The collective memory of the immediate postwar trials of Nazis has two common misconceptions. One, memory often conflates these trials into a single, undifferentiated series of judicial processes. In reality, these trials varied quite a bit. The Nuremberg International Military Tribunals (IMT) for instance, were conducted by all four Allied powers working together. The emerging Cold War and the stresses of working this arrangement soon led to the end of this cooperation. The silent end of the IMT meant that each of the occupying power conducting their own tribunals, often termed National Military Tribunals (NMT- and this is simplifying the process quite a bit, justice varied by zone). The second misconception memory holds of these trials is that they were much more successful in prosecuting Nazi offenders than they were in reality. The Allied powers had intended the trials to not only punish the guilty but also serve a pedagogical function for the German public. But the reality was that the trials soon became mired in legal technicalities that made determining guilt difficult and the wider German public's attitude towards the trials ranged from indifference to active hostility towards purported victors' justice. These two aspects of the trials help explain why a number of these convicted Nazis did not serve out their sentences.

The process was far easier for the defendants convicted by the various NMTs as the nascent FRG government became a powerful advocate for their release. NMT-convicted defendants were the responsibility of the Allied occupying power, which in turn meant that later amnesties became a bilateral affair between the respective Allied High Commissioner and the FRG government. Bonn was subjected to various pressure groups such Verband deutscher Soldaten that pressed for the release of convicted German soldiers. But Bonn also saw amnesty as an important symbol of regaining national sovereignty. The Adenauer government would claim that continued imprisonment would make it impossible for German veterans to serve in a reformed German army to fight the Soviets. US HICOG chief General John McCloy set the tone for the later "amnesty fever" after considerable pressure from the Adenauer government and pardoned some 29 convicted war criminals from Landsberg in 1951.

But the needs of rearmament was not the sole pressure for amnesties. German professional groups likewise used pre-existing associational structures to advocate for early release for their colleagues. The upper-class nature of such professions meant these advocates could operate within elite social circles of the occupation and press their cases, a process that worked very well in the British zone. Industrial and business leaders likewise were able to gain a powerful ally within the American HICOG. The US's plan for occupation, JCS 1068, had initially called for significant break-ups of German industry and prosecution of industrial leaders. The targets of this plan were able to conduct a successful counterattack by painting their actions under the Third Reich as a patriotic defense against communism, an argument that found much weight in the developing Cold War milieu.

IMT defendants were a different matter as a four-power consensus was needed to alter the IMT sentence for early release or parole. Such a consensus generally was not forthcoming in Cold War milieu outside of cases of extreme ill-health. Thus Spandau's prisoners tended to serve their full terms or close to them. Hess himself was the ultimate example of how the Cold War made Spandau an anomaly for German war criminals. A unique constellation of factors led to this somewhat absurd situation where a large prison complex held only one inmate.

The Soviets were the main reason why any move for Hess's or his fellow inmates parole was vetoed. Keeping Spandau open meant that the Soviets could keep their foothold in West Berlin. Once Spandau had closed, then the facility would revert back to the control of West Berlin government. The four powers had initially anticipated a much larger roster of inmates when the four powers agreed to the collective running of Spandau. but the breakdown in Allied unity meant that it had only an anemic number of prisoners. Thus paroles meant that the site would become irrelevant. Keeping Spandau open had value to the Soviets both for intelligence purposes as well as symbolic importance, although a number of Cold War-era commentators overstated the importance its intelligence worth. Keeping Spandau's inmates incarcerated was a way to score a moral victory over the West. Unlike the FRG, the GDR did not have an equivalent amnesty-fever and many former Nazis did not creep back into public positions of authority in the SED state like Hans Globke or Hanns Martin Schleyer did in the FRG. Both the Soviets and the GDR made frequent mention of how Western officials like McCloy were more than willing to forget Nazi war crimes if their perpetrators proved useful. Keeping Spandau open due to a very public Soviet intransigence was a way to transform this talking point into concrete reality. While various Westerners advocated for pardons, the Eastern bloc made sure it publicly stood for Nazi criminals receiving their just deserts.

The Soviets could play the amnesty game though when it suited them. Khrushchev dangled the idea of releasing Germans convicted in the Eastern-bloc system during his abortive offers for a reunified, neutral Germany. The timing of the health-related releases of Spandau prisoners also suggests that the Soviets were paying close attention to FRG political winds and did not want to give Adenauer's CDU a political issue. Yet the Soviets never had to deal with the type of amnesty pressure groups as their Western counterparts. The SED found it just as useful as the Soviets to highlight the fact that they were hard on Nazi war criminals while the FRG was not. But even the GDR found it expedient not to dig too deeply in the pasts of its citizens and while former Nazis were not in prominent leadership positions in the state, there were a number that managed to live out their lives rather peacefully.

Both the IMT and the NMTs were flawed judicial procedures, not the triumphs recorded in public memory. The trials did accomplish a great deal. The mounds of documentation for the prosecution ensured a lot of evidence of Nazi criminality was preserved for posterity. The defendants' poor legal defense and sense of victimhood also provided a valuable window into the mentality of Nazi perpetrators. Some of the extremely guilty and unrepentant defendants could not wiggle out of their sentences even in the heydays of amnesty fever in the West. Not all the defendants wished to be martyrs though and more than a few were able to take advantage of the changing political circumstances to their own benefit.

Sources

Frei, Norbert. Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Goda, Norman J. W. Tales from Spandau: Nazi Criminals and the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Hirsch, Francine. Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.