Blurb at the end says not one is still serving time...
Were they trying to be historically correct?
What about Rudolph Hess?
Fighting A Never Ending Battle For Truth, Justice And The American Way
Were they trying to be historically correct?
What about Rudolph Hess?
Fighting A Never Ending Battle For Truth, Justice And The American Way
Hess wasn't a defendant in the "Justice trial" as they are called. He was convicted after the first trial - that of the major war criminals, alongside the likes of Göring, Donitz, etc.
shareThank You for the reply...
shareYou're quite welcome. Glad I could help.
shareThe end blurb specifically refers to the trials in the American Zone. These were separate from the original 1946 Nuremberg trials of the leaders of the Third Reich. As the film itself states several times, the trials depicted in the movie are those of the smaller fry -- doctors, lawyers, judges -- who were cogs in the wheel of the Third Reich, as opposed to its top leadership. Similar trials occurred in other zones of occupation.
Remember too, when the film was released in 1961 it had been only 12 years since the last trials had ended in 1949, so the fact that none of the 99 defendants sentenced to life were still in prison even then was outrageous. Today, of course, 66 years later, pretty much anyone who had been sentenced to life at that time would be dead anyway. But with few exceptions most of the Nazis who were tried and sentenced got off lightly.
Rudolf Hess wasn't the only Nazi still in prison in 1961. Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer remained imprisoned in Spandau until their 20-year sentences ended in 1966, after which Hess remained the prison's only inmate until he finally succeeded in committing suicide in 1987. (He had made earlier attempts.) The prison was demolished after that to prevent its becoming a shrine for neo-Nazis.
You do have to wonder this though. If those who got life sentences had gotten them in a post-war German court rather than in an international war crimes trial, might the odds of them serving longer sentences have been increased?
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