A Labor of Loathing

Through groundbreaking archival work, Goda has given us the first thorough look at the incarceration of major Nazi war criminals in Spandau Prison after the Nuremberg tribunal. Because the prison was located in the British sector of West Berlin but was run by all 4 major powers, its postwar history was interwoven with that of the Cold War in a way that results in a tale of substantial historical interest.

Despite the author's meticulous research, this book is marred by his relentless detestation for the prisoners. No opportunity is missed to assert that they deserved much worse than they got, to impute to their every action the worst possible motive, and to snark about those on the outside who showed the slightest human concern for them. Yes, the book does follow through on its promise to tell us how these prisoners got caught in an international tug-of-war, but it is the prisoners who Goda faults for not being willing pawns. In particular, Goda roundly criticizes Speer for selfishly being reluctant to be held hostage in furtherance of the Western powers' claim to a right to a presence in Berlin.

These men were war criminals; we get it. Must we be subjected to the author's incessant spleen-venting about them? ( )

Call this book a case study in trying to exact justice under less than ideal circumstances, as Goda examines the complications entailed by the extended incarceration of men such as Rudolph Hess, Albert Speer, and Karl Donitz. Much of the complexity stemmed from bad logistical decisions made immediately at the conclusion of Nuremberg war trials (never mind the flaws in that judicial process) and the decision to hold these men in Berlin, at which point their fates became entangle in the fate of the divided city. The next level of complexity derived from how much of a support group the prisoners had outside of prison, what with the aristocratic elite of Wurttemburg speaking up for Konstantin von Neurath, the German naval officer corps supporting Admirals Raeder and Donitz, and elements of the German business community helping Albert Speer; Hess and Baldur von Schirach, not so much. Finally, there was the chronic matter of the balance between seeing that these men were forced to endure the sentences meted out to them, with the fear of making them into martyrs.

In the end Goda concludes that the meaning of Spandau was most important to the Soviet government, as the prison was the symbolic validation of the Cold War division of Europe and the international regime that resulted. As for the way forward in such cases, Goda notes that national leaders serving sentences as war criminals will inevitably remain points of conflict and the hope of virtually entombing them so that they are forgotten like a quarantined contagion is a pipe dream. Countries trying alleged war criminals need to enter into this endeavor "with open eyes and with thick skins," and to remember that the real punishment for the likes of the Spandau Seven is the "bar of history." ( )