WaPo Piece on German Opposition to the Death Penalty

This is rather bizarre.  Why would a major newspaper use up valuable real estate on its op/ed page to examine the history of the death penalty in post-war Germany?  That is precisely what Charles Lane does in a piece today in the Washington Post.  The crux of Lane’s argument is that West Germany’s abolishment of capital punishment is somehow illegitimate – or at least hypocritical – because it arose from opposition to executions of convicted Nazi war criminals:

Addressing the council, Seebohm equated executions "in the
period before 1945 and in the period since 1945." As British historian
Richard J. Evans notes in "Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment
in Germany, 1600-1987," the rightist politician was "thinking above all
of the execution of war criminals, to which he and his party were
bitterly opposed. Preventing Nazi war criminals from being sentenced to
death would certainly help the German Party in its search for voters on
the far right."

Both Social Democrats and Christian
Democrats initially rejected the Seebohm initiative but gradually began
to see its advantages. To the Social Democrats, it offered right-wing
political cover for an idea they dared not pursue on their own. And for
more than half of the Christian Democrat delegates, Evans reports, the
political advantages of trying to shield Nazi war criminals trumped
their belief in the death penalty for ordinary murder cases. Social
Democratic arguments about turning the page on Nazism, belatedly made,
were not decisive. Rather, writes Evans, "only the hope of being able
to save Nazi criminals from the gallows . . . persuaded conservative
deputies from the German Party and the Christian Democrats to cast
their votes in favor of abolition in sufficient numbers to secure its
anchorage in the Basic Law. Had it merely been the question of common
homicide that was at issue, the vote would never have been passed."

I have not read the Evans book, but I intend to if I can find it.  But is this history accurate?  According to the Wikipedia entry it was the SPD politician Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner who brought the motion before the parliament in 1949;  Wagner was a an anti-fascist who had little reason to want to protect Nazis.

Regardless of the historical reasons, the law abolishing the death penalty in Germany was the correct thing to do, and Germany is much better off without executions.  I can only surmise what Lane’s motivation is in writing this piece.  Did he think that pointing out some questionable motives of German politicians back in 1949 somehow  offers legitimacy to state-sanctioned executions in 2005?
The fact that the United States continues this barbaric practice is a stain on our constitution.  Lane’s piece is yet another salvo in the constant assault on Europe by the conservative press in the  US.

UPDATE:  Google is awesome!  I was able to find the entire debate concerning abolishing the death penalty  on the Web site: gewaltenteilung.de – a site devoted to discussion of the role of the judiciary in the democratic state.  The debate before the the parliamentary council took place on May 6. 1949 – Dr. Konrad Adenauer presiding .  The CDU representative Dr. Paul de Chapeaurouge made a forceful speech in favor of the death penalty. Then Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner gives an speech that wins the day with its power and eloquence:

Wenn wir heute, meine Damen und Herren, zur Frage der Todesstrafe
Stellung nehmen, so haben wir hinter uns die Erfahrung jener
schrecklich blutigen Hitlertyrannei, in der das Leben systematisch
mißachtet wurde, der nichts heilig war, in der man Menschen gemordet
hat, zunächst im kleinen, dann im größeren, dann im Riesenmaßstab. Wenn
der Staat nicht beginnt, von sich aus mit der Tötung von Menschenleben
aufzuhören, wenn er nicht von sich aus beginnt, das Morden
einzustellen, dann wird es auch mit dem großen Völkermorden niemals ein
Ende nehmen. Denn das ist der Beginn. Sie mögen die Dinge betrachten,
wie Sie wollen.

Nowhere does Wagner express any understanding for using the death penalty in criminal cases, as Lane incorrectly asserts.  Here is my letter to the Washington Post:

To the editor:

 

In his op/ed piece on the historical background to
Germany’s opposition to the death penalty, Charles Lane implies that the primary
motivation was to prevent the execution of convicted Nazi war criminals.  That
is historically incorrect.  The article to abolish the death penalty was brought
forward in the German parliamentary advisory council by Friedrich Wilhelm
Wagner, a Social Democrat who had joined the resistance against the Nazis in
France. I quote from his moving speech to the German adisory council , Konrad
Adenauer presiding, on May 6, 1949: "If the state does not begin to end the
practice of killing human life, if it does not on its own accord stop the
murdering, then there can never be an end to genocide in the world."  The real
tragedy is that the United States still hasn’t learned this lesson in
2005.

Sincerely,

D.V.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Charles Lane called me about my letter to the editor.  He cited some historical sources that it was the right-wing politician Seebohm who initiated the constitutional article to abolish the death penalty already in December 1948.  In his view, the Wikipedia entry is incorrect.  I therefore changed my letter to the editor pending my ability to conduct some more research into the topic.