"The Best I Could"

Their medals tinkling discreetly on their chests, the five military judges walked into the court. Then the four defendants marched in. First among them was a tall old man, with pince-nez and a vinegar-sour face, who bowed stiffly to the presiding judge. He was Lieut. General Alexander Ernst Alfred Hermann von Falkenhausen, 72, military governor of Belgium in World War II, accused together with three other members of his occupation regime of causing the execution of 240 hostages, deporting Belgians for slave labor, deporting Jews to death camps.

Are There Excuses? There were two ways of looking at the Falkenhausen case. Many were convinced that Falkenhausen was no war criminal. Others pointed to the fact that he was the head of a German occupation under which atrocities had undoubtedly been committed.

Much of Falkenhausen's brilliant career gave testimony in his favor. A professional soldier, he fought in the Boxer war, in World War I (when Turkey was Germany's ally) became chief of staff of the Seventh Ottoman Army. Between wars, he was a member of the Steel Helmet, a right-wing but anti-Nazi party. He retired from the Reichswehr in 1930, went to China as Chiang Kai-shek's military adviser, became his good friend and stayed on to help him fight the Japanese even after Germany had formed the Axis.

His rule in Belgium was more lenient than German occupations of other enemy countries. When Belgium faced starvation one winter, Falkenhausen made a secret deal with German army officials in Poland to get potatoes for Belgium's hungry cities.

Once, when Falkenhausen was threatened with 'assassination in Brussels; he calmly issued a proclamation announcing that he would move to the ground floor of his headquarters, and listed the restaurants where he could be found after dark, to make the job for his assassin easier. The assassin never tried it. In 1944, after the plot on Hitler's life, the Gestapo arrested Falkenhausen; he has been in various jails ever since.

Is There a Difference? Prosecution lawyers painted a very different picture of Falkenhausen. Presiding Judge Achille Marechal asked how it happened that a reputed anti-Nazi was given as important a job as Falkenhausen's. The accused general snapped: "I can't answer that. I was told I was being chosen for my competence." When a defense witness reported that many plain Belgians trusted Falkenhausen to help them, the judge declared: "I note that Falkenhausen did nothing [to help them] except perhaps show himself sympathetic."

Pleaded Falkenhausen: "During my interrogations by the Gestapo I was reproached with having been too mild in Belgium; I was supposed to have arrested too few and released them too soon." He admitted that under his regime there were arrests, shootings, deportations. "A German general, like any soldier, must obey his chiefs." But, he said, "I employed every means to frustrate, modify or alleviate the orders and instructions which opposed my views. Obviously, I could frustrate them completely [only] in a few cases. But I always tried to do the best I could under the circumstances ... St. Augustine has written: 'The man whose feebleness cannot cause complete goodness to triumph must prevent all the evil he can.' That is what I did."

In his summation, the prosecutor put the case against Falkenhausen thus: "Is there a..'difference, between a sadistic Storm Trooper and a gentlemanly officer who signs death orders?" Last week's verdict agreed with the prosecutor. The court found that Falkenhausen had executed hostages to protect the lives of Belgians who collaborated with the Nazis, and had established a puppet regime that was not a military necessity. He was sentenced to twelve years at forced labor, but he would probably be released soon, as he had already served six years in allied jails. One co-defendant got the same sentence, another ten years; the fourth was acquitted. The accused heard the sentences with less evident emotion than the judges who rendered them. The five men on the bench, who had had a difficult case to decide, looked uncomfortable and gloomy as Falkenhausen and his fellow defendants were led from the court.

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