Otto Heinrich Kranzbühler (also spelled Kranzbuehler, ; 8 July 1907 – 9 August 2004) was a German naval judge who represented defendant Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials.
Early life and education
Otto Kranzbühler was born in Berlin, German Empire, on 8 July 1907, the youngest son of German Lieutenant Commander Henry Kranzbühler (1871-1946). He had two sisters: Caroline (1898–1969) and Elizabeth (1904–1981) and one brother: Helmuth (1901–1978).
Kranzbühler graduated from secondary school in 1925. Following secondary school, Kranzbühler studied law in Freiburg, Bonn, Geneva, and Kiel, passing the German law exam by his 21st birthday in 1928. During his legal studies, Kranzbühler became particularly interested in boating – perhaps sparking his later interest in naval law.
Legal career
In 1934, Kranzbühler voluntarily enlisted into the Reichsmarine. By 1937, he was sent to Berlin to act as a legal advisor to the Naval High Command. In 1943, he was sent to France and appointed as Naval Fleet Judge-Advocate, or Flottenrichter. Kranzbühler remained in France until the winter of 1944, when Germany withdrew from France. In the winter of 1944, Kranzbühler moved to Wilhelmshaven, the main operating base for the Kriegsmarine. By April 1945, Kranzbühler was brutally beaten, arrested, detained and interrogated for approximately four weeks by Allied Forces, along with other German navy judges.
During the immediate post-war period, both the British and the Americans utilized former Kriegsmarine personnel to maintain, transfer, and destroy Kriegsmarine vessels and assets, and to clear mines.The Klose Fast Patrol Group Kranzbühler was not immune from these assignments, even though he was a Naval Judge. In fact, for several months, he served on the German Minesweeping Administration.
His minesweeping activities, however, were short lived. In October 1945, Kranzbühler was called by the agency of the British Royal Navy to Nuremberg to serve as defense counsel for Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Commander and Chief of the Kriegsmarine, before the International Military Trial in Nuremberg. Dönitz specifically requested Kranzbühler, a fellow Kriegsmarine, to represent him in his defense.
Kranzbühler before the IMT at Nuremberg
Before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Dönitz was indicted as a major war criminal on three counts: (1) "conspiracy to commit crimes against peace", (2) "Planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression", and (3) "crimes against the laws of war". Dönitz was not indicted on a fourth count of "crimes against humanity". Kranzbühler had the unprecedented task of defending Nazi Germany's last Reichspräsident (President) and Grand Admiral.The Avalon Project at Yale University, available at:
Kranzbühler made his presence known immediately. In his very first court appearance, he appeared before the international tribunal in his full Kriegsmarine uniform, indicating that if the head of the Navy was on trial, then it would be the Navy that would defend him. This entrance caught the immediate attention of the members of the court.
The indictments made against Dönitz bothered Kranzbühler a great deal. As a result, he wanted to make it immediately clear to the tribunal that, though on the losing side of the war, Dönitz's actions were not deserving of the indictments brought against him. Kranzbühler argued that if the Grand Admiral of the German Navy was to be tried, he should be addressed by the court with the respect he deserved as a military leader. While the prosecutors (including Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson) and judges at Nuremberg continued to address the defendant without any recognition, Kranzbühler always referred to Dönitz as Grand Admiral, or "Herr Grossadmiral".
Count 1
As for Count 1 of the indictment (conspiracy to commit a crime under international law), Kranzbühler argued that Dönitz was not privy to the conspiracy to commit crimes against the peace, since he was not present at the relevant war planning conferences. The Tribunal did not find Dönitz guilty on this count.
Count 2
As for Count 2 of the indictment (Planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression), Kranzbühler once again relied on the fact that Dönitz was not present to plan or initiate a particular type of war because he was merely performing tactical duties and not present at the war planning conferences. The Tribunal, as it did in Count 1, agreed with this conclusion. However, arguing that Dönitz did not wage a war of aggression would be a difficult assignment for Kranzbühler. In later writings, Kranzbühler noted this difficulty because in his opinion the term "war of aggression" was never adequately defined. The U-boat Arm was the principal part of the German fleet – with its submarines sinking millions of tons of allied and neutral shipping. Dönitz's fleet had been successful, and this success was unavoidable. Kranzbühler argued that Dönitz's actions were consistent with the actions of a successful Admiral during war. Nevertheless, the Tribunal found that Dönitz was active in waging an aggressive war.
Count 3
As for Count 3 of the indictment, (crimes against the laws of war, or war crimes), Dönitz was specifically charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to the Naval Protocol of 1936 to which Germany acceded – particularly that (1) Dönitz ordered the German U-Boat arm to attack both enemy and neutral merchant ships without warning and that (2) Dönitz issued orders not to rescue survivors from ships attacked by submarine.
In reference to the charge of waging unrestricted submarine warfare on all merchant ships, Dönitz argued that he ordered the attack of merchant ships because his reports indicated that British merchant ships were armed, attacking submarines on sight, and being used to transmit information. To defend Dönitz against the charge that orders to sink merchant vessels were illegal, Kranzbühler brilliantly presented to Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the United States Pacific Fleet, an interrogatory in which he extracted various items of information about American naval practice. Nimitz answered questions describing the practice of the United States Navy concerning submarines and merchant ships, especially when a submarine crew had no way of knowing whether or not the ship was armed. The answers made it clear that the German practice of attacking merchant ships was indistinguishable from American practice and therefore was not criminal.Speech by Professor William Maley, Saturday 19 November 2005, National Museum of Australia. http://www.apcml.org/documents/maleytranscript.pdf The Tribunal held that the practice violated international protocols, but excluded this aspect from consideration in sentencing him.
Dönitz was also accused of waging unrestricted submarine warfare for issuing orders not to rescue survivors from ships attacked by submarine – specifically War Order No. 154 in 1939 and another similar order after the Laconia incident in 1942. Kranzbühler argued that the security of the submarine is paramount to rescue and that to risk the submarine to rescue survivors from ships would be contrary to typical naval behavior. Yet, unlike in the merchant ship argument, Kranzbühler was unable to attain an affidavit from Allied Forces that Americans had done the same – even though they arguably did. As a result, by issuing these two orders Dönitz was found guilty of causing Germany to be in breach of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936.Judgment: Doenitz the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
Count 4
Kranzbühler did not defend Dönitz on count 4 (crimes against humanity) because Dönitz was not indicted regarding this count.
Sentencing of Dönitz
Dönitz was sentenced to 10 years in prison – solely for his conviction related to waging a war of aggression. Once again, Dönitz's order to conduct unrestricted submarine warfare was not officially included in his sentence; however this was still the main reason why most judges wanted him convicted. Dönitz served 10 years in Spandau Prison plus the additional 5 months he had spent at Mondorf and Nuremberg while awaiting trial and being tried.
Kranzbühler was bothered by the ultimate verdict. Remarking on the conviction, he noted that "This conviction was born out of the dilemma to take the Grand Admiral into prison for political reasons". According to Kranzbühler years later "As I learned later on, an American law advisor made the proposal to the Allied control office to nullify the verdict."
Kranzbühler’s critique of the Nuremberg Trials
In 1964, Kranzbühler published a De Paul University law review article entitled "Nuremberg Eighteen Years Afterwards" in which he provided a unique first hand critique of the Nuremberg proceedings.The entire section on Kranzbühler’s critique of Nuremberg is detailed in the De Paul law review article "Nuremberg Eighteen Years Afterwards", available at 14 De Paul L. Rev. 333 (1964-1965) In evaluating the Nuremberg Trials, Kranzbühler found it necessary to consider not only the cases against the highly publicized political and military defendants before the International Military Tribunal but also the 12 subsequent purely American trials which were directed against the activities of the SS (Schutzstaffel), military generals and field marshals, industrial leaders, jurists, medical doctors, and diplomats. Kranzbühler considered both the internationally governed trial and the American governed trials because he believed they were all based on a "common idea of the American prosecution" – that members of the elite, regardless of their criminal participation, would be held responsible for the actions carried out by Hitler and his aides. With this in mind, Kranzbühler commented on the procedural and legal inadequacies at Nuremberg.
Procedural critique
Kranzbühler believed that the prosecutors and judges made it very difficult for the defense to efficiently represent the defendants at Nuremberg.
Kranzbühler noted that while the prosecution had access to all of the confiscated German archives, the defense counsel only had access to the documents the prosecution introduced into evidence. In other words, the defense counsel's access to the confiscated archives was completely barred. Furthermore, the defense was only allowed to use German material, meaning that all foreign archives remained strictly barred from review or submission. For instance, the German-Soviet Treaty of 1939 could not be directly submitted as evidence to the Tribunal because it was a foreign archive. Instead, the defense had to prove its existence through numerous affidavits that were subject to continued objections on the part of the Russian prosecutors. Although, in this instance, the defense reached its ultimate intent, they had to spend time calculating ways in which such foreign evidence could be introduced.