Lecture 10:
War Crimes and Command Responsibility: Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer and the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War during the Second World War

Readings:

Tim Cook, "The Politics of Surrender: Canadian Soldiers and the Killing of Prisoners in the Great War," Journal of Military History 70/3 (July 2006), 637-665. (Available through Project Muse)

Case No. 22, “The Abbaye Ardenne Case,” Law Reports of War Criminals 1 (1945), 97-112.

P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Chris Madsen, Kurt Meyer on Trial: A Documentary Record. Kingston: Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2007. Read the historical background in the introduction, the prosecutor's opening and closing addresses, as well as Jan Jesionek's and Kurt Meyer's testimony.

W. Lackenbauer and C. Madsen, "Justifying Atrocity: Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Andrew and the Defence of Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer," in Canadian Military History Since the 17th Century (Proceedings of the Canadian Military History Conference, Ottawa, 5-9 May 2000) ed. Yves Tremblay, 553-564.

Questions

• How does international law differ from domestic law?
• What constitute “war crimes”? Why are these difficult to prosecute?
• Why were Canada's War Crimes Regulations contentious in 1945?
• What is command responsibility? Why was Kurt Meyer tried on these grounds?
• What do prosecutor Bruce Macdonald's opening remarks to the court (and his exchanges with the judge advocate) reveal about this case and about war crimes trials?
• What is victor's justice?
• Why did Chris Vokes commute Meyer's death sentence to life imprisonment?
• What was the basis for Meyer's lawyers' petition for clemency?

Additional Reading

Bantekas, Ilias. “The Contemporary Law of Superior Responsibility.” Journal of American International Law 93 (1999). 573-595.

Brode, Patrick. Casual Slaughters and Accidential Judgments: Canadian War Crimes Prosecutions, 1944-1948. Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 1997.

Fenrick, Bill. “The Prosecution of War Criminals in Canada,” Dalhousie Law Journal 12 (1989). 256-97.

Green, L.C. The Contemporary Law of Armed Conflict. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

Lehmann, Wady. “Recollections Concerning War Crimes Investigations and Prosecutions,” Canadian Military History 11/4 (2002). 70-80.

Macdonald, B.J.S. The Trial of Kurt Meyer. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co., 1954.

Madsen, Chris. Another Kind of Justice: Canadian Military Law from Confederation to Somalia. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999.

Margolian, Howard. Conduct Unbecoming: The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Meyer, Kurt. Grenadiers. Trans. Michael Mendé. Winnipeg: J.J. Fedorowicz, 1994.

Parks, William H. “Command Responsibility for War Crimes.“ Military Law Review 62 (1973). 1-104.

Reynolds, Mark. “Cold War Clemency: The Kurt Meyer Conundrum.” The Beaver 83 (2003). 12-15, 17-19.

Smidt, Michael. “Yamashita, Medina, and Beyond: Command Responsibility in Contemporary Military Operations.” Military Law Review 164 (2000). 155-234.

Whalen, James M. “The Face of the Enemy: Kurt Meyer: Normandy to Dorchester,” The Beaver 74 (April/May 1994). 20-3.