Robert Hutchinson - After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals

AFTER NUREMBERG

AFTER NUREMBERG

ROBERT HUTCHINSON

AMERICAN CLEMENCY FOR NAZI WAR CRIMINALS

Copyright 2022 by Robert Hutchinson.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021952533

ISBN 978-0-300-25530-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)

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I started writing this book as a postdoctoral fellow in the Strategy & Policy Department at the United States Naval War College (USNWC), and finished it as an assistant professor of strategy and security studies at the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS). Although I must state that all views expressed herein are my own, I owe both institutions and my colleagues at each a debt of gratitude. The former generously funded research trips to Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, the United States National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Both provided a vibrant and supportive intellectual atmosphere. While many colleagues lent me their support along the way, I would like to single out David Stone, the chair of the Strategy & Policy department at USNWC, for his tireless work to secure funds for research and conference travel, and George Zecher, the departments travel coordinator, for making the travel arrangements smooth sailing.

At my new home, SAASS, I want to thank Jeffrey Donnithorne, Derrick Frazier, and Tom Hughes for providing me with a teaching schedule conducive to completing the revisions to the manuscript, and for providing funding and support for virtual conference attendance in the wake of COVID.

I have had the pleasure to present portions of this work at the 2018 German Studies Association Conference and 2021 Society for Military History Conference, where I received much valuable feedback and thoughtful questioning from, among others, Andrew Beattie, Danny Orbach, Jeffrey Herf, Jeremy Best, and Stephen Davis.

At the National Archives in College Park, archivist Meg Dwyer saved the day in locating some vital clemency records that were filed in an unexpected collection while archivists Haley Maynard and Cate Brennan offered valuable assistance in my navigating and obtaining the necessary State Department and Foreign Service files. I would also like to thank Jeffrey Herf for alerting me to the invaluable reports of the Foreign Broadcast Information Services held there. At Amherst College, archivists Rachel Jirka and Christina Barber were immensely helpful in guiding my research into the John J. McCloy Papers both in person and through the wonderful new finding aid they have produced for the collection. Numerous librarians and archivists at the Harvard Law School Library were also welcoming and helpful in facilitating my access to the Henry Lee Shattuck Papers. Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank the staff of the Naval War Colleges Henry E. Eccles Library for their patience and dedication in obtaining innumerable monographs through interlibrary loan.

At Yale University Press, special thanks go to the attention and care of my editor, Adina Berk, whose steady encouragement was vital to my completion of the manuscript, and my wonderfully thorough and helpful copy editor, Erica Hanson. Together with the generous and thoughtful comments from the two anonymous reviewers, the entire Yale production team has helped me improve this book in every conceivable way.

As always, I must report that this book would not have been possible without both the support and critical feedback of my wife, historian Stephanie Hinnershitz, who carefully read every word numerous times and identified further lines of inquiry that have substantially improved it. Any errors that remain are of course entirely my responsibility.

Introduction

ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1951, a curious bit of revelry took place in dreary Landsberg Prison as ten war criminals condemned to death by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals learned they would live after all. According to newspaper accounts of the scene, when the inmates heard the news they shouted with joy and, chattering excitedly, hastily shed the red jackets which every condemned prisoner wears. Meanwhile, scores of other prisoners beamed with pleasure upon receiving word that American high commissioner for occupied Germany John J. McCloy had significantly reduced their sentences.

Among the newly freed prisoners was erstwhile weapons magnate and convicted plunderer and exploiter of slave labor Alfried Krupp, ebullient that The atmosphere was one of celebration and vindication; the Krupp corporate family had regained its long-lost patriarch, no longer a martyr to the foreign occupiers injustice.

Besides Krupp and his executives, the recipients of McCloys clemency who walked free that day included the former chief physician of the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS (SS Race and Settlement Main Office [RuSHA]) who had performed hormone experiments on concentration camp inmates without their consent in hopes of curing homosexuality in German men; three former judges or prosecutors who had ruthlessly implemented death sentences against racial and political enemies of the Reich even as it crumbled around them; seven Schutzstaffel (Protection Squad [SS]) officials affiliated with the administration and exploitation of the murderous slave labor system in the Reichs concentration camps; four generals with supervisory responsibility for massacres of civilian hostages in the Balkan campaigns; three additional RuSHA deputies who had overseen forcible resettlement activities in the occupied territories, including the kidnapping and Aryanization of foreign children; two administrative officers from