Spandau war crimes prison

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Entrance gate to the Spandau war crimes prison, 1951

The Spandau War Crimes Prison was a prison located in today's Berlin district of Wilhelmstadt in the Spandau district , in which those convicted of the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals of the Second World War served their sentences from 1946 to 1987 . After the death of the last prisoner, Rudolf Hess , it was demolished in 1987.

The prison is occasionally confused with the Spandau Citadel in the Haselhorst district, about three kilometers away , but has nothing to do with it.

history

Main entrance
Changing of the guard
Wasteland after demolition
Watchtower Wilhelmstrasse

Between 1878 and 1898, a fortress detention facility for members of the military was built on Wilhelmstrasse in Spandau . Among other things, the later KPD member of the Reichstag, Werner Scholem, was imprisoned here in 1917 for insulting his majesty because he had participated in an anti-war demonstration as an infantryman. After the First World War , mainly civil prisoners were imprisoned there.

After the Reichstag fire in 1933, the prison served as a protective custody camp in which prominent opponents of National Socialism such as Egon Erwin Kisch and Carl von Ossietzky were imprisoned before concentration camps were systematically set up in Prussia and the prisoners were transferred there. Before the Second World War, the prison was temporarily occupied with over 600 inmates.

After the war, the prison was taken over by the Allies to house the war criminals of the National Socialist regime who had been sentenced to prison terms at the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals . Seven war criminals (see table below) were imprisoned there, four of whom were serving their full sentences. After Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach were released in 1966, the prison had only one prisoner, Rudolf Hess , who was serving a life sentence .

Those convicted in the subsequent trials were not imprisoned in Spandau, but in Landsberg am Lech and other prisons.

The prison, which is located in the British sector , was the only facility operated by the four Allied powers , along with the Allied Aviation Security Center , and survived the Cold War . The prison administration changed monthly. The current status could be seen from the flag hoisted in front of the Allied Control Council building .

The building was demolished in 1987 to prevent the prison from being used for propaganda purposes by neo-Nazis after the death of its last inmate, Rudolf Hess . In order to ensure complete destruction, the demolition material was pulverized and dumped in the North Sea . Since the site was adjacent to the British barracks Smuts Barracks and was in the restricted military area, a shopping center for military personnel of the Western Allies with a car park, the Britannia Center Spandau, was built there . After the British troops withdrew from Berlin in 1994, the area was used by various trading companies. In 2011 a demolition request was made for part of the Britannia Center . Trees that the prisoners planted in the 1950s still stand in the parking lot of a shopping center.

Prison facility

The prison was a brick building built for several hundred prisoners and surrounded by several security systems. The security systems were from the inside out:

  1. a five meter high wall
  2. a ten meter high wall
  3. a three meter high wall with an electrically charged fence
  4. a fence with barbed wire

In addition, there were nine watchtowers on which guards armed with machine guns were on duty around the clock. The guard on duty consisted of about 60 soldiers. Since there were enough prison cells, one cell was left free between the prisoners to prevent them from communicating with each other by knocking. Other cells were designated for special purposes. One housed the prison library , another a chapel . The cells were approximately 3 meters by 2.7 meters and were 4 meters high.

A special feature of the prison for the prisoners was the garden. Since this was very spacious considering the small number of inmates, the space was initially divided among the inmates. The prisoners used it to grow various plants: Karl Dönitz preferred to plant beans, Walther Funk tomatoes and Albert Speer flowers.

administration

The prison was administered by the four powers on a monthly basis, so that each allied power controlled the prison three months a year according to the following scheme:

Allied jurisdiction Months
United KingdomUnited Kingdom United Kingdom January May September
FranceFrance France February June October
Soviet UnionSoviet Union Soviet Union March July November
United StatesUnited States United States April August December

controversy

When the Allies took over the prison in November 1946, they believed 100 or more war criminals would be incarcerated there. In addition to the approximately 60 soldiers on duty, there were civilian guards from the four powers, four prison directors and their aides , four doctors, cooks, translators, waiters, and others. This was received as a drastic misplacement of resources and developed into a point of contention between the prison directors, the politicians from their countries and especially the government of West Berlin , who had to pay for the maintenance of the facility. The debate about the seven war criminals in such a large prison widened the fewer prisoners there were. Proposals ranged from transferring inmates to a wing of a larger prison to their release and subsequent house arrest . The discussion reached its climax when Speer and Schirach were released in 1966 and Rudolf Hess remained the only prisoner. None of these plans came about.

Prison life

Every part of life in prison was governed by an elaborate set of rules that had been laid down by the Four Powers before the prisoners arrived. Compared to other prison regulations of the time, the rules in Spandau were stricter. Letters from prisoners to their families were initially limited to one page per month. Conversations among the prisoners, newspapers, writing diaries and memoirs were forbidden. Family visits were only possible every two months and were limited to 15 minutes. As a suicide prevention , each cell was briefly illuminated every 15 minutes during the night.

Much of the stricter rules were later relaxed or ignored by prison staff. The directors and guards of the Western powers opposed many of the stricter measures and protested almost constantly throughout the existence of the prison, but were all stopped by the veto of the Soviet Union, which preferred tougher measures .

daily routine

The daily routine was meticulously regulated and began with waking up at six o'clock, personal hygiene, cleaning of the cells as well as the corridors and breakfast. This was followed by gardening or the pasting of envelopes. After lunch and the ensuing afternoon rest, there was more gardening and dinner around 5 p.m. Sleep was from 10 p.m.

The inmates were shaved every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and given a haircut if necessary.

In the first few years after the start of imprisonment, the prisoners developed a series of communication channels to the outside under the eyes of the sometimes benevolent prison staff. Since every piece of paper the prisoners received was recorded and its whereabouts tracked, the prisoners mostly wrote their secret letters on toilet paper .

Detention conditions regularly deteriorated when Soviet staff took control of the detention center. The sometimes very generous catering by the staff of the Western Allies then switched to the same combinations of meals, which consisted of substitute coffee, bread, soup and potatoes.

It was only with the sudden dismissal of the Soviet director in the early 1960s that this situation gradually changed.

The war criminals caught there

The seven war criminals sentenced to prison terms were transferred to Spandau on July 18, 1947. The inmates were given a number in the order in which they first occupied their cells. According to the Allied regulations, they also had to be addressed by their number.

No. Surname judgment End of imprisonment Function in the time of National Socialism Died Remarks
1 Baldur von Schirach 20 years Oct. 1, 1966 Reich Youth Leader and Reich Governor of Vienna Aug 8, 1974 Dismissed regularly
2 Karl Doenitz ten years Oct 1, 1956 Grand Admiral , Commander in Chief of the Navy , last Reich President in 1945 Dec. 24, 1980 Dismissed regularly
3 Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath 15 years Nov 6, 1954 Reich Foreign Minister from 1932 to 1938, Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia from 1939 to 1941 Aug 14, 1956 Discharged early for health reasons
4th Erich Raeder life sentence 26 Sep 1955 Grand Admiral , Commander-in-Chief of the Navy until January 30, 1943 Nov 6, 1960 Discharged early for health reasons
5 Albert Speer 20 years Oct. 1, 1966 Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition and General Building Inspector for the Reich capital Sep 1 1981 Dismissed regularly
6th Walther Funk life sentence May 16, 1957 Reich Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank May 31, 1960 Discharged early for health reasons
7th Rudolf Hess life sentence Aug 17, 1987 "Deputy of the Führer " until 1941 Aug 17, 1987 died in custody (suicide)

As is typical for the rivalries and struggles for prestige within the leadership of the Nazi regime, groups also formed among the prisoners: Albert Speer and Rudolf Hess were the loners and generally unpopular with the others - Speer because of his blanket acceptance of responsibility for Nazi injustice and the formal rejection of Hitler at the Nuremberg trials , Hess because of his anti-social personality and his recognizable psychological instability. The former Grand Admirals Raeder and Dönitz stuck together, although they were considered irreconcilable since the replacement of Raeder by Dönitz as Commander in Chief of the Navy in 1943. Von Schirach and Funk are described as "inseparable". As a former diplomat, Von Neurath was amiable and well-liked by everyone. Despite the long time they spent together, they made comparatively little progress in reconciling with one another. One example is Dönitz's aversion to Speer, which lasted the entire term of imprisonment together and which came to a head in the last days of imprisonment.

Albert Speer

As the most ambitious of the inmates, he subjected himself rigorously to self-imposed and scheduled physical and mental work, with a two-week self-approved "vacation" from this routine every few months. He wrote two books, a draft of his memoir, and a collection of diary entries. His request to write the memoirs had been rejected, so he wrote secretly and systematically smuggled the documents out with the help of corrupt guards and orderlies. The two books became bestsellers after their publication in 1969 and 1975, respectively . Speer also worked as an architect : he designed a Californian summer house for one of the guards and redesigned the prison garden. He used to go hiking "around the world" by requesting geography books and guidebooks from the local library and doing laps in the prison garden while imagining the trips. In total, he covered more than 30,000 kilometers before his release.

He was helped with smuggling by Toni Proost from Holland , originally a forced laborer in an armaments factory, but who was then trained as a paramedic in a hospital belonging to Speer's sphere of influence. He was employed in the prison as a paramedic from 1947 and, out of gratitude, helped Speer smuggle messages out until he was recruited as an agent by the Soviets. He refused, reported it to the Western Allies and resigned from his prison job.

Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz

"The Admiralty, " as the other prisoners called them, got together on many tasks. With his penchant for systematics and strict order, Raeder became the chief librarian of the prison library . Doenitz was his assistant. Both withdrew from the other prisoners. Doenitz, because for the whole ten years he had claimed that he was still the rightful head of state in Germany. Raeder because he despised the presumptuousness and lack of discipline of his fellow non-military prisoners.

Doenitz wrote, among other things, letters to his former adjutant with the intention of preserving his prestige in the world outside of prison. Before his release, he gave his wife instructions on how best to support the transition from prison life to his return to politics. He intended to do the latter, but never put it into practice.

Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment but, unlike Raeder, Funk and Neurath, was not released because of health problems. He completed the longest sentence of all. As the "laziest man in Spandau", Hess avoided all kinds of work that he considered beneath his dignity, such as weeding. He was the only one of the seven who almost never attended the Sunday service. As a naturally paranoid hypochondriac , he kept complaining about all kinds of illnesses, mostly stomach ache. He mistrusted all the food that was given to him and always took the plate that was furthest away from his place in order to avoid an attempted poisoning he feared . His "pain" made him moan and scream at any time of the day or night. This sparked repeated discussions about the authenticity of the pain among the other prisoners and prison directors. Raeder, Doenitz and Schirach despised Hess's behavior and saw his cries more as calls for help to attract attention or methods of refusal to work than actually caused by pain. Speer and Funk, aware of the likely psychosomatic nature of the disease, met Hess. Speer increasingly attracted the displeasure of the other prisoners by taking care of Hess. He brought him his coat when he was cold and defended it when a director or guard tried to persuade him to get out of bed and go to work. It is also interesting that when Hess screamed in pain again and deprived the other prisoners of their sleep, the prison doctor would sometimes give him a " sedative " which was actually just water for injections . But this placebo worked and let Hess sleep. Only in relation to Speer did Hess appear delicate, generally educated and polite and forgot his psychosomatic reactions in the respective conversations. The fact that Hess repeatedly avoided work that the others had to do and enjoyed other preferential treatment because of his illnesses was received with aversion by some of his fellow prisoners and earned him the title of his imprisoned lordship ( translated from English ) from the two admirals .

As for his pride, Hess was also unique among the prisoners in another matter, for he refused to receive visitors for over twenty years. It was not until 1969 that he accepted to see his wife and grown-up son when he had to be treated in a hospital outside the prison for a ruptured ulcer. After Hess was the only prisoner, the prison directors agreed to relax most of the remaining prison rules for fear of his sanity. He was allowed to move into a larger cell, the former chapel, and was given a kettle so that he could make tea or coffee whenever he wanted. His cell was left unlocked, which gave him free access to the prison washrooms and the prison library.

He died in custody, by connecting to an extension cord hanged . The circumstances of death are doubted by his family, however, as there were contradictions in the results of the two autopsies carried out . This and the clear commitment to National Socialism made him a political martyr for neo-Nazis . Therefore, Hess's death anniversary is used by such groups for rallies every year.

Others

The well-known SS officer Otto Skorzeny , who was involved in the liberation of Benito Mussolini in 1943 , claimed in an interview in 1953 that with a hundred reliable men and two helicopters he could have liberated the prisoners easily. This had a clearly negative impact on the campaigns of those seeking to free the prisoners through appeals and legal action, because it showed that the men were still of great value and their release would have meant a boost for neo-Nazis.

The American officer Eugene Bird was the top American guard in the Spandau War Crimes Prison in 1947 and was the American commander of the prison from 1964 to 1972. In 1972 he wrote a book about this in personal collaboration with Rudolf Hess. Since this was against the regulations, Bird was soon removed from office. When Rudolf Hess died in 1987, Bird became one of the spokesmen for those who questioned the official version that he had committed suicide.

See also

literature

  • Tony le Tissier: Spandau years. 1981-1991. The last British Governor's notes. With documents, a report from the last British governor of the war crimes prison. Herbig, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7766-1978-3 .
  • Jack Fishman: Long Knives and Short Memories. The Spandau Prison Story . Breakwater Books, St. John's 1986, ISBN 0-920911-00-5 (used in article body).
  • Albert Speer : Spandau Diaries . Ullstein, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-548-36729-1 (used in the article text).
  • Norman L. Goda: Tales from Spandau. Nazi Criminals and the Cold War . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 2007, ( Ullstein 36729), ISBN 978-0-521-86720-7 .
  • Johannes Fülberth: The Spandau Prison 1918–1947. Prison execution in democracy and dictatorship . be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95410-034-7 .
  • Heiko Metz: The central fortress prison in Spandau . In: Spandauer Forschungen , Volume 1, ed. by Joachim Pohl and Gisela Rolf, Berlin, 2007, pp. 167–197.

Movies

Web links

Commons : Spandau War Criminal Prison  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Britannia Center Spandau  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Scholem had previously served his pre-trial detention in the Rote Ochsen in Halle. Ralf Hoffrogge : Werner Scholem - a political biography (1895-1940) . UVK Konstanz 2014, ISBN 978-3-86764-505-8 , pp. 96–110, p. 462.

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 16 ″  N , 13 ° 11 ′ 7 ″  E