Spandau Prison
From Freepedia
Spandau Prison was a purpose-built prison situated in the borough of Spandau in western Berlin, constructed in 1876. The prison was near, though not part of, the ancient Spandau Citadel fortress.
After World War II it was operated by the Four-Power Authorities to house the Nazi war criminals that had been sentenced to imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials. Only seven prisoners were finally imprisoned there: Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, and Erich Raeder with life sentences, Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach serving 20 year terms each, Konstantin von Neurath with 15, and Karl Dönitz being sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment. Of the seven only four fully served out their sentences, with the remaining three, Neurath, Raeder, and Funk, having been released partway into their sentences due to ill health in 1954, 1955, and 1957 respectively.
Of note, Spandau was one of only two Four-Power organizations to exist during the Cold War; the other being the Berlin Air Safety Center. The four occupying powers of Berlin would alternate control of the prison on a monthly basis, each having the responsibility for a total of three months out of the year. Control of the prison could be determined by observing the Four-Power flags that flew at the Allied Control Authority building. They too rotated monthly, right to left. The nationality flag furthest to the left had control of Spandau Prison and its infamous inhabitants for that month.
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The prison
The prison, initially designed for a prison population in the hundreds, was an old brick building enclosed by one wall of 15 feet in height, another of 30 feet, a 10 foot high wall of electrified wire, followed by a wall of barbed wire. In addition, 9 machine-gun armed guards towers were manned 24 hours a day by a some of the 60 strong soldiers on guard duty. Due to the superfluous amount of cells available, an empty cell was left in between each of the prisoners' cells, so as to avoid the possibility of prisoners communicating in morse code. Some of the other remaining cells in the wing were designated for other purposes, with one being used for the prison library and another for a chapel. The cells were approximately 3 metres long by 2.7 metres wide and 4 metres high.1
Garden
The highlight of the prison, from the prisoners perspective, was the prison garden. Very spacious given the small amount of prisoners using it, the garden space was initially divvied up into small personal plots that were utilized by each prisoner in a number of ways, usually for the growing of vegetables. Dönitz favoured growing beans, Funk tomatoes, and Speer flowers, although flowers were subsequently banned for a time by the Soviet director. By regulation, all of the produce was to be put towards use in the prison kitchen, but prisoners and guards alike often skirted this rule and indulged in the garden's offerings. Later, as prison regulations slackened in this regard and as other prisoners became either apathetic or of too poor health to maintain their plots, the garden was consolidated into one large workable area. This suited the liking of the former architect Speer, who, being one of the youngest and liveliest of the prisoners, later took up the task of refashioning the entire plot of land into large complex garden, complete with walkings paths, rock gardens, and flower displays. On the days without the garden, as when it was raining for instance, the prisoners occupied their time making envelopes together in the main corridor.
Controversy
Before the Allied powers requisitioned the prison in November 1946, expecting a hundred or more war criminals, it housed well over 600 prisoners. In addition to the 60 or so soldiers on duty in or around the prison at any given time, there were teams of professional civilian warders from each of the four countries, four prison directors and their deputies, four army medical officers, cooks, translators, waiters, porters and others. This was perceived as a drastic misallocation of resource and became a serious point of contention amongst the prison directors, politicians from their respective countries, and, especially, the government of West Berlin, who were left to foot the bill and suffer from the lack of valuable prison space. The debate surrounding the imprisonment of the seven war criminals in such a large prison with such a large and expensive complementary staff was only heightened as time went on and prisoners began being released. This reached its peak after the release of Speer and Schirach in 1966, when only one prisoner, Rudolf Hess, was left remaining in an otherwise un-utilized prison. Various proposals were made to remedy this situation throughout, ranging from moving the prisoners to an appropriately sized wing of another larger, occupied prison, to releasing the men from prison entirely and instead putting them under house arrest. Nevertheless the prison remained as one exclusively for the housing of the 7 war criminals, and was demolished after the death of Hess in 1987 to prevent it from becoming a Neo-Nazi shrine.To further ensure its erasure, the site was made into a complex parking facility, and all demolished materials from the prison were ground to powder and dispersed into the cold waters of the North Sea.
Life in the prison
Prison regulation
Every facet of life in the prison was strictly set out by a bloated and intricate prison regulation scheme that was designed prior to the prisoners' arrival by the Four Powers -- France, Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Compared to other established prison regulations at the time, Spandau's rules were quite strict. The prisoners' outgoing letters to family were at first limited to 1 page every month, talking with fellow prisoners was prohibited, newspapers were banned, diaries and memoirs were forbidden, visits with family were limited to one of 15 minutes every two months, and lights were flashed into the prisoners' cells every 15 minutes during the night as a form of suicide watch. A considerable portion of the stricter regulations were either later revised towards the more lenient, or were conveniently ignored by prison staff. The directors and guards of the Western powers (France, Britain, and the United States) repeatedly voiced opposition to many of the stricter measures, and made near constant protest of them to their superiors throughout the prison's existence, but were invariably vetoed down by the Soviet Union, which favoured a tougher approach. The Soviet Union, which pushed for execution for all men that were imprisoned in Spandau, were unwilling to compromise with the Western powers in this regard, both because of the harsher punishment that they felt was justified to be bestowed on the convicted war criminals, and as an extension of Cold War-era jockeying for power. This contrasted with Werl Prison, which housed hundreds of former officers and other lower ranking Nazi men who were under comparatively lax regulation.
Daily life
Every day prisoners were ordered to rise at 06.00 hours, wash, clean their cells and the corridor together, eat breakfast, stay in the garden until lunch time at noon, weather permitting, have a post-lunch rest in their cells, then return to the garden. Supper followed at 17.00 hours and the prisoners were kept in their cells until lights out at 22.00 hours. Prisoners received a shave and a haircut, if necessary, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and did their own laundry every Monday. This routine, with the exception of the amount of time allowed in the garden, changed very little throughout the years, although each of the controlling nations had their own slightly varying interpretation of the prison regulations.
Within a few years of their arrival at the prison, all sorts of illicit lines of communication were opened up for the prisoners by sympathetic prison staff. This supplementary line to the outside world was free of the censorship put over the official communications allowed to the prisoners and was also virtually unlimited in volume. Since every piece of paper given to the prisoners was recorded and tracked, the secret letters were most often written on toilet paper, whose supply went unmonitored for the entire duration of the prison's existence. Subsequently, many prisoners took full advantage of this illegal privilege. Albert Speer, after having his official request to write his memoirs denied, finally began setting down on paper his experiences and perspectives of his time with the Nazi regime, which would be systematically smuggled out and be later released as a bestselling book, Inside the Third Reich. Dönitz, amongst other things, wrote letters to his former deputy with regards to the protecting his prestige in the outside world and, when his release was near, gave instructions to his wife on how best she could help facilitate his transition from prisoner back into politics, which he intended to, but never actually did, do. Funk managed to obtain a seemingly constant stream of cognac (all alcohol was banned in the prison) and other treats that he would share with other prisoners on special occasions.
A great fear of the prisoners' was the month in which the Russians took command, as they were much stricter in their enforcement of prison regulation and offered poorer quality meals. Each month, the nation in charge would bring their own cook and would, in the case of the American, French, and British months, liberally allow food given to the prisoners to exceed the amount proscribed in established prison regulation, in terms of food energy and volume. The Russians, until being swayed much later into the prisons existence, would offer a daily unchanged diet of coffee, bread, soup, and potatoes, which was much eclipsed in terms of quality by the relatively luxurious food available during the Western months. This was primarily because of the much loathed Russian director, who was feared and despised by Russian and Western soldiers alike, who perpetually enforced these measures. Until his sudden removal from this duty in the early 60s, when he was replaced by another, more accommodating, director, the Russian month was dreaded.
The Spandau Seven
The prisoners, still subject to the petty personal rivalries and battles for prestige that characterized the party politics of the Nazi regime, divided themselves up into a few groups: Albert Speer and Rudolf Hess were the loners, generally un-liked by the others -- the former for his admission of guilt and repudiation of Hitler at the Nuremberg trials, and the latter for his anti-social personality and perceived mental instability. The two former Grand Admirals, Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz, stayed together as a matter of seniority, despite the heated dislike they shared for each other ever since Raeder was replaced as Commander in Chief of the Navy by Dönitz in 1943. Baldur von Schirach and Walther Funk were described as "inseparable"2 , and Konstantin von Neurath was, being a former diplomat, amiable and amendable to all the others. Despite the amount of time they spent with each other, remarkably little progress was made in the way of reconciliation between prisoners. A notable example was Dönitz's dislike of Speer being steadfastly maintained for his entire 10 year sentence, with it only coming to a head literally during the last few days of his imprisonment.
Albert Speer
The prisoners were assigned numbers corresponding to the order in which they were first assigned cells and were, by regulation, referred to by their number only. Speer, number 5, was the most ambitious of the prisoners, designating himself to a rigorous physical and mental work regime, scheduling "vacations" of two weeks in length every few months where he relieved himself from his self imposed routine. He secretly wrote two books, a draft of his memoirs entitled Inside the Third Reich and a collection of diary entries, The Spandau Diaries. Speer also kept busy with architectural works designing a Californian summer home for one of the guards.1 He would frequently go on "walking tours of the world" by ordering geography and travel books from the local library and walking laps in the prison garden visualizing his journey. Meticulously calculated, he traveled over 24,000 km before his release.
Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz
"The Admiralty", as the other prisoners referred to Dönitz and Raeder, were often teamed together in various tasks. Raeder, with a like for rigid systems and organization, designated himself as chief librarian of the prison library, with Dönitz as his assistant. Both men often withheld themselves from other prisoners, with Dönitz claiming for his entire ten years in prison that he was still the rightful head of the German state, and Raeder having contempt for the insolence and lack of discipline endemic in his non-military prison-mates. After Dönitz's release in 1956 he wrote a pair of books, one his early life, My Ever-Changing Life, and one on his time as an admiral, Ten Years and Twenty Days. Raeder, in failing health and feared of being close to death, was released in 1955 and died a few years later in 1960.
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess, sentenced to life but without being released due to ill health like Raeder, Funk, or Neurath, served the longest sentence out of the seven and was by far the most demanding of the prisoners. Agreed on being the 'laziest man in Spandau', Hess avoided all forms of work that he deemed below his dignity, such as pulling weeds, and was the only one of the seven who almost never attended the prisons Sunday church service. A paranoid hypochondriac by nature, he repeatedly complained of all forms of illness, mostly stomach pains, and was suspicious of all food given to him, always taking the dish that was placed farthest away from him as a mean to avoid poisoning. His stomach pains often gave rise to wild and excessive moans and cries of pain throughout the day and night and their authenticity were repeatedly the subject of debate amongst prisoners and the prison directors. Raeder, Dönitz, and Schirach were contemptuous of this behavior and viewed them as cries for attention or as means to avoid work, rather than out of pain. Speer and Funk, acutely aware of the likely psychosomatic nature of the illness, were accommodating to Hess. Speer, in a move than gained more of the ire of his fellow prisoners, would often tend to Hess's needs, bringing him his coat when he was cold and coming to his defense when a director or guard was attempting to coax Hess out of bed and into work. An interesting fact is that sometimes when Hess was wailing in pain, affecting the sleep of the other prisoners, the prison's medical officer would inject Hess with what was described as a "sedative", but was in actuality just distilled water, which succeeded in putting Hess to sleep. The fact that Hess repeatedly skirted duties the others had to bear and received other preferential treatments because of his illness, was loathed by some of the other prisoners and earned him the title of "His imprisoned Lordship" by the admirals.
Hess, also as a matter of dignity, was unique amongst the prisoners in that he refused all visitor for over twenty years, finally accepting to see his long since adult son and wife in 1969 after suffering from a perforated ulcer that required his treatment at a hospital outside the prison. Fearing for his mental health, now that he was the sole remaining prisoner, and that his death was imminent, the prison directors thereafter agreed to slacken most of the remaining regulations, moving Hess to the more spacious former chapel space, giving him a water heater so as to allow the making of tea or coffee when he liked, and permanently unlocking his cell so that he could freely access the prisons bathing facilities and library.
Trivia
- The 1980s British pop band Spandau Ballet took their name from this prison.
- The famed Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny, who freed Benito Mussolini from his captors in 1943, claimed in an interview in 1953 that, given "a hundred reliable men and two planes", he could easily free all of the prisoners. This had a decidedly negative impact on the campaigns of those trying to free the prisoners at Spandau through appeal and legal means, as it showed that the men were still of high value and that their release would be a boon to neo-Nazis
See also
Resources
Notes
- Note 1: {{{Author|}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1| (1986)}}{{{{{Year|}}}}}}|show1|.}} {{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|[{{{URL}}}}} Long Knives and Short Memories: The Spandau Prison Story{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|]}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|, {{{Pages}}}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|Show1|, Breakwater Books}}. {{{ID|}}}, pg. 22
- Note 2: {{{Author|}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1| (1976)}}{{{{{Year|}}}}}}|show1|.}} {{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|[{{{URL}}}}} The Spandau Diaries{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|]}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|, {{{Pages}}}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|Show1|, Macmillan}}. {{{ID|}}}
References
- {{{Author|}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1| (1986)}}{{{{{Year|}}}}}}|show1|.}} {{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|[{{{URL}}}}} Long Knives and Short Memories: The Spandau Prison Story{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|]}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|, {{{Pages}}}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|Show1|, Breakwater Books}}. {{{ID|}}}
- {{{Author|}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1| (1976)}}{{{{{Year|}}}}}}|show1|.}} {{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|[{{{URL}}}}} The Spandau Diaries{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|]}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|show1|, {{{Pages}}}}}{{|{{{3}}}}}}|Show1|, Macmillan}}. {{{ID|}}}
