Guttendorp Commission (Napoleon's World)

The Guttendorp Commission was a tribunal of judges that held hearings between 1944 and 1946 to determine the loyalty of various French officials to the Sebastienite government, deriving its name from its chairman, Franz Guttendorp. While the Commission's stated goal was initially to punish war criminals within the Edmondian regime, by the last seven months of its existence it was essentially a forum for the new Emperor to publicly admonish and humiliate his detractors and known opponents in government, and many "enemies of the state," even during the early stages of the Commission, were typically given show trials before being executed.

Despite the somewhat contentious memory of the Guttendorp Trials, it is accredited with aggressively pursuing a number of crimes perpetrated by the Edmondian regime. One of the first defendants tried and punished under French law was Charles De Gaulle, the head of the Churat, who was indicted and convicted on forty-four counts of murder, war crimes, conspiracy and torture, and executed two days later. Other high-profile defendants tried and convicted of war crimes were Phillippe Nife, Paul Goesthe, Francois Descard, Joseph Dorfmann, Karl von Hesse, Jean-Louis Baptiste (no relation to Francois Baptiste) and Roger Velanes.