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NAZI ATROCITIES AGAINST ALLIED AIRMEN: STALAG LUFT III AND THE END OF BRITISH WAR CRIMES TRIALS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1998

PRISCILLA DALE JONES
PRISCILLA DALE JONES
Affiliation:
Air Force History Support Office, Bolling Air Force Base, District of Columbia, USA
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Abstract

This article addresses one aspect of the legal proceedings known collectively as the ‘Nuremberg trials’: British policy towards, and trials of, Nazi war criminals in the British zone of occupied Germany. The killing of fifty allied airmen after their escape from Stalag Luft III illustrates how atrocities against British POWs affected British war crimes policy. The article examines one part of that policy: the efforts to expedite trials and the decision to end them. It examines the ambivalence that characterized British attitudes towards war crimes trials, and also discusses British hopes for an expeditious trial programme and political and legal objections to delays in prosecutions. Finally, it shows that concerns about the Stalag Luft III case led to extensions in the trial programme, but that eventually the programme was subordinated to Britain's broader policy of reintegrating Germany into the western fold.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 543 - 565
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Crown-copyright material in the Public Record Office, Kew, is reproduced by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Portions of this manuscript appeared in Priscilla Dale Jones, ‘British policy towards “minor” Nazi war criminals, 1939–1958’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, 1990). The author thanks Jacob Neufeld for his editorial advice and Dr Jeffery A. Rudd for his unfailing helpfulness and editorial assistance.