Brief Discussion: Is It Treason for High Officers to Aid Nazism, Neo or Otherwise?
Listen Instead…
The answer to the question of whether it is chargeable treason for U.S. high officers to aid Neo-Nazis in any form acting with hostility toward the United States in loyalty to the historic Nazi regime, I don’t know. A case could be made. Here are some preliminary thoughts worthy of discussion and further research.
From the Act of Military Surrender German High Command, paragraph 5 provides the following:
“5. In the event of the German High Command or any of the forces under their control failing to act in accordance with this Act of Surrender, the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and the Soviet High Command will take such punitive or other action as they deem appropriate.
Signed at Rheims at 0241 France on the 7th day of May, 1945.
On behalf of the German High Command. Alfred Jodl”
As then-President Doenitz, Hitler’s successor, had authorized Gen. Jodl to sign the surrender on behalf of the Nazi High Command and it was done on May 7th, 1945, the unconditional surrender had a binding effect, as did its exception under paragraph 5. Neither at any time thereafter was the Act of Military Surrender abrogated, cancelled, or rescinded, including enumerated paragraph 5.
An interesting question for today is whether paragraph 5 above, by the words, “or any of the forces under their control failing to act in accordance with this Act of Surrender,” includes future forces that proclaim, hail, or otherwise act in loyalty to the Nazi Party, Third Reich, German High Command, or any of its past or future leaders, officers, and/or Adolf Hitler himself, yet engage in hostilities toward Allied nations?
The words leading off paragraph 5, “In the event” anticipate any future failure to honor the unconditional surrender, and would include “any of the forces” under the German High Command’s control so failing the terms of unconditional surrender.
Neither is there a distinction in paragraph 5 as to whether such forces may be “under their control,” by acting in post-humous service to the Nazi High Command of their own volition without respect to time or the kind of forces they may be: military, paramilitary, militia, proxies, or civilian agents. This is especially significant as it would seem to consider Hitler’s cultic, fanatical concept of the 1,000 year Reich with religious and deific features designed for permanency.
The disjunctive word “or” in the phrase “In the event of the German High Command or any of the forces under their control” seems to anticipate that forces that continue to fight whether or not the German High Command ordered them to, may still be deemed under the German High Command’s control yet not “acting in accordance” with the Act of Surrender.
Consequently, it would seem that the current successor(s) to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, without respect to time, title, or circumstances could then exact “such punitive or other action as they deem appropriate” against any future forces of any kind loyal to the Nazi regime and its German High Command failing to honor the unconditional surrender of 1945 by any acts of violence, insurrection, sabotage, murder, subversion, spying or the like against the United States and or its Allies.
Neo-Nazis pursuing hostile actions against Allied nations would, under Paragraph 5 of the Act of Military Surrender, impliedly remain enemies under the authority of the December 11, 1941 House Declaration of War against Nazi Germany to the extent they kept Nazi Germany alive as “forces” loyal to same, and this is implied in the future remedy and open language of paragraph 5 of the Act of Surrender executed at Reims, France on May 7, 1945. This would seem to control without respect to when such future forces put themselves under the Third Reich’s control via loyalty oaths, actions, implication, or the like.
Finally, any person giving aid, comfort, encouragement, or an imprimatur of authority in an official capacity to such Neo-Nazi elements would thereby be chargeable with treason or high treason by giving aid to forces against which a past U.S. declaration of war was still applicable by paragraph 5’s exception to an otherwise complied-with Act of Surrender.
The matter is open for discussion, of course, and theoretically, the Allied Control Council, not the United Nations, handled governance, denazification, and other key tasks in pacifying post-war Germany. Therefore, it is arguable that if the U.N. never superseded the Act of Military Surrender signed by the German High Command on May 7, 1945 and mirrored in Berlin shortly thereafter, the terms of that Act of Military surrender stand, especially that of the forward looking paragraph 5.
