Manfred Roeder (August 20, 1900 – October 18, 1971) was a military judge in Nazi Germany and after the war became a confirmed Nazi apologist. Holding the rank of Oberstkriegsgerichtsrat (Senior Military Court Councillor), he served as the investigating officer and prosecutor, bearing partial responsibility for at least 45 death sentences handed down by the Reich Court Martial in the trials of members of the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle") resistance movement. Roeder was also the investigator and prosecutor in the so-called “deposit box funds” proceedings against Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans von Dohnanyi, Wilhelm Schmidhuber and others. After Germany's defeat in World War II, there were attempts by survivors, family and the U.S. Army to investigate the prosecutions of Red Orchestra members and others, but Roeder was never convicted of any malfeasance or crime since the Allies wanted information from him about the Russians to aid them in the nascent Cold War.

After the war, Roeder was politically active in the far-right Socialist Reich Party, before it was banned. He began giving lectures at meetings of the Deutsche Reichspartei and wrote a book, further defaming the Red Orchestra as well as other people he had prosecuted. This led to work as an expert witness in espionage with the Federal Court of Justice. In 1961, he sold his Neetze estate and retired to Glashütten.

Life Roeder was the son of a Landgericht director from Kiel. After passing his notabitur examination in 1917, he volunteered for military service and became an officer cadet working as an artillery observer in a 3rd Rhine Field Artillery Regiment No. 83. In December 1918, he was demobbed with the rank of rank of lieutenant. He was later awarded an Iron Cross (2nd Class) for having been poisoned by gas in July 1918. In 1919, Roeder then joined the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division where he fought in street battles in Berlin. He then joined the Freikorps, a volunteer militia and saw action in Baltic region when he was posted to the Volunteer Russian Western Army, a Belarusian anti-communist unit.

From 1918 to 1921, he studied law at the Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Würzburg, and University of Göttingen. He continued his studies, resulting in being awarded a doctorate in Labour law in Würzburg in 23 February 1922 with the title "Arbeit über den „öffentlichrechtlichen Arbeiterschutz der Seeleute" (Study on the "public-law protection of seafarers").

Roeder then returned to Berlin where he worked at the Charlottenburg Water and Industrial Works Ltd until 1924. In December 1922, he married a noblewomen Hedwig-Luise von Estorff, which elevated his social rank. Between 1924 and 1928, Roeder managed his wife's estate known as "Estorff " that was located near Neetze in Lüneburg, that had been in her family since the 19th century. The couple had 4 children, three daughters, the first in 1924, second in 1925 and the third in 1929. The couple then had a late child, a son, who was born in 1937.

Civil career From 1928 to 1930, Roeder worked as the legal counsellor in the Lower Elbe purchasing cooperative in Hamburg and used his spare time to continue his studies in Göttingen and Hamburg. During this period, he studied a number of subjects but finally decided to specialise in law. While working for the cooperative, he became a member of both Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, a nationalistic fascist ex-servicemen association and the right-wing nationalistic conservative German National People's Party.

On 1 May 1931, Roeder formalised his law education by passing the state examination Referenda under the Prussian training regulations of 1923 to become a trainee lawyer. He passed the exam with the mediocre grade of "fully sufficient" (*voll ausreichend*). In May 1933, Roeder joined the League of National Socialist German Jurists which was followed by membership in November 1933, the Sturmabteilung. He then began working as a legal trainee in Lüneburg until the end April 1934, then moved Hanover, and Berlin for further training. While in Berlin on 17 August 1934, Roeder passed the Assessor licencing examination, achieving the grade “sufficient” (ausreichend) that would enable him entry into the higher civil service. After briefly working as a reserve officer in Altes Lager, he began working as a judge at the Charlottenburg Amtsgericht (District court) on 1 October 1934.

Luftwaffe career In 1933, Roeder initially applied to become a military judge, to avoid joining the Nazi Party, but was rejected. In April 1935, Roeder began working as a military judge in the Luftwaffe in April 1935 working on probation at the Artillery Commander's Court (Gericht des Artillerieführers) in Königsberg. On 1 November 1935, Roeder accepted a position as supervising judge advocate at the Court of Air District Command I (Gericht des Luftkreiskommandos) working as a supervising military judge where he administered court proceedings (Dienstaufsichtsrichter in the position of Kriegsgerichtsrat). He undertook the same work at both Air District VII in Braunschweig in April 1937 and at Air District Command III Berlin from December 1938. Roeder had a reputation for being "one of the harshest and most regime-loyal military judges." In one of Roeders performance reports, described by Hiska Bergander:

According to Bergander in her doctoral thesis, this "goes far beyond standardized formulas... and expresses Roeder's political affinity with National Socialism". In January 1939, Roeder was promoted to Senior Judge Advocate general (Oberkriegsgerichtsrat) that was followed by a further promotion in August 1941 to Chief Judge Advocate General (Oberstkriegsgerichtsrat). Between March 1941 and August 1941, he was seconded to Luftwaffe headquarters (Luftwaffenbefehlshaber Mitte) in the Wannsee. On 1 December 1944, Roeder was promoted to General Judge of the Luftwaffe (Generalrichter der Luftwaffe). He maintained close ties to Hermann Göring, who placed great trust in him. When the popular Luftwaffe General Ernst Udet committed suicide—raising the risk that the act might be interpreted as political criticism—Göring tasked Roeder with the investigation. Roeder delivered the desired outcome. Roeder also maintained close relations with Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller. From then on, Goering used Roeder for sensitive political cases including investigations into the Red Orchestra resistance fighters case, the investigation into the suicide of Luftwaffe Chief of General Staff Hans Jeschonnek and the investigations into resistance efforts in the Abwehr.

Rote Kapelle case

In late August 1942, the resistance group centred around Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack was exposed. It resulted in 119 individuals being arrested; of these, 79 were indicted before the Reich Court Martial. Roeder was assigned by Hermann Göring to the Reich Court Martial for the proceedings, where he served as the chief investigating officer and prosecutor, with his official title being Chief War Prosecutor of the Reich. Adolf Hitler, who considered the court's previous verdicts insufficiently harsh, had agreed to the trials only on this condition. Although the accused formed a loose network of individuals with widely varying political backgrounds and convictions, the Abwehr—and later Roeder, acting as prosecutor—falsely characterised them as a unified communist espionage organisation controlled by the Soviet Union, labelling them with the name Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle"), a term originally coined for investigative purpose. On the 19 October 1942, Roeder liaised with Luftwaffe Field Marshall Erhard Milch about the case and began formal proceedings on 14 December 1942 against the group that resulted in 45 death sentences. Roeder led many of these investigations.

Numerous surviving defendants later consistently described Roeder’s conduct as both callous and blatantly inhumane. One example of this behaviour occurred when Meta Strelow, mother to Heinz Strelow, executed on 13 May 1943, contacted Roeder on 24 May: "I have received your ghastly notification that my only child is no longer alive and that the sentence has indeed been carried out. So that I may lovingly provide a grave for my son, I ask to be informed when and where I can receive my child’s body". Roeder forwarded a letter to Strelow on 26 May 1943 stating: "Your son’s body cannot be released at this stage. In any case, under current regulations, burial outside Berlin would not have been permitted. Furthermore, I would point out that not even German soldiers who have fallen on the field of honour at the front can be granted a final resting place in their homeland". For co-defendant Adolf Grimme, former Prussian Minister of Science, Art and People's Education, Roeder was "...one of the worst criminals of the shameful justice system of those years".. Axel von Harnack, who sought to intercede on behalf of his cousin Arvid, recounted his encounter with Roeder: "Never again have I received such a distinct impression of brutality from a man. He was someone who radiated an atmosphere of fear.".

During the proceedings, Roeder further disparaged the defendants by accusing them of sexually "immoral and decadent behaviour". In his sentencing demands, he called for the death penalty "on an assembly-line basis", even for offences such as holding money for one of the other defendants. Of the 79 defendants, one had been beaten to death during interrogation, and another had hanged himself. Of the 77 verdicts handed down, 45 were death sentences—including that of Cato Bontjes van Beek, who was executed. Twelve defendants were sentenced to penal servitude, and 17 to prison terms. After the trial concluded, Roeder went to Brussels and Paris, where, presiding over courts-martial, he "handed over to the executioner" numerous other foreign defendants linked to the "Red Orchestra". Roeder later boasted to a fellow judge that he had "delivered about 90 heads to the Führer" and had dissuaded Hitler from showing "inappropriate leniency toward women".

Roeder personally attended 11 executions in Plötzensee Prison. When the new gallows were installed for the Red Orchestra executions he commented "Death was instantaneous and—insofar as the word 'humanity' can be used in this context—more humane than the guillotine". In total he presided over 24 death sentences. As the records of that period are fragmentary, it enabled Roeder to minimise his responsibility for the trial verdicts.

Deposit funds case

The proceedings in this case were triggered by an attempt by Heinrich Himmler and the Reich Security Main Office to weaken and seize control of the Abwehr—the Wehrmacht’s intelligence service led by Wilhelm Canaris. The immediate cause was the so-called "Depositenkasse Case" (*Depositum* referring to a type of security deposit)—an investigation into Abwehr officer for violating foreign currency regulations, a case that also implicated Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi.

After Roeder—at the time the presiding supervisory judge at the Luftwaffe field court for special assignments (zur besonderen Verwendung) in Berlin—was appointed investigating officer for the case in April 1943, Bonhoeffer, Dohnanyi, and the future CSU politician Josef Müller were also arrested on charges of high treason and treason against the state. Roeder attempted to frame the case as a major conspiracy, coining the term Schwarze Kapelle ("Black Orchestra") to describe it. Despite resorting to threats and abuse, he failed to substantiate the charges, largely due to the adroit conduct of the two accused men, Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi. Abwehr General Hans Oster, who was also under suspicion, wrote the following about Roeder after his first interrogation by him: "Young, arrogant, pathologically ambitious, driven by unbridled impulses... an investigator of the modern breed... He is utterly unscrupulous in his choice of means and methods. One could describe him as a sadist".