After Nuremberg : american clemency for nazi war criminals, 1949-1958 / Robert Hutchinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hutchinson, Robert, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War criminals--Germany.

War criminals.

Germany.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (353 pages)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, Connecticut : Yale University Press, [2022]

Summary:

How the American High Commissioner for Germany set in motion a process that resulted in every non-death-row-inmate walking free after the Nuremberg trialsAfter Nuremberg is about the fleeting nature of American punishment for German war criminals convicted at the twelve Nuremberg trials of 1946–1949. Because of repeated American grants of clemency and parole, ninety-seven of the 142 Germans convicted at the Nuremberg trials, many of them major offenders, regained their freedom years, sometimes decades, ahead of schedule. High-ranking Nazi plunderers, kidnappers, slave laborers, and mass murderers all walked free by 1958. High Commissioner for Occupied Germany John J. McCloy and his successors articulated a vision of impartial American justice as inspiring and legitimizing their actions, as they concluded that German war criminals were entitled to all the remedies American laws offered to better their conditions and reduce their sentences. Based on extensive archival research (including newly declassified material), this book explains how American policy makers’ best intentions resulted in a series of decisions from 1949–1958 that produced a self-perpetuating bureaucracy of clemency and parole that “rehabilitated” unrepentant German abettors and perpetrators of theft, slavery, and murder while lending salience to the most reactionary elements in West German political discourse.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Abbreviations

List of Nuremberg Military Tribunals

Introduction

1 American Justice

2 Voices from Landsberg

3 Clemency

4 Undoing Nuremberg

5 Crimes without Punishment

6 Between Clemency and Parole

7 A Short Walk to Freedom

Conclusion

Appendix: Sentencing Revisions for Nuremberg War Criminals Eligible for McCloy’s 1951 Clemency

List of Archival Collections

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Hutchinson, Robert After Nuremberg

ISBN:

9780300268706

OCLC:

1338298916