Photograph of the Judges

SS Standard Leader Paul Blobel (1894-1951) in the assize courtroom 600 during the Task Force trial.
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The result of the revision was announced in January 1951. It represented a major, though not all-out success of this campaign: of the 28 death penalties, 21 were converted to prison terms; 69 of the 74 prison sentences handed in for revision were reduced. 32 detainees were released immediately. In view of the magnitude of the committed atrocities - the massacres of the Task Forces, the shooting of partisans, the mass killings in concentration camps - the extent of the mitigation of the penalties was no less than stunning.

In doing this, the American occupation administration had actually greatly harmed, if not destroyed, the idea of legal prosecution of Nazi criminals. In the public perception of these sentences, the main point was not the act of mercy of the Americans toward the former enemy, which was meant to promote the political future of the fledgling West German state, but rather the associated putative admission that the war crime trials had been based on an inadequate legal, historical, and moral foundation. Thus, three quarters of the Germans rejected the revisions as insufficient, and even more regarded the seven confirmed death sentences as unjustified.