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Last week, as criticism grew in Munich, Cardinal Döpfner came to his assistant's defense with an impassioned plea for understanding. According to the cardinal, the division commander had first ordered Defregger to shoot all males in the village. He had refused, and the number to be executed was lowered. When he still refused, the general sent staff officers to see that the reprisals were carried out. Defregger objected again, but finally, and reluctantly, passed on the order to a lieutenant. "He himself," noted Döpfner, "did not participate in the executions."
According to Dietrich Rahn, Frankfurt's chief prosecutor, Defregger's involvement might have been, at the very most, manslaughter, a crime for which the German statute of limitations expired in 1959. Döpfner, who shocked many Catholics by admitting that he had known about Defregger's military history all along, said he was convinced that "according to international law, no criminal action has taken place." He also reminded his Munich flock that the 114th, an antipartisan outfit with a reputation for ruthlessness, had been engaged in "an especially dangerous withdrawal operation . . . It is almost impossible for us outsiders to identify ourselves with the situation during a partisan war." Indeed, the 114th Division had become so brutal, one veteran recalled, that anyone who refused an order "was stripped of his shoulder boards and shot on the spot."
Under the Bridge. The villagers of Filetto di Camarda were perhaps more ready to forgive than some of Defregger's own countrymen. Though a few of them called for revenge, and a survivor provided Der Spiegel with lurid details about the executions, one old lady spoke for many when she said, "For us, it is all water under the bridge." It was not quite so in Munich, where the city's powerful daily, Süddeutsche Zeitung, called for the bishop's resignation, and some Catholics whose children had been confirmed by Defregger demanded that their children be administered the sacrament again. Prophetically, Defregger's last public speech six weeks ago had noted that in a time when the church is being pilloried, "we who want to help the church must be ready to be pilloried ourselves." Matthias Defregger was reported to be on retreat in an Alpine monastery last week; but even away from the furor, he was clearly among the pilloried.