At the Front: common traitors in West
German war films of the 1950s
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Wölfel, U. (2015) At the Front: common traitors in West
German war films of the 1950s. Modern Language Review,
110 (3). pp. 739-758. ISSN 0026-7937 doi:
https://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.110.3.0739 Available at
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AT THE FRONT: COMMON TRAITORS IN
WEST GERMAN WAR FILMS OF THE 1950s
Erst im militärischen Geheimnis kommt das Staatsgeheimnis zu sich
selbst; da der Krieg als permanenter und totaler Zustand vorausgesetzt
wird, läßt sich jeder beliebige Sachverhalt unter militärische
Kategorien subsumieren: dem Feind gegenüber hat alles als
Geheimnis und jeder Bürger als potentieller Verräter zu gelten.
(HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER)
Die alten Krieger denken immer an die Kameraden, die gefallen sind,
und meinen, ein Deserteur sei einer, der sie verraten hat.
(LUDWIG BAUMANN)
Introduction
Margret Boveri, in the second volume of her treatise on Treason in the 20th Century, notes
with respect to German resistance against National Socialism that the line between ethically
justified and unethical treason is not easily drawn.
1
She cites the case of General Hans Oster,
deputy head of the Abwehr under Admiral Canaris. Oster had repeatedly leaked military
information to Western governments warning them of the dates of German attacks, and
Boveri contends that his opposition to the Nazi regime came close to treason not just in what
1
Margret Boveri, Der Verrat im 20. Jahrhundert. Für und gegen die Nation: Das
unsichtbare Geschehen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956), p. 56.
she calls the ‘Hitler-Freisler’ sense.
2
The underlying assumption here is that while
jurisdiction in the Third Reich as represented by Roland Freisler (President of the
Volksgerichtshof, or People’s Court) perpetrated injustice, some of its victims might
nonetheless be guilty and Hans Oster might have been a real or ‘unethical traitor’. Boveri
bases the difference between ‘ethical’ and ‘unethical treason’ on the distinction between
treason directed against the National Socialist state (Hochverrat) and treason involving
cooperation with the enemy, which puts the nation at risk (Landesverrat).
3
This distinction is
already part of Boveri’s source, namely Gerhard Ritter’s discussion of Oster. In Ritter’s
assessment, Oster had committed treason out of moral outrage at the injustice of the Nazis’
war of aggression. Faced with ‘das offenkundige Verbrechen des Überfalls auf friedliche
Nachbarvölker’,
4
Oster had disregarded what Ritter calls ‘sham law’. While such behaviour
towards the other is marked as highly ethical, in the eyes of Ritter it is still not beyond doubt:
Trotzdem bleibt die Frage noch offen, ob das Mittel, das Oster gegen diese
völkerrechtswidrigen Gewalttaten einsetzte, in jedem Sinn gerechtfertigt war. Landesverrat,
hat man in dem bekannten Braunschweiger Remer-Prozeß geurteilt, setzt böse Absicht
voraus, dem eigenen Lande zu schaden. Daß Oster seinem Deutschland nicht schaden,
sondern nützen wollte, bedarf keiner Diskussion. Aber hat er nicht wissentlich der deutschen
Wehrmacht geschadet, indem er sie in erhöhte Gefahr brachte? Ging nicht die nächste Pflicht,
2
Ibid, p. 55.
3
For the definition of both terms see Gesetz zur Änderung des Strafrechts und des
Strafverfahrens vom 24. April 1934 on www.documentarchiv.de.
4
Boveri, Der Verrat im 20. Jahrhundert, p. 55.
die gegen die eigenen Volksgenossen, die eigenen Kameraden, der gegen fremde Völker
voran?
5
Boveri pursues this question further in her subsequent discussion of the resistance of the Rote
Kapelle organization. Her focus on the distinction between those members of the group who
cooperated with the (Soviet) enemy and those who did not provides an answer to Ritter’s
question: resistance against National Socialism was legitimate but became unethical where it
helped the other before the self.
6
5
Ibid., p. 55. Boveri quotes from Gerhard Ritter, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler und die deutsche
Widerstandsbewegung (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1954).
6
The Rote Kapelle served as a standard example of unethical treason at the time, based on the
group’s presentation as part of a Soviet-organized espionage network. This view was
publically propagated after 1945 in talks, lectures, and brochures by, for example, former
Oberstkriegsgerichtsrat Manfred Roeder who had acted as prosecutor against the Rote
Kapelle in 1942. Despite post-war accusations arising from his role as prosecutor at the
Reichskriegsgericht Roeder was exonerated in 1951 by the district attorney of Lüneburg
while his victims were confirmed as lawfully sentenced to death: ‘“Blut deutscher Soldaten”
sei “unnütz und unschuldig durch ihre Verratshandlung geflossen”’. Roeder’s public
defamation had, according to Heinrich Grosse, a remarkable impact: ‘Seine Aussagen und
diffamierenden Urteile über die Männer und Frauen der Widerstandsgruppe um Hans von
Dohnanyi und der “Roten Kapelle” wurden nicht nur von Journalisten, sondern auch von
Historikern unkritisch übernommen. So stützt sich der bekannte Historiker Gerhard Ritter in
seinem Werk Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung auf Roeder’s Schrift
Die Rote Kapelle und macht sich dessen These vom Landesverrat zu eigen’. See Heinrich
The debate on resistance in terms of treason that Boveri echoes here was extensive in
the early years of the Federal Republic,
7
and it is therefore not surprising that it was also
taken up in a number of West German war films of the so-called Militär- or Kriegsfilmwelle
of the 1950s.
8
These films are generally known for their apologetic and self-righteous
attitude, for avoiding the topic of the Holocaust, ignoring the nature of the Second World
War as a war of annihilation, romanticising it as ahistorical tragedy or fate, and cleansing the
Wehrmacht off its involvement in National Socialism and of responsibility for the horrors of
the war.
9
As part of this attempt at German exculpation, the arguments for or against treason
formed part of a strategy of safeguarding Germany against charges of war crimes and
atrocities, as has been demonstrated in the case of screen representations of the conservative
Grosse, ‘Ankläger von Widerstandskämpfern und Apologet des NS-Regimes nach 1945 –
Kriegsgerichtsrat Manfred Roeder’, Kritische Justiz, 38 (2005), 36-55 (p. 55).
7
See Helmut Kramer, ‘Das letzte Gefecht um den “Kriegsverrat” im NS-Staat’, Kritische
Justiz, 42 (2009), 89-96.
8
The term is widely used for the 224 or so international and German war films (according to
statistics from the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft, or Voluntary Self-
Regulation of the Movie Industry) screened in West German cinemas between 1951 and
1959. See Manfred Barthel, So war es wirklich: Der deutsche Nachkriegsfilm (Munich:
Herbig, 1986), p. 260.
9
Philipp von Hugo, ‘Kino und kollektives Gedächtnis? Überlegungen zum westdeutschen
Kriegsfilm der fünfziger Jahre’, in Krieg und Militär im Film des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by
Bernhard Chiari, Matthias Rogg, and Wolfgang Schmidt (Munich: Oldenburg, 2003), pp.
453-76 (p.461).