERS, EUROPEAN COMMAND" letterhead, subject: "Inspection of EUCOM Military Prison", regarding inspection of a EUCOM Military Prison and reporting the request "concerning unexplained delays in the processing of cases", signed by General Harbaugh, Jr., Colonel JAGD, Judge Advocate and "APPROVED" by General Huebner, Lieutenant General, Chief of Staff.
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.
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