Summary:
The senior thesis reflects on the investigation into the Merten case in postwar Greece through the Greek press. The focal point of this research is how a war criminal case such as that of German military official Max Merten has been deemed unresolved from a historical perspective as well as the fact of how such an affair in a time of political polarization in the country, warrants increasing public attention remaining an unsettled historical issue as of yet.
The paper gives cause to consider a discussion of the matter concerning collaboration acts of resistance and the question of an ‘ultimate solution’ namely with regard to the ‘recent past’ of the 1940s.
In the first chapter, we examine with the assistance of the existing bibliography, highlighting how the Merten case is not only a judiciary and legal matter but moreover a political issue. Greece is connected with the West, has signed a bilateral economic agreement with the German state. In this context, both Greek and German counterparts were interested in a ‘tacit settlement’ of the Merten’s case.
The second chapter focuses on the process of the collection of data of files relevant to German war criminals and the first-ever drafting of the legal framework. In the after-war years, the Allie forces were the first to draw up legal documents regarding the prosecution of war criminals and Greece too, having respected the model of foreign affairs organizes its own legislation, with the legal framework itself and a lot of legal void in the case files relative to the prosecution of war criminals.
The third chapter discusses the arrest of Max Merten in Greece in April 1957, the visit of Karamanlis in Bonn in November 1958 and the signing of financial affairs between the two sides. Moreover, there is a reference to the implementation of the first-ever legislation on the amnesty of war criminals.
The fourth chapter examines the trial of Max Merten in the Special Military Court for War Crimes through the testimonies of cross-examined witnesses attempted to highlight the frame of German occupation at Thessaloniki, but also the process of memorization Jews’ prosecution and incidents, which acted in this period, at the court and public sphere.
Finally, in the fifth chapter highlighting through Max Merten’s accusation against Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, the Minister of Internal Affairs Dimitris Makris and the Deputy Minister of National Defence Georgios Themelis, for cooperation with Nazi occupation forces’, how the decade of the 1940s comes in the foreground. The new Merten’s issue and the intense environment in parliament have proven to us a war criminal case has given rise to a new memory of the resistance and the period during the Occupation. A legal proceeding at the end of the 1950s that functioned as a historical unresolved event concerning the ‘recent past’ of the 1940s.
