Re Greiser

• Jurisdiction: Polonia
• Date: 07 July 1946
• Docket Number: Case No. 166
• Court: Obsolete Court (Poland)

Poznan, Poland, Supreme National Tribunal of Poland.3

Case No. 166

In re Greiser.

Territory — Annexation — Annexation of Occupied Territory during War — Purported Annexation by Germany of Occupied Polish Territory.

War — Illegality of — War of Aggression — Effects of — Illegality of.

Laws of War — Subjects of — Responsibility of Superior for War Crimes Committed by Persons under his Authority.

War Crimes — Punishment of — Plea of Superior Orders and of Obedience to the Law of the State.

Belligerent Occupation — Civilian Inhabitants — Treatment of — Extermination, Enslavement, Ill-treatment and Deportation to Slave Labour of Civilian Inhabitants — Persecution of Civilian Inhabitants on Racial, Religious or Political Grounds — Plunder and Spoliation of Public and Private Property in Occupied Territory — Annexation of Territory during War — Purported Annexation by Germany of Occupied Polish Territory — Plea of Superior Orders and of Obedience to the Law of the State.

The Facts.—The accused, formerly Deputy Gauleiter and President of the Senate of the Free City of Danzig, was later Governor (Reichsstatthalter) of occupied Polish territory which Germany claimed to have incorporated into the Reich. He was charged with participation in actions involving, inter alia: (1) the arbitrary deprivation of rights to which Poland was entitled in the territory of the Free City of Danzig by virtue of Article 104 of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Polish-Danzig Agreement of November 9, 1920; (2) the extermination, enslavement, ill-treatment and deportation to slave labour of civilian inhabitants of occupied Polish territory and of prisoners of war; (3) the plunder and spoliation of public and private property in occupied Polish territory; (4) the persecution on racial, religious or political grounds of Jews in occupied Polish territory.

The accused pleaded that the responsibility for all matters of policy and for the measures which were applied and carried out in occupied Polish territory rested exclusively with his superior authorities, Hitler and Himmler, and that most of the decrees and regulations signed by him or issued under his authority were enacted and put into effect on their express orders.

Held: that the accused was guilty of all the charges, with the exception that he was found not to have committed personally any acts of murder, cruelty or bodily harm.1

(1) Purported Annexation by Germany of occupied Territory.—The Tribunal said that it regarded the incorporation by Germany of the western Polish territories as criminal and that the hostilities commenced against Poland on September 1, 1939, did not constitute a war according to international law but a “criminal invasion” of the territory...