With malice toward none: The punishment and pardon of German war criminals, 1945-1958.

摘要

The purpose of this dissertation is to explain why the United States government granted parole and clemency to German war criminals in its custody after World War II. Due to pressure from conservative and far Right nationalists in West Germany, the U.S. agreed to release war criminals as a quid pro quo for cooperation in the Cold War. In order to appease public opinion in Allied countries, however, the U.S. rejected a general amnesty for war criminals in favor of a policy of gradual releases and reductions of sentences, thus cloaking a political action in a legalistic guise. The State Department was the major force within the U.S. government in favor of acceding to West German demands, while the Army--particularly the Judge Advocate branch--opposed clemency and attempted to delay its implementation. The major sources used in the dissertation are Army and State Department records and collections of personal papers in the National Archives the Truman and Eisenhower Libraries.