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Guest post: Confiscation as punishment for war crimes?

by Dominik Haumayr

Confiscation as punishment for war crimes?

The confiscation of German industrial magnates' assets in the course of the Nuremberg Succession planning

Russia must pay for its heinous crimes. We will work with the ICC and help to establish a to establish a specialised court to try Russia's crimes. Together Working with our partners, we will ensure that Russia pays for the devastation it has caused with the frozen assets of oligarchs and its central bank.1

On 30 November 2022, nine months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen released this statement on Twitter (now X). Three years later, in December 2025, 25 out of 27 EU states decided by majority vote to permanently freeze Russian assets and ban their transfer back to Russia. Hungary and Slovakia were the only states to vote against it.2 Since the start of the war, approximately 300 billion euros of Russian assets have been frozen worldwide – 210 billion euros of that within the European Union. These include assets belonging to the Russian state as well as the private assets of Russian billionaires.3

A large number of EU member states would like to transfer these frozen assets to Ukraine, as the country is estimated to require around $350 billion for defence and reconstruction over the next four years. However, there are two problems with this: Firstly, confiscating Russian assets would violate international law. While freezing them can be considered a legitimate countermeasure against Russia's war of aggression, which is illegal under international law, permanent confiscation would be seen as a punitive action not covered by international law. Secondly, in the event of such expropriation, the European Central Bank warns of a loss of confidence in Euro government bonds in the Global South. As much as 30 percent of Euro government bonds are held by “non-allied” countries.

So far, the EU has opted for an interim solution: all interest income from the frozen assets will benefit Ukraine. However, with only €7 billion in 2024, these funds fall far short of the country's needs. Furthermore, interest-free loans are to be issued to Ukraine, which it is expected to service after the war with the help of Russian reparations payments – a far from satisfactory solution from the Ukrainian perspective.4 This is why the Green Party most recently demanded in the Bundestag that the frozen assets be “fully made available to Ukraine in compliance with international law.“5 However, the motion was rejected by a large majority. As it stands, therefore, it remains to be seen whether the permanent confiscation of frozen Russian assets will ultimately be realised.

The idea of holding economic elites accountable for war crimes through asset confiscation is by no means new. Even during the Second World War, the Allies considered the question of whether to confiscate the assets of companies involved in the crimes of the Nazi regime. In the course of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, which followed the main war crimes trials from 1946 to 1948 and, in addition to Wehrmacht representatives, jurists and doctors, also affected the German economic elite, asset confiscation was considered by the courts as a possible punitive measure.

The establishment of a legal basis for succession processes

Of a total of twelve subsequent trials, three were directed against representatives of German big industry: the Flick trial, the I.G. Farben trial, and the Krupp trial. The respective company managements had to answer for various crimes during the Nazi era before American military tribunals. The focus was on the use and mistreatment of forced labourers, the appropriation of forcibly expropriated Jewish property (so-called "Aryanisation") and the looting of companies in occupied territories. Numerous German companies profited from these crimes, as well as from the armament orders of the German war economy.

To create a legal basis for succession processes, the Allies published Control Council Law No. 10 on 20 December 1945.6 Possible penalties listed, in addition to death, imprisonment, and fines, included confiscation of assets and the restitution of unlawfully acquired property. Accordingly, „property whose confiscation or restitution has been ordered by the Court shall ... be handed over to the Allied Control Authority for Germany for further disposition.“.7 The legal basis thus permitted, alongside confiscation, the permanent seizure and utilisation of German industrial assets. For the selection of defendants, the Americans compiled a list of leading industrialists and other important representatives of industry in the Nazi state. Of the original 400 potential defendants, for whom 36 trials were planned, ultimately only 42 industrialists were put on trial in 3 proceedings. Among them were 24 representatives of I.G. Farben, 12 of Krupp AG, and 6 of the Flick conglomerate.8

The Judgments of the Nuremberg Industrialist Trials

The proceedings began with the opening of the Flick trial on 18 April 1947 and concluded with the verdicts in the Krupp trial on 31 July 1948. The verdicts in the Flick trial were comparatively lenient and were a severe setback for the prosecution, which had hoped the trials would result in the symbolic condemnation of the entire German heavy industry. The judges followed the defence's portrayal of an entrepreneurship pressured by the Nazi regime and the resulting state of necessity concerning the use of forced labourers. The court did not consider itself competent to judge the 'Aryanisations', as these had taken place before the war and, in the sense of Control Council Law No. 10, could not be interpreted as crimes against humanity. While three of the defendants were acquitted, the other three received prison sentences, including seven years for Friedrich Flick.9

Even in the trial against the I.G. Farben conglomerate, the verdicts fell significantly short of the prosecution’s expectations. Despite the clear involvement of I.G. leadership in the National Socialists’ war plans, all 23 managers of the chemical conglomerate were acquitted of conspiracy and planning an aggressive war. The greatest failure of the industrialist trials, however, lay in the omission to adequately hold the I.G. leadership accountable for their role in the mass murder of Jewish people. In 1942, the conglomerate established its own, privately financed concentration camp a few kilometres east of the main Auschwitz camp. It was intended to exclusively use concentration camp inmates for the production of synthetic rubber and oil, which were of great importance to the National Socialists’ war industry. Although operations did not commence, approximately 30,000 of the 300,000 inmates deployed died during the construction of the factory.

Another dark chapter in the history of I.G. Farben is their involvement in the supply of the poison gas Zyklon B to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung (Degesch), which supplied Zyklon B to the National Socialist extermination camps, was 42.5 percent owned by I.G. Farben. Nevertheless, the court decided that the knowledge of the company's management regarding the purpose of the deliveries could not be proven. Due to the use of concentration camp inmates, only five of the 23 defendants were sentenced to prison terms of six to eight years; on the charge of looting, there were nine convictions for 1.5 to five years in prison. Ten of the defendants were acquitted on all counts.10

In the third and final of the three industrialist processes, the Krupp trial, the verdicts were significantly harsher. Although the judges announced before the verdict that the accusations concerning conspiracy and the planning of an aggressive war would be dropped, they considered the charges of plunder and the use of forced labour to be proven. While there was only one acquittal, the majority of the defendants were sentenced to six to twelve years in prison. In addition to twelve years in prison, Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was the only defendant in the Nuremberg trials to be punished with the confiscation of his entire fortune.11

Pardon and Lifting of Asset Seizure 1951

However, such a confiscation of the Krupp assets never happened. As early as 1951, the American High Commissioner John J. McCloy pardoned numerous German war criminals in a sort of general amnesty. All prison sentences of the Nuremberg industrialists were annulled, provided they had not already been released.12 In the Krupp case, McCloy also lifted the asset seizure, stating that it was „not in accordance with the practices of the [American] legal system“ and „generally contrary to the American legal concept.“.13

In the Soviet Occupation Zone (SOZ), however, the handling of private industry was entirely in line with anti-capitalism. Shortly after the war, a large portion of industrial facilities was confiscated and dismantled, so that in 1955 only 15% of industry remained in private hands.14 Kim Priemel aptly describes one of the American prosecutors in his Flick study, who „looked with a certain sense of envy at the SBZ [Soviet Occupation Zone], where Flick had been dispossessed by law ‚without the inconvenience of a trial‘.“.15

Despite the original plans of the US authorities to severely punish German industry, by 1951 all defendants had been released and some had regained high positions in the German economy. The political situation in post-war Germany also played an important role. Not only did the defence lawyers manage to present their clients as victims of the Nazi regime, but they also argued for their release on the grounds of their importance for the rebuilding of Germany as a bulwark against communism.16

Conclusion

Examining the history of the Nuremberg Industrialist Trials demonstrates that legal decisions are not only dependent on laws and the professional expertise and preparation of jurists, but are also influenced by their political and personal attitudes, as well as current political events. Simultaneously, it becomes clear that law is malleable and that legal foundations can be created for the conviction of war crimes and similar offences. In the case of Russian assets, the EU has so far opted against confiscation. For now, they remain frozen, which is equivalent to the seizure of Krupp's assets. Whether the EU will pass a law, similar to the Allied Control Council, that allows for the transfer of Russian assets to Ukraine remains to be seen.

Literature

  1. Kokott, Juliane, Confiscation of Russian assets for the reconstruction of Ukraine?, in: Legal Tribune Online, 06.02.2023, https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/enteignung-russischer-vermoegenswerte-wieder-aufbau-ukrainie-kommission, accessed 14.03.2026. Turn over
  2. Anon., EU states decide on permanent freezing of Russian assets, in: Die Zeit, 12.12.2025,
    https://www.zeit.de/politik/2025-12/ukraine-krieg-russland-vermoegen-eu, Zugriff 14.03.2026. Turn over
  3. Vohra, Anchal, Russia's frozen assets – what's it all about?, 17.12.2025, in: Deutsche Welle, https://www.dw.com/de/russlands-eingefrorene-vermögenswerte-worum-geht-es/a-75190948, accessed 14.03.2026. Turn over
  4. Stephanie Kaufmann, The EU wants to use Russian assets – but the ECB warns, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 04.12.2025, https://www.fr.de/wirtschaft/die-eu-will-russische-vermoegenswerte-nutzen-doch-die-ezb-warnt-94069245.html, accessed 14.03.2026. Turn over
  5. German Bundestag, Applications regarding frozen Russian state assets rejected, 05.12.2025,
    https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2025/kw49-de-ukraine-1128240, Zugriff 14.03.2026. Turn over
  6. Jung, Susanne, The legal problems of the Nuremberg Trials. Illustrated by the proceedings against Friedrich Flick (= Contributions to Legal History of the 20th Century 8), Tübingen 1992, p. 226. Turn over
  7. Ibid., pp. 226–228. Turn over
  8. Scholtyseck, Joachim, The Rise of the Quandts. A German Entrepreneurial Dynasty, Munich 2011, p. 729; Taylor, Telford, The Nuremberg Trials. War Crimes and International Law, Zürich 1951, pp. 78f. Turn over
  9. Ahrens, Ralf, „Businessmen on Trial. The Nuremberg Trials as Successors to Genocide between Criminal Prosecution and Symbolic Tribunal,“ in: Lillteicher, Jürgen (ed.), Profiteers of the Nazi System? German Companies and the „Third Reich“, Berlin 2006, pp. 128–153, here: pp. 138–142; Drecoll, Axel, „Flick before the Court. The proceedings before the Allied Military Tribunal 1947“, in: Bähr, Johannes/Drecoll, Axel/Gotto, Bernhard/Priemel, Kim C./Wixforth, Harald (Eds.), The Flick Group in the Third Reich, Munich 2008, pp. 559–645, here: pp. 641–645; Weinke, Annette, The Nuremberg Trials, Munich 2019, pp. 84–86. Turn over
  10. Ahrens, Entrepreneurs on Trial, pp. 142f.; Jeßberger, Florian, „The I. G. Farben on Trial. From the Origins of an ‚International Criminal Law of Economics‘“, in: JuristenZeitung (JZ), 64 (2009) 19, pp. 924–932, at p. 925; Wagner, Bernd C., SS Auschwitz. Forced labour and extermination of prisoners in the Monowitz camp 1941-1945 (=Representations and Sources on the History of Auschwitz III), Munich 2000, p. 10; Weinke, Nuremberg Trials, pp. 86–88. Turn over
  11. Ahrens, Entrepreneurs on Trial, pp. 144f.; Weinke, Nuremberg Trials, pp. 88–91; Taylor, Telford, Final
    Report to the Secretary of the Army on the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials under Control Council Law No. 10, Washington D.C., 1949, p. 194. Turn over
  12. McCloy, John, Landsberg. A Documentary Report, Munich 1951, p. 3; Schwartz, Thomas Alan, „The Pardon of German War Criminals. John J. McCloy and the Prisoners of Landsberg“, in: Quarterly reports for contemporary history, 38 (1990) 3, pp. 375–414, here: p. 375. Turn over
  13. McCloy, Landsberg, S. 16. Turn over
  14. Hardach, Karl, German Economic History in the 20th Century, Göttingen 1979, pp. 136–139. Turn over
  15. Priemel, Kim C., Flick. A Company History from the German Empire to the Federal Republic (= Modern Times. New Research on the Social and Cultural History of the 19th and 20th Centuries 17), Göttingen 2007, p. 645. Turn over
  16. Jung, Legal Problems, pp. 218f. Turn over

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