A surprise that's no surprise at all, eh? It plugs into the thesis that the Nuremberg trials were staged, and just another part of the psychodrama.

What may also surprise some people is that, for all we are told about the infinite crimes and outrages of the Nazis, only a handful met with punishment:

Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death (Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, and Bormann). On 16 October, ten were hanged, with Göring killing himself the day before. Seven defendants (Hess, Funk, Raeder, Dönitz, Schirach, Speer, and Neurath) were sent to Spandau Prison to serve their sentences. All three acquittals (Papen, Schacht, and Fritzsche) were based on a deadlock between the judges; these acquittals surprised observers.

So for prosecuting the personification of evil, they went 17 and 3. They couldn't even get those last three convictions in a show trial!

If you scrutinize the list more closely, you can see the attempts at manipulating the guilty verdicts upwards. For example, Hess had left Germany in May 1941 on what many believe was a peace mission. They tell us Goring killed himself, but based on other research this was just the cover for his extraction. Donitz was just a stooge left holding the bag.

The most important was probably Martin Bormann, the "eminence grise" of the Nazi Party. He was never executed because he had disappeared before the end of the war. I suspect he was part of the "secret team" used to get Germany involved in the war in the first place. As such, he was far too important to allow him near to potentially unfriendly hands.

EDIT: I just came across this quote from one of the defendants at the trial, Alfred Jodl, again indicating how managed it all was from the very beginning:

If we did not collapse already in the year 1939 that was due only to the fact that during the Polish campaign, the approximately 110 French and British divisions in the West were held completely inactive against the 23 German divisions.

Sorry, Jodl, if that's the kinda talk you're spouting, then you gotta go!

A surprise that's no surprise at all, eh? It plugs into the thesis that the Nuremberg trials were staged, and just another part of the psychodrama.

What may also surprise some people is that, for all we are told about the infinite crimes and outrages of the Nazis, only a handful met with punishment:

Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death (Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, and Bormann). On 16 October, ten were hanged, with Göring killing himself the day before. Seven defendants (Hess, Funk, Raeder, Dönitz, Schirach, Speer, and Neurath) were sent to Spandau Prison to serve their sentences. All three acquittals (Papen, Schacht, and Fritzsche) were based on a deadlock between the judges; these acquittals surprised observers.

So for prosecuting the personification of evil, they went 17 and 3. They couldn't even get those last three convictions in a show trial!

If you scrutinize the list more closely, you can see the attempts at manipulating the guilty verdicts upwards. For example, Hess had left Germany in May 1941 on what many believe was a peace mission. They tell us Goring killed himself, but based on other research this was just the cover for his extraction. Donitz was just a stooge left holding the bag.

The most important was probably Martin Bormann, the "eminence grise" of the Nazi Party. He was never executed because he had disappeared before the end of the war. I suspect he was part of the "secret team" used to get Germany involved in the war in the first place. As such, he was far too important to allow him near to potentially unfriendly hands.