Massacre of The Acqui Division - Prosecution

Prosecution

Major Harald von Hirschfeld was never tried for his role in the massacre: in December 1944, he became the Wehrmacht's youngest general officer, and was finally killed while fighting at the Dukla Pass in Poland in 1945. Only Hirschfeld’s superior commander, General Hubert Lanz, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment at the so-called "Southeast Case" of the Nuremberg Trials for the Cephalonia massacre, as well as the participation of his men in other atrocities in Greece like the massacre of Kommeno on 16 August 1943. He was released in 1951 and died in 1982. Lt Colonel Barge was not on the island when the massacre was taking place. He was subsequently decorated with the Knight's Cross for his service in Crete. He died in 2000.

The reason for Lanz’s light sentence was that the court at Nuremberg was deceived by false evidence and did not believe that the massacre took place, despite a book about the massacre by padre Formato published in 1946, a year before the trial. Because there was doubt as to who issued what order, Lanz was only charged with the deaths of Gandin and the officers. Lanz also lied to the court by stating that he refused to obey Hitler’s orders to shoot the prisoners because he was revolted by them. He claimed that the report to Army Group E, claiming that 5,000 soldiers were shot, was a ruse employed to deceive the army command in order to hide the fact that he had disobeyed the Führer’s orders. He added that fewer than a dozen officers were shot and the rest of the Acqui Division was transported to Piraeus through Patras.

In his testimony, Lanz was assisted by affidavits from other highly respectable Germans who led exemplary post-war lives, such as General von Butlar from Hitler's personal staff who was involved in the Ardeatine massacre. These Germans were with Lanz in September 1943 and swore that the massacre had never taken place. In addition, for reasons unknown, the Italian side never presented any evidence for the massacre at the Nuremberg trials. It is speculated that the Italians, reeling from armistice terms highly unfavourable for their country, refused to cooperate with the trial process. Given the circumstances the court accepted Lanz's position that he prevented the massacre and that the event never happened. Consequently Lanz received a lighter sentence than General Rendulic.

Lanz’s defence emphasised the fact that the prosecution had not presented any Italian evidence for the massacre and claimed that there was also no evidence that the Italian headquarters in Brindisi had ever instructed Gandin and his Division to fight. Therefore, according to the logic of the defence, Gandin and his men were either mutineers or franc-tireurs and did not qualify for POW status under the Geneva conventions.

The Germans also justified their behaviour by claiming that the Italians were negotiating the surrender of the island to the British. The German claim was not entirely unfounded: in the Greek mainland, an entire division went over to the Greek guerrillas, and in the Dodecanese, the Italians had joined forces with the British, resulting in a two-month German campaign to evict them.

An attempt to revisit the case by the Dortmund state prosecutor Johannes Obluda in 1964 came to naught, as the political climate in Germany at the time was in favour of "putting the war behind".

In 2002 Dortmund prosecutor Ultrich Maaos reopened a case against the people responsible for the massacre. In his office, along with a map of the world, Maaos displayed a map of Cephalonia with the dates and locations of the executions as well as the names of the victims. No indictments or arrests have occurred from Maaos' investigation at present.

Ten ex-members of the 1st Gebirgs Division have been investigated and may be charged, out of 300 still alive. Currently, the youngest member of the Gebirgs regiment is in his 80s.