A wartime aftermath injustice

Ernst von Weizsäcker was born in Stuttgart to Karl Hugo von Weizsäcker, who would become Minister President (Prime Minister) of the Kingdom of Württemberg and raised to personal nobility in 1897, and Paula von Meibom. In 1911 he married Marianne von Graevenitz, who belonged to the old nobility. In 1916 he became a Freiherr (Baron), as his father and his family were raised to the inheritable nobility, less than two years before the fall of the local monarchy.

In 1900, Weizsäcker joined the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy) to become an officer, serving mainly in Berlin. In 1916, he served as Flag Lieutenant to Admiral Reinhard Scheer aboard the German flagship Friedrich der Grosse during the battle of Jutland. In 1917, during the latter portion of World War I he earned the Iron Cross (both classes) and was promoted to Korvettenkapitän (equivalent to U.K and U.S. naval officer grades of Lieutenant Commander) the following year. He was a member of the Naval Staff led by Admiral Reinhard Scheer from August 1918. From June 1919 to April 1920, he served as naval attaché to the Hague.

Weizsäcker joined the German Foreign Service in 1920. He was appointed as Consul to Basel in 1921, as Councillor in Copenhagen in 1924 and was stationed in Geneva from 1927. He became head of the department for disarmament in 1928, and was appointed as Envoy to Oslo in 1931 and to Berne in 1933. He became Director of the Policy Department at the Foreign Office in 1937 and the following year he was appointed as Staatssekretär ("State Secretary") -- the second ranking official after the Foreign Minister in the German Foreign Office.

He was encouraged by his superior to join the ruling NSDAP party, which he did in 1938, and he was also awarded an honorary rank in the SS. According to his later account, he took up the position as State Secretary because he wanted to prevent war in Europe.He was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer on January 30, 1942.

After the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 and the changing German war fortunes, and following his own request, Weizsäcker resigned as Secretary of State and was appointed German Ambassador to the Holy See from 1943 to 1945.
When received by the Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione on January 6, 1944,

Weizsäcker stated, "If Germany as a bulwark against communism should fall, all of Europe will become communist." To this, the cardinal replied, "What a misfortune that Germany with its antireligious policies has stirred up such concerns." Similar representations were repeated by Weizsäcker to Monsignore Giovanni Battista Montini (the later Pope Paul VI).

Weizsäcker's record at the Vatican was mixed. While in Berlin, he had refused to accept a Papal note protesting the treatment of occupied Poland. During the German occupation of Rome, Weizsäcker did little to stop the deportation of Jews. However, he did help individuals to avoid persecution, and he helped to free Rome from all German military bases in an effort to discourage Allied bombing of the city. He also advised the Foreign Office that drafting Jews for labor camps inside Italy might be less likely to draw a papal protest than deporting them. According to Richard Evans, Weizsäcker shared the opinion of Ulrich von Hassell that the Final Solution was a "devilish campaign."

"His messages and documents to Berlin were nothing but lies," said his coworker Albrecht von Kessel later. In those messages to Berlin, Weizsäcker purposely painted Pope Pius XII as mild, diplomatic, indecisive, and pro-German, in order to help the Pope and to avoid anti-German sentiment in Italy. Like the commanding Waffen SS General Karl Wolff, Weizsäcker was clearly opposed to Hitler’s plan to occupy the Vatican, during which, Weizsäcker feared, the Pope could have been shot, "fleeing while avoiding arrest"

However, some Vatican documents show the ambassador to have been threatening. The State Secretariat papers include a conversation in February 1944 with Rev. Otto Faller on the Vatican refugee program, in which Weizsäcker attacked the Papal newspaper Osservatore Romano for its protests against the German searches of the Church and Convent of St. Paul and accused Catholic institutions of hoarding hams and other food items at the expense of the population. Weizsäcker also questioned the right of the Vatican to provide asylum to thousand of refugees within the Vatican City in Rome. Weizsäcker threatened military reprisals against parishes, Vatican institutions, and monasteries, and he announced a complete military surveillance not of the Vatican itself but also of the many off-limit churches, Roman Catholic institutions, and other off-limit buildings that housed Jewish, socialist, and foreign and domestic anti-fascist refugees. This remarkable threat from a German ambassador indicates that Weizsäcker was not without power during the German occupation of Rome.

Weizsäcker continued to present the Vatican with anti-communist slogans, and either threatened a separate Russian-German peace and requested from Monsignore Domenico Tardini to mount at once a Papal peace initiative to stop the war in the West so Germany could finish Communism in the East (Tardini saw in this a transparent effort to obtain a military solution). Like several other German officials, Weizsäcker attempted to negotiate the survival of some segment of the government and to avoid the "unconditional surrender" of Germany, but his efforts to bring up the topic of "a German transition government, and the likelihood of his being a member of it," failed.

After the end of the war, Weizsäcker initially remained in the Vatican City with his wife, as a guest of the Pope and a member of the diplomatic corps. He did not return to Germany until 1946.

Weizsacker was extremely ambivalent regarding his government's actions. He hated Nazi extremism, yet he never expressed his opposition strongly or impressively. He opposed Germany’s invasion of Poland, but he never spoke up or resigned his post in protest. He wanted to get rid of Adolf Hitler, but he wanted Germany to win the war and thus supported the Fuehrer's aggression.

He was quite aware of the persecution of European Jewry, having received reports about the Einsatzgruppen and the Wannsee Conference, and probably regretted the annihilation, but he failed to object to the deportation of Jews to their deaths in extermination camps. Apparently, Weizsacker wanted to serve both his country and his moral code, but could not satisfy both at the
same time.

He acted no differently than thousands of other Germans did during the war. That didn’t necessarily make him a war criminal. Nevertheless, Weizsäcker was arrested on July 25, 1947, in Nuremberg in connection with the Ministries Trial, also known as the Wilhelmstrasse Trial, after the location of the German Foreign Office in Berlin.

These particular American military tribunals started before and finished during the Berlin blockade confrontation with the Soviets and proceeded without participation of the USSR; they were also much milder in conduct and outcome than the first series of war crimes trials in 1946. No European judges were involved in the trial, which was very controversial because Weizsäcker was considered by many to be closely associated with the anti-Nazi resistance and as a moderate force at the Foreign Office during the war; Winston Churchill called his trial a "deadly error."

Weizsäcker was charged with active cooperation with the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz, as a crime against humanity. Weizsäcker, with the assistance of his son Richard, who appeared as his assistant defence counsel (Richard was a law student during the trial and later became the president of Germany), claimed that he had no knowledge of the purpose for which Auschwitz had been designed and believed that Jewish prisoners would face less danger if deported to the east.

The British Foreign office knew that Weizacker was innocent but they didn’t come his aid, because if they had, it would have become public knowledge that Weizacker had warned them of Hitler’s intentions before the war began and they had chosen to ignore his warnings which invarialbly resulted in the war beginning when it did.

In 1949, the Americans convicted Weizsacker. (one of the three judges voted to acquit him). He was convicted of Crimes against Peace and Crimes against Humanity, He appealed the first conviction and won, but the Americans sentenced him to seven years for the second conviction however that same year, the sentence was reduced to five years. Winston Churchill believed in his innocence and pressured the Americans into giving Weizacker an amnesty the following year. He served only 18 months in prison.

He later published his memoirs, in which he portrayed himself as a supporter of the resistance which in fact, he actually was. He died of a stroke in 1951.

This man should never have been charged, let alone imprisoned.