Judgment of the Federal Court of Justice in the case against Huppenkothen and Thorbeck, 19 June 1956 (1 StR 50/56)

Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice of Germany)19 June 1956

The final West German judgment on the SS prosecutor and the SS judge who conducted the summary court-martial at Flossenbürg on 8 April 1945. It sets out what the trial court found about the hearing and the hangings of the next morning.

Walter Huppenkothen, of the Reich Security Main Office, acted as prosecutor and Otto Thorbeck, an SS judge, presided at the court-martial that condemned Canaris, Oster, Sack, Gehre and Bonhoeffer. Both were tried after the war. The jury court at Augsburg convicted them on 15 October 1955 as accessories to murder. On appeal the Federal Court of Justice acquitted Thorbeck for want of proof, and upheld Huppenkothen’s sentence of six years only for the executions at Flossenbürg, because the death sentences had been carried out without the confirmation the law required.

The first part of the judgment repeats the facts found at Augsburg from the testimony of the accused and other witnesses: the order of 5 April 1945, the composition of the court, the absence of defence counsel and of a recording clerk, and the hanging of the five prisoners between six and seven on the morning of 9 April. These findings were made ten years after the event and are cited here for the sequence of events only. See the Execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

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