German-Greek Relation 1940-1960
and the Merten Affair
by Heinz A. Richter
Hardback (Published)
(June 2019)
ISBN: 9783447111775
Price: $43.00
On back order
This study by. Heinz A. Richter describes the developments of the German-Greek relations from 1940 to 1960 focusing on the role of Max Merten, a military official during the German occupation of Greece, whose arrest in 1957 and release in 1959 despite a twenty-five year prison sentence, has long been the subject of speculation and conjecture. Richter begins with the occupation of Greece and the organizational structures of the German army in Greece. It analyses the functions and competences of a “Kriegsverwaltungsrat” which was the function of Max Merten. In 1943, Merten was confronted with the deportations of the Salonika Jews ordered by the SS. His reactions are described in detail and it is proved that he helped the Jews a lot though he, and not his commander, was forced to sign the deportation orders of the SS. After the war a traditional problem of Greece turned up again. Since 1832, the budget of the Greek state had always had a gap which was closed by the protective powers, first by Britain and in connection with the Truman doctrine by the US. But the Eisenhower doctrine stopped these payments. Greece was forced to look for other income sources. Athens demanded reparations from Germany despite its ratification of the London debt Agreement, which postponed reparation payments only to the time after German reunification. This question of reparations was linked to the persecution of war criminals in Germany. When the negotiations did not lead to a solution, Athens used the opportunity of a trip of Merten to Athens to arrest him. In the subsequent trial he was sentenced to 25 years of prison but when Germany paid the expected sum, Merten was set free. Now the Merten affair became an object of German interior policy which implied Adenauer’s Secretary of State Hans Globke. This conflict found its way into the press, most prominently into Der Spiegel.
This study by. Heinz A. Richter describes the developments of the German-Greek relations from 1940 to 1960 focusing on the role of Max Merten, a military official during the German occupation of Greece, whose arrest in 1957 and release in 1959 despite a twenty-five year prison sentence, has long been the subject of speculation and conjecture. Richter begins with the occupation of Greece and the organizational structures of the German army in Greece. It analyses the functions and competences of a “Kriegsverwaltungsrat” which was the function of Max Merten. In 1943, Merten was confronted with the deportations of the Salonika Jews ordered by the SS. His reactions are described in detail and it is proved that he helped the Jews a lot though he, and not his commander, was forced to sign the deportation orders of the SS. After the war a traditional problem of Greece turned up again. Since 1832, the budget of the Greek state had always had a gap which was closed by the protective powers, first by Britain and in connection with the Truman doctrine by the US. But the Eisenhower doctrine stopped these payments. Greece was forced to look for other income sources. Athens demanded reparations from Germany despite its ratification of the London debt Agreement, which postponed reparation payments only to the time after German reunification. This question of reparations was linked to the persecution of war criminals in Germany. When the negotiations did not lead to a solution, Athens used the opportunity of a trip of Merten to Athens to arrest him. In the subsequent trial he was sentenced to 25 years of prison but when Germany paid the expected sum, Merten was set free. Now the Merten affair became an object of German interior policy which implied Adenauer’s Secretary of State Hans Globke. This conflict found its way into the press, most prominently into Der Spiegel.
- By (author) Heinz A Richter
Other Titles in this Series
Erinnerungen eines Archaologen
Einige bedeutende Kapitel aus der Kulturgeschichte der Republik Turkei
Volume 57
Die griechisch-orthodoxe Kirche und ihr Verhaltnis zu den Kirchen in Russland und in Mitteleuropa
Ausgewahlte Aufsatze I
Volume 20
The Straits of Hell
The Chronicle of a Salonikan Jew in the Nazi extermination camps Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Melk, Ebensee
Volume 30
Griechenland im Zweiten Weltkrieg 1939-1941
Contingenza Grecia - Operationen Barbarity, Lustre und Marita
Volume 2
Similar Books
Balthasar Caymox of Nuremberg
Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century
Constitutional Conflict as Judicial Civil Disobedience and Conscientious Objection
Reconceptualising National Constitutional Court Rulings in the European Union Legal Space
Dis/United States of Vulnerability
Literary and Cultural Transgressions in U.S. Poetry Since the 1960s
Volume 330
European Drama and Performance Studies
Dramatisations politiques. Théâtre, politique et idéologie au XIXe siècle (1806-1914)
Volume 27
Formulary apportionment in international tax law
An allocation method for the age of globalization and digitalization
Volume 210
Hofmann oder Vorkämpfer der „philosophes“?
Deutsche Voltaire-Bildnisse und -Imaginationen im Zeitalter der Aufklärung
Legal Unification through Case Law?
Supreme Courts and the Emergence of Uniform Law in the Modern Era
Volume 242
Modernization, Crises, Cultural Revolutions
Yugoslavia’s 1960s and 1970s through the amateur film lens
The Documentation of Historical Facts in Trial Judgments of the International Criminal Court
A Constitutional Theory of International Criminal Proceedings
Volume 66
Visual Memory and Oblivion
Monuments and Conflicts in Urban Spaces in Central and Eastern Europe from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day
Linguistic and Cultural Dynamics in a Frontier Society
New Perspectives on Northeastern Bavaria and Western Bohemia in the Early Middle Ages
Volume 9
The Law of the International Civil Service
Institutional Law and Practice in International Organisations