The Field Marshals
The decision of the Cabinet to proceed with the trial of the German military leaders now held in custody in the British zone has caused much understandable disquiet. It has also caused a great deal of irrelevant comment, which shows that the basis for this disquiet is often misinterpreted. There is no point in arguing at this stage whether Field-Marshals von Brauchitsch, von Rundstedt and von Manstein and Colonel-General Strauss were good or bad commanders, loyal or disloyal Nazis, or whether military leaders are or are not free agents in war-time, or whether the Russian armies in the Baltic behaved worse than the German armies in Russia. As long as we accept the thesis of the Nuremberg trials these four leaders are as liable to come up for judgement as any of their colleagues, if a prima facie case can be made out against them. Presumably the Cabinet is satisfied that it is in possession of such a case. But the manner in which it appears to have reached its decision has been far from happy. The four men have been in custody since the end of the war, more than three years ago. For most of that time they were kept in this country, but neither we nor the Field-Marshals were led to believe that they would not be repatriated on the same terms as the other prisoners held here. It was only when the Field-Marshals, to their surprise, found that they had exchanged confinement in Britain for an even stricter prison life in Germany, and when the uncertainty of their fate had been questioned in our own Press, that the belated Cabinet decision was made known. It may be that the delay is only a reflection of the delay in some of our Allies to produce the necessary evidence against the four men, but as the trial is to be before a British Court
we should have been in a position to announce a date beyond which we would not hold them uncharged. Even now, it is apparently unlikely that the trial will take place before the beginning of next year. Three years after the end of the war this sort of thing should not happen. The trial of the Field-Marshals may be logically justifiable. It has no other excuse at all. Public opinion would welcome the end of the whole business cordially.
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