From what I know of the British Army at the end of the Second World War they either put them in prison or murdered them straight away
Rudolf Hess was one of the twenty-two top Nazis to be tried at Nuremberg by a cooperative judicial effort of Britain, France, United States and the Soviet Union.
What made Rudolf Hess' case so interesting was that in 1941 he attempted without any authorization from Hitler to negotiate an armistice with Britain. With the hope that Britain would join Germany against the fight against Bolshevism in Russia. Meanwhile the Nazis just assumed that Hess was slowly losing it psychologically.
The most basic controversy was the question of whether the man who was sent to be tried at Nuremberg, was actually the real Rudolf Hess. The man who would eventually prove to be the last prisoner of Spandau. Where he would allegedly end his own life. Was it suicide, or murder?
Some people believe that the British may have actually entertained the idea at the time, and turned Hess down. That he may have been murdered by the British as a security precaution. Others believe that Hess was killed by Russia's NKVD to prevent this from happening. And that they had replaced the man in British custody with one of their own agents.
Why would Britain murder this old man in Spandau Prison? Look at the wealth former Spandau prisoner Albert Speer accrued after his release. Had it been agreed to release Hess, it might have been diplomatically disastrous for Britain had he told the world that he was an imposter.
The problem is or was that at a point in time, Britain maintained confidential archives on all this. Much like they did regarding the Guildford Four defendants. That it remained a matter of record in the archives that the Guildford Four were in fact innocent and the law knew it. And how their lawyer eventually tricked archive monitors into giving her the confidential documents that would free all four of her clients after years of incarceration. Oops.
Only in this case, a gifted scholar was given unique access to these archives for historical study. And that he stumbled onto information that he clearly wasn't supposed to see. Archive monitors physically threw him out when they discovered the information he was accessing. Oops. How do I know about all this? Because that young gifted student became an old man and a tenured university professor who made a point of discussing this incident with his Russian history students. I was one of them.
Imagine the reaction of the Russians had they learned many decades later that Britain seriously considered war with the Nazis against Russia. Even today it would not have gone over well with the Russians, given their relationship with Britain ain't so good. The fact that Britain turned Hess down probably wasn't much consolation to Stalin, who didn't trust Britain or the United States or anyone else as an official ally.
How's that for a mystery? A cool one at that.
Why hasn't anyone made the movie, even if for fiction? Maybe some folks won't even put up with
that.
