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other important portions of the record of the 12 cases, and it is
believed that these materials give a fair picture of the trials, and as full
and illuminating a picture as is possible within the space available. Copies of
the entire record of the trials are available in the Library of Congress, the
National Archives, and elsewhere.
In some cases, due to time
limitations, errors of one sort or another have crept into the translations
which were available to the Tribunal. In other cases the same document appears
in different trials, or even at different parts of the same trial, with
variations in translation. For the most part these inconsistencies have been
allowed to remain and only such errors as might cause misunderstanding have
been corrected.
Volumes X and XI are devoted to the “military
cases,” the two trials which concerned principally the activities of
high-ranking German military leaders. Volume X and the first part of Volume XI
is dedicated to the “High Command Case,” (United States vs. Wilhelm
von Leeb, et al., Case No. 12). Leeb and twelve of the other defendants
indicted were field marshals or generals, and one was an admiral, all of whom
held high command and staff positions in the Wehrmacht. The remainder of Volume
XI concerns the “Hostage case,” (United States vs. Wilhelm List, et
al., Case No. 7) . List and the other 11 defendants indicted in this case were
field marshals and generals charged principally with war crimes committed in
Norway and during the German occupation of southeast Europe, more particularly
Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece.
Although the “Hostage Case”
was concluded some months before the High Command Case, the materials on the
High Command Case are reproduced first in these volumes for reasons of clarity
and economy. The High Command Case contains historical features running back to
the period immediately following the First World War which are not contained in
the Hostage Case. More important, however, is the fact that some of the
defendants in the High Command Case were assigned to central military agencies
of the German Armed Forces, whereas all of the defendants in the Hostage Case
were field commanders or chiefs of staff to field commanders. The sections of
this publication on the High Command Case, therefore, afford the better place
to present most of the materials on military organization and on the history
and origin of numerous military orders common to both cases. This sequence of
printing the materials has made it possible to avoid reproducing in connection
with the Hostage Case numerous lengthy documents and other materials already
appearing in the sections on the High Command Case. |
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