Tales from Spandau
Nazi War Criminals and the Cold War 1949-1988
In the last months of World War Two, the victorious Allies: Britain, France, The Soviet Union and the United States began discussions as to what to do with German War prisoners and to punish those that they felt either caused the war or violated the rules of war. The worst of these criminals were put imprisoned at the Spandau Fortress in occupied and divided Berlin. In his new book, Tales from Spandau: Nazi War Criminals and the Cold war, author Professor Norman JW Goda sheds new light on this subject.
In 1949 the prison was set up as a “shocking waste of manpower” with each of the four allied powers providing 54 officers and men plus another seventy or so civilian engineers and maintenance staff. This caused a guard to prisoner ratio of some 25 to one as Spandau only held a handful of hard core Nazis. Its commandant rotated through the commander of each of the allied details and included several notable officers on all sides including the one time commander of Easy Company of Band of Brothers fame. In Chapter six the author branches out and spends some time going into detail of other war criminals held in other prisons. This included mention of SS-Sturmbannfuher Franz Fischer held in Holland until 1989, SS-Obertsturmbannfuher Herbert Kappler in Italy and others. Spandau’s inmate population consisted of only seven men: Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Walther Funk, Konstantin von Neurath, and Baldur von Schirach. The book describes the extremely complicated routines that were strictly adhered to due to the fact that four nations had to cooperate and deliberate on every small detail of the day to day operations over the years. These regulations and rules became much defined and included such micromanagement that has rarely been seen in the worst bureaucracies.
The book continues this story throughout the cold war and explains how the Soviets were the guiding force in keeping Spandau even though for most of its existence in the 1970’s and 80’s it only held Rudolf Hess as its sole inmate. His story and life is covered and expanded on to the point of being a near biography. On August 17, 1987 Rudolf Hess hung himself and deprived the last of the four power occupiers their prisoner. Goda goes into great detail and describes how before Hess was even cold the British Army sent in a hundred soldiers with axes and pioneer tools to begin tearing down the prison by hand and then scattered and hid the remains to keep them from becoming relics for neo-Nazis. The records were even burned and the prisons rubber stamps destroyed in January 1988 so that they would not linger as a memory of their Nazi past. Interestingly enough, within a year of this closed chapter of world war two the Berlin wall (only meters away from Spandau) came down and ended the Cold War.
Today Spandau remains only as a parking lot to a shopping center.
The book is particularly useful for its detailed examination of the treatment and text for procedural details of a modern prison for war criminals as well as providing an enlightening epilogue to world war two and how it ties into the cold war. However, its dry nature may leave it as a work for the serious student of military history.
It is available from Cambridge University Press.
tales from Spandau cover
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