Why Did We Shoot Spies?

[bainbrig]

Why did we execute spies? What harm could they do once we’d locked them up? Why didn’t we treat them like other POWs?

Was it just habit?

[Spicerack]

Made sick in Salisbury, you mean?

[DTCwordfan]

Winchester would surely be 'rifled'

[shoota]

Not if it was a shotgun - I'm researching steel proofed shotties at the mo....

[retrocop]

More research needed methinks.

///Yes, but one reason why POWs were treated well by both Allied and Nazi captors was so that the OTHER side would have some obligation to do the same. //

This tells a different narrative


https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/raf-bomber-command-confirmed-war-crime-actions-1939-1945.22972/

[DTCwordfan]

retrocopped in rotherham?

[Khandro]

//(I have Winchester on the brain)//

and I've got Georgia on my mind.

[retrocop]

DTC
Nah........Rogerthem

[bainbrig]

Yes, of course, retrocop (“More research needed methinks”) - I’m not saying that the Germans behaved with honour and decency, just that SOME elements of the heirarchy did, or at least weren’t all tub-thumping lunatics. The prisoner exchange was one manifestation of this - and of course self-preservation came into it - they wanted clean(-ish) hands when the inevitable defeat came.

But anyway, the original question remains. Why bother killing spies when they’re already locked away?

[bainbrig]

Is no-one going to try and make a case for killing them? (Not just an assertion, like ''cos they're bad people', or 'cos it's the law', or whatever. A reasoned argument.)

Otherwise I'll just conclude that there is NO valid reason for executing spies.

[ParsleyDumpling]

We shot them because they were tried and found guilty of treason. In wartime treason is punishable by death. If anyone watched the program about the Tower of London last night there was a section about this very subject.

[retrocop]

//Otherwise I'll just conclude that there is NO valid reason for executing spies.//

I rather suspect that those who had the carp bombed out of them in the blitz were not interested or expected a reason for the execution.
The spy probably directed the Luftwaffe withinformation on target rich environments.
Unless the spy could be turned and serve a useful purpose to counter intelligence he became another mouth to feed in war torn rationed Geat Britain. So he got the chop.
Movements of shipping to and from Docks were a gift to the Kriegsmarine and a severe loss to logistics and food supply.

[bainbrig]

Yes retro, but we'd got the ***, we'd got them bang to rights, locked up in a small cell. No more information was coming out of them. And I still wonder why we didn't treat them as we treated POWs - for similar reasons, i.e. if you kill OUR spies, we'll kill YOURS, and vice versa. Just lock them up, have 'em back later.

I suspect other answerers have touched on the thinking. Spying is not 'gentlemanly' and they are thus beyond the pale. (Well, it's not gentlemanly when the OTHER side is doing it...)

And my question is slightly broader - why (oh why) did the Yanks kill the Rosenbergs? Is it just that they're even twitchier about spies than us?

B B

[mushroom25]

//why (oh why) did the Yanks kill the Rosenbergs?//

I don't know. they were tried under the Espionage Act of 1917 which, when enacted, provided for 20 years inside. It may have had something to do with Roy Cohn being the prosecutor, he went on to play a leading role in the McCarthy un-American purges. Or it could be the effect the ring was said to have had on the Korean War.

what is true is that the activities of Theodore Hall were far more damaging than the Rosenbergs. Co-incidentally, one of Hall's couriers was Lona Cohen, better known as Helen Kroger, jailed with her husband in 1961 in the UK and later exchanged for UK spy Gerald Brooke. The Krogers lived in Ruislip and when a teenager, I delivered newspapers to their bungalow in Cranley Drive.....

[bainbrig]

But again mushroom, what you're doing is telling me of the legalities.

I want to know why they BOTHERED killing them.

[emmie]

so they couldn't do further damage. Suppose we jailed them then turfed them out after the war, they could have still been active in the cold war, no?

[mushroom25]

not sure there's an answer to that BB. but American paranoia was at its height in that part of the 1950s.

[naomi24]

//Is no-one going to try and make a case for killing them?//

I did. I said because they pose a threat to national security … but I’ll add to that if you like. They’re on the other side and can't be trusted. Hence, it's in our national interest to dispose of them.

[jim360]

Except that we've moved on from all that, presumably, as spies are deported (or imprisoned) rather than "disposed of" -- what an ugly euphemism that is.

[naomi24]

Is 'kill' better? How about 'execute'? Yes, that will do.

[Kromovaracun]

There's no guarantee of how much an enemy spy has actually learned. If they're able to escape or even just smuggle out information, they were still a threat.