Night and Fog

Night and Fog (German: Nacht und Nebel) is phrase used to refer to a directive issued by Adolf Hitler on 7 December 1941, according to which certain partisans/resistance members were to be imprisoned, while relatives and others remained uncertain as to the fate of the prisoner.

The phrase is also the title of a French 1956 film (French: Nuit et Brouillard).

Directive

The Holocaust revisionist Carlos Porter has written that "The "Night and Fog Decree" (XVIII 19-22 [27-30]) was intended as an alternative to shooting resistance members. It was conceded by the prosecution that such people could be legally shot (V 405 [456]) but the Germans considered it undesirable to sentence everyone to death. Prison sentences were felt to have little deterrent value, since everyone expected the war to end in a few years (XXI 524 [578-579])."

Another less politically correct view: "Many people today mistakenly think that the term “Night and Fog,” as used by the Nazis, meant that prisoners were condemned to die and their relatives were not notified of their deaths. The real meaning of the term “Night and Fog,” with regard to the Resistance fighters who were captured during World War II, is that these prisoners were sent to concentration camps and their relatives were not told where they had been sent. For all the relatives knew, their loved ones had just disappeared into the “night and fog.” The purpose of this order was to put fear into the Resistance fighters and discourage civilians, in countries occupied by Germany, from fighting as illegal combatants in a Resistance movement. [...] The Nacht und Nebel prisoners were not marked for execution. On the contrary, they were prisoners who had not been condemned to death in the first 8 days after their capture. Except for not being able to communicate with the outside world, N.N. prisoners were treated the same as other concentration camp prisoners, and could only be killed on direct orders from Oranienburg, the headquarters of the concentration camp system."

Compliance with the directive was one reason for the death sentence given to Wehrmacht commander Wilhelm Keitel. Keitel claimed that he was not aware that the Nacht und Nebel order was used for anything except Wehrmacht soldiers who had been court-martialed.

Film

The 1956 film is a French documentary short film. It features among other scenes the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek, while describing the alleged lives of prisoners in the camps. The film was made in collaboration with scriptwriter Jean Cayrol, a former prisoner of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.

The Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson wrote in 2000 that "It is deplorable that the film “Nuit et Brouillard” (“Night and Fog”), in which the Auschwitz death toll is put at nine million, continues to be shown in French schools. This film perpetuates the myths of “soap made from the bodies,” or lampshades of human skin, and of scratches made by fingernails of dying victims on the concrete walls of the gas chambers. The film even proclaims that “nothing distinguished the gas chamber from an ordinary barracks”!"

See also

• National Socialist Germany and partisans/resistance movements
• Superior orders

External links

Directive

• the real “Night and Fog” (not the movie with the same name)