Political support for war crimes prosecutions soon declined. Under interrogation, Himmler admitted who he was, but avoided trial by committing suicide with a concealed cyanide pill. He was arrested, while in disguise, at a checkpoint and taken to an interrogation camp near Lüneburg on. The most famous Nazi caught by the British was Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS and one of the main architects of the Holocaust. Those found guilty included Commandant Josef Kramer who was sentenced to death by a military court and hanged on 13 December 1945. It established the British Army War Crimes Investigation Teams (WCIT), which was assisted by other units, including the Special Air Service (SAS).Īmong those brought to trial were the SS personnel of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which had been liberated by the British in April 1945. The BAOR was responsible for pursuing suspected war criminals in its zone of north-west Germany. The last Werewolf activities petered out in early 1947, with its operatives having failed to mobilise a war-weary population to support their doomed struggle. They also kept many German officers in prisoner-of-war camps for longer to prevent them supporting the Werewolf campaign on release. In any case, the Allies took the threat seriously and had interned around 100,000 civilian suspects by the end of 1945.
Despite its limitations, it was a useful propaganda device that helped convince the most ardent Nazi supporters to carry on fighting in the final weeks of the war. This was aimed at encouraging acts of sabotage and reprisals against collaborators in areas occupied by the Allies. These concerns proved unfounded and were largely the result of German propaganda fooling Allied intelligence services.Īnother last-ditch Nazi resistance effort, the Werewolf plan, was also something of a damp squib.
Following their victory, the Allies feared that Nazi fanatics might wage a partisan war against the occupation, and gather in the mountains of Bavaria and Austria, in the so-called 'Alpine Redoubt'.
0 kommentar(er)
