Judiciary and Nazi Atrocities: Court District Innsbruck

This research project aims to: 1. compile an overview of all judgements concerning Nazi crimes of violence (the section Innsbruck corresponds with the Austrian federal states Tyrol and Vorarlberg); 2. compare the punishment of Nazi crimes of violence by different Austrian courts (trials before people`s courts of the post-war era and jury courts; regional differences); 3. compare the punishment of Nazi homicidal crimes by Austrian and (West, East) German courts; 4. examine the application of different substantive and procedural law, in order to answer a question which has relevance also for present trials for crimes against humanity - namely, to which extent does the application of a different law influence the outcome of the prosecution of identical or similar offences. The interdisciplinary analysis of the data obtained by scanning the judgements is to be put into a framework of regional history and politics. The analysis of the application of law by the courts is to be confronted with the juridical discussion in the first three post 1945 decades. The "Innsbruck" part of the project will due to the specific situation regarding the available sources and the restricted scope of the court district, examine the entirety of cases before the people`s court of Innsbruck under the War Crimes Act as well as the application of the Prohibition Act to suspected war criminals and will draw a comparison with proceedings instituted by West German public prosecutors and courts against offenders at the Reichenau "labour education camp" and proceedings on euthanasia in Tyrol and Vorarlberg.

This case study on the history of the Innsbruck People`s Court is breaking new ground since it provides, for the first time, a comprehensive description of the functioning, personnel and jurisdiction of an Austrian People`s Court, including its merits and deficiencies in dealing with Nazi crimes, plus a complete analysis of all major cases tried over the full period of its existence between 1945 and 1955. For the prosecution of Nazi war criminals and so called "illegal Nazis", i.e. members of former the Nazi party in Austria between 1933 and 1938, one of the four Austrian People`s Courts was established in Innsbruck in charge of the French Zone of Occupation. Between 1946 and 1955, about 13.000 preliminary examinations were carried out. Of the 1.347 defendants tried, 77 percent were found guilty, 23 percent were acquitted. Three quarters of the cases tried dealt with denunciation (paragraph 7 of the Austrian War Crimes Law). The most important cases were tried between 1946 and 1949 and ended - compared to the other three People`s Courts - with a noticeable lower rate of acquittals. Main reason was the very pragmatic and "success-oriented" approach of the prosecutors in Innsbruck: 1) they concentrated on bringing to justice defendants that had committed their crimes in the region - which meant easier access to witnesses and other evidence, and 2) they usually chose a safe approach for a guilty verdict rather than taking chances in order to achieve a maximum penalty. Especially in more complex cases, the prosecutor would charge a defendant rather on the basis of the Austrian denacification law than according to the War crimes law. Since the penalty provided by law for so called "illegal Nazis" (high treason) was quite tough, ranging from 10 years to 20 years, and this specific criminal offence was easy to proof, the prosecution could thereby avoid complicated lines of argument. As a result and despite clear evidence in the direction of war crimes, defendants were just sentenced for having been members of the illegal Austrian Nazi party prior to 1938. Bottom line: the more complex the crime (e.g. "aryanization" of Jewish property), the less likely an indictment! This easy way out only worked until 1950. From then on, neither judges nor juries were willing to charge defendants for having been "illegal" members of the Nazi party prior to 1938. As a result, the number of acquittals in Innsbruck rose too (but not to the same degree than in other parts of Austria), more than 600 cases were rested after the start due to political intervention and the huge majority of sentenced war criminals benefited from various acts of mercy by the Federal president. Despite sentences of up to 20 years, by 1955 none of the convicts was still serving time! Statistically, Nazi criminals sentenced in Innsbruck to five and more years in jail actually served between 30 und 50 percent of the time (the maximum being 80 months). A first glance, the Innsbruck People`s Court statistically fits into the Austrian overall trends of the first post-war decade, but a closer analysis provides amazing regional particularities.