Comment by spwa4

Which means 90% of people who committed extremely serious crimes in service of the Nazis, serious enough to warrant the death penalty, were gradually let out of prison in the years after that. Of the people not convicted to death, 100% were "forgiven". Not really, but read on.

Most people convicted to death (AND Robert Schuman, who was convicted, but later founded the EU) were guilty of helping the Nazis deport and massacre people, and not one or two, hundreds at least. Tens of thousands, some.

And the reason for releasing most of them is even worse, if you disregard that half managed to escape. The reason is that the resistance (and remaining Nazis, by the way, who in some places killed literally everyone they could get their hands on in retreat) carried out their own executions in French towns, villages and cities. Without courts, or judgement. Needless to say, pretty much everyone in government was guilty and more and more were getting executed.

So a "clean slate" was declared, to prevent the country falling apart entirely, and these people were let go. Not just in France. Spain. Italy. Belgium. Luxembourg. The Netherlands. In countries that were Nazi-leaning (like the Netherlands, Austria or Italy) some government departments (think health, youth, justice and education departments) literally have archives of their own cooperation with the holocaust.

Please note that it is now known that quite a few victims of both the courts and the extrajudicial killings were convicted as Nazi collaborators ... BY Nazi collaborators who remained in government and wanted revenge.

Needless to say, there was a wave of murders around the time of every release, with suspiciously little effort going to finding the perpetrators.