Joseph Bühler – urzędnik uwikłany czy świadomy uczestnik zbrodni? Rozważania w świetle procesu Josepha Bühlera (17 czerwca – 10 lipca 1948 r.)
Joseph Bühler – an Official Involved in Atrocities or a Deliberate Perpetrator? Reflections on the Trial of Joseph Bühler (17 June – 10 July 1948)

Summary/Abstract: The last person to face trial before the Supreme National Tribunal was Josef Bühler, an official of the General Governorate tasked with legislation in German-occupied Poland. The trial was held in Kraków and hinged on the question of whether or not Bühler had become merely unfortunately implicated in a system created by the occupation authorities, which he found impossible to oppose despite his own moral qualms. Was Bühler a weak person, completely dominated by and subservient to Hans Frank, but who nonetheless made attempts to help Poles and to impede the occupation machinery to the best of his ability? Or perhaps this was a misleading image crafted for the purposes of the trial, where the only thing that worked in his favour was the scarcity of evidence pointing to his direct involvement in atrocities? The article examines the trial’s evidence in order to answer those questions. It presents an analysis of the defence put forward by the accused and his legal counsel. It also discusses the arguments of the prosecutors and, above all, the position of the judges. They were faced with the difficult task of using conflicting evidence to establish whether Bühler was only a cog in the occupation machinery, as his legal counsel argued, or perhaps the key architect responsible for creating the legal basis for the apparatus of law enforcement and terror in occupied Poland.

• Details
• Contents