H6: War Criminals

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Letting the enemy in

Immediately after the Second World War, former Nazis entered Britain by a number of routes. Allied officials visiting the DP Camps at this time found that many people from the Baltics and Ukraine would make 'desirable immigrants' because there was a desperate labour shortage in the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK. There was also an urgent need to fix the problem of homeless millions in Europe before reconstruction could take place.

A screening system was set up to prevent ex-Nazis from seeking refuge. However, screening was notoriously superficial. The US army training for screening was a two day course. In this time, participants were expected to learn overall Second World War history, the movements of individual units and their part in massacres, interrogation techniques, basic forensics and a host of other specialities. Also, there were not many records referencing non-German personnel so the screening and searching out of local collaborators was haphazard and left many war criminals in better positions than before.

It must be remembered that the Allies also wanted to tap Nazi 'talent' for their own purposes. New political priorities were developing and suddenly Communism was the new enemy. Former Nazis would be very useful in the espionage activities of what was to become the Cold War. DPs could also enter certain Allied countries as 'Refugees from Communism', while Germans who held top Nazi jobs during the war were put into top jobs by the Allied Powers to rebuild German economy and society e.g. in banks, education, business and politics. The Allies clearly followed contradictory policies whereby they publicly claimed that they were pursuing war criminals whilst in truth other priorities were really on their mind.

Justice: superficial & forgotten

From Nov. 1945 to Sept. 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg put captured Nazis and collaborators on trial for war crimes. However, there was a view that many of the major culprits had not been found. The general public were fed up with war and wanted to leave it behind. The Nuremberg and a few subsequent trials were only briefly reported in Britain and were something of a non-event. Few books were published in English that described the horrific fate of European Jewry and most people were very ill informed. The shocking fact is that in the 1990s, awareness of the Holocaust is deeper and more pervasive than was the case immediately after it ended.

War criminals in the UK

In October 1986, the British Government received information from the Los Angeles based Simon Wiesenthal Center that 17 alleged Nazi war criminals were believed to be living in the UK. In February, following research for a documentary, Scottish Television sent a second list containing 34 names to the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd. By early 1988, the Home Office had confirmed that at least 17 persons from the two lists were living in the UK.

February 1988 saw Hurd set up an independent War Crimes Inquiry. Its members were Sir Thomas Hetherington, former Director of Public Persecutions, and William Chalmers, former Crown Agent for Scotland - two men with impeccable credentials and no bias in this matter. In July 1989, Hurd presented the Inquiry's Report to Parliament. The Report recommended that British criminal law should be changed to enable the prosecution of suspected Nazi war criminals in the UK. The report confirmed that it had indeed been possible for war criminals to enter Britain after the Second World War and that, 40 years later, there were no less than 70 men still living who were deemed worthy of investigation.

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