Hans Laternser (3 August 1908 in

Diedenhofen Thionville (; ; german: Diedenhofen ) is a city in the northeastern French department of Moselle. The city is located on the left bank of the river Moselle, opposite its suburb Yutz. History Thionville was settled as early as the time of th ...

– 21 July 1969 in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

) was a German lawyer who specialised in Anglo-Saxon law. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, this made him especially qualified to defend Germans prosecuted for war crimes by the Allied military tribunals, including the High Command Trial. He had represented several defendants at the

Nuremberg Trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...

, such as former field marshals

Albert Kesselring Albert Kesselring (30 November 1885 – 16 July 1960) was a German '' Generalfeldmarschall'' of the Luftwaffe during World War II who was subsequently convicted of war crimes. In a military career that spanned both world wars, Kesselring beca ...

and

Erich von Manstein Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Manstein (born Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Lewinski; 24 November 1887 – 9 June 1973) was a German Field Marshal of the ''Wehrmacht'' during the Second World War, who was subsequently convicted of war crimes and ...

High Command Trial

Laternser played a prominent role in the High Command Trial, one of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, a series of court proceedings held in front of the United States military tribunals. He represented

Wilhelm von Leeb Wilhelm Josef Franz Ritter von Leeb (5 September 1876 – 29 April 1956) was a German field marshal and war criminal in World War II. Leeb was a highly decorated officer in World War I and was awarded the Military Order of Max Joseph which gr ...

, a former field marshal who had been in command of

Army Group North Army Group North (german: Heeresgruppe Nord) was a German strategic formation, commanding a grouping of field armies during World War II. The German Army Group was subordinated to the ''Oberkommando des Heeres'' (OKH), the German army high comman ...

during the invasion of the Soviet Union,

Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...

. Laternser acted as the de facto lead defence counsel for the entire group of defendants, who were former high-ranking personnel in the

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. Often representing other parties in matters of procedure, Laternser defended the overall "decency" of the German officer corps who, in Laternser's interpretation, had displayed respect for the laws of war. The defence attributed the actions of the German military vis-a-vis civilians, hostages and partisans to battle conditions and military necessity. Addressing the criminal orders Leeb and other defendants had passed on, Laternser claimed Leeb was a humane soldier who had neither seen nor transmitted such orders and had no opportunity to countermand them. He claimed Leeb knew nothing of the activities of the '' Einsatzgruppen'', the mobile SS death squads that were tasked with the murder of Jews, communists and Soviet prisoners of war in his area of command. Laternser further claimed that Leeb had had no jurisdiction to stop the death squads even if he had known.

References

* 1908 births 1969 deaths 20th-century German lawyers {{Germany-law-bio-stub