Harold Shipman Trial and imprisonment How old was he when he was arrested? I don't know. How long was the trial? after six days of deliberation, the jury found Shipman guilty Did Shipman have a statement? Shipman consistently denied his guilt,
What was his reason for denying guilt?
What was Harold Shipman's reason for denying guilt?
Shipman's trial began at Preston Crown Court on 5 October 1999. Shipman was charged with the murders of Marie West, Irene Turner, Lizzie Adams, Jean Lilley, Ivy Lomas, Muriel Grimshaw, Marie Quinn, Kathleen Wagstaff, Bianka Pomfret, Norah Nuttall, Pamela Hillier, Maureen Ward, Winifred Mellor, Joan Melia and Kathleen Grundy by lethal injections of diamorphine, all between 1995 and 1998. His legal representatives tried, but failed, to have the Grundy case, where a clear motive was alleged, tried separately from the others, where no motive was apparent.  On 31 January 2000, after six days of deliberation, the jury found Shipman guilty of 15 counts of murder and one count of forgery. Mr Justice Forbes subsequently sentenced Shipman to life imprisonment on all 15 counts of murder, with a recommendation that he never be released, to be served concurrently with a sentence of four years for forging Grundy's will. On 11 February 2000, ten days after his conviction, the General Medical Council formally struck Shipman off its register. Two years later, Home Secretary David Blunkett confirmed the judge's whole life tariff, just months before British government ministers lost their power to set minimum terms for prisoners.  While many additional charges could have been brought, authorities concluded that a fair hearing would be impossible in view of the enormous publicity surrounding the original trial. Furthermore, the 15 life sentences already handed down rendered further litigation unnecessary.  Shipman consistently denied his guilt, disputing the scientific evidence against him. He never made any public statements about his actions. Shipman's wife, Primrose, steadfastly maintained her husband's innocence, even after his conviction.  Shipman is the only doctor in the history of British medicine found guilty of murdering his patients. John Bodkin Adams was charged in 1957 with murdering a patient, amid rumours he had killed dozens more over a ten-year period and "possibly provided the role model for Shipman". However, he was acquitted. Historian Pamela Cullen has argued that because of Adams' acquittal, there was no impetus to examine the flaws in the British system until the Shipman case. CANNOTANSWER
disputing the scientific evidence against him.
Harold Frederick Shipman   (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004), known to acquaintances as Fred Shipman, was an English general practitioner who is believed to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. On 31 January 2000, Shipman was found guilty of the murder of fifteen patients under his care. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with the recommendation that he never be released. Shipman killed himself by hanging, in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield, West Yorkshire on 13 January 2004, a day before his 58th birthday.

The Shipman Inquiry, a two-year-long investigation of all deaths certified by Shipman, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, examined Shipman's crimes. The inquiry identified 218 victims and estimated his total victim count at 250, about 80 percent of whom were elderly women. Shipman's youngest confirmed victim was a 41-year-old man, although suspicion arose that he had killed patients as young as four.

Shipman, who has been nicknamed "Dr Death" and "The Angel of Death", is the only British doctor to date to have been convicted of murdering his patients, although other doctors have been acquitted of similar crimes or convicted on lesser charges.

Early life and career
Harold Frederick Shipman was born on 14 January 1946 on the Bestwood council estate in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, the second of the three children of Harold Frederick Shipman (12 May 1914 – 5 January 1985), a truck driver, and Vera Brittan (23 December 1919 – 21 June 1963). His working-class parents were devout Methodists. When growing up, Shipman was an accomplished rugby player in youth leagues.

Shipman passed his eleven-plus in 1957, moving to High Pavement Grammar School, Nottingham, which he left in 1964. He excelled as a distance runner, and in his final year at school served as vice-captain of the athletics team. Shipman was particularly close to his mother, who died of lung cancer when he was aged 17. Her death came in a manner similar to what later became Shipman's own modus operandi: in the later stages of her disease, she had morphine administered at home by a doctor. Shipman witnessed his mother's pain subside, despite her terminal condition, until her death on 21 June 1963. On 5 November 1966, he married Primrose May Oxtoby; the couple had four children.

Shipman studied medicine at Leeds School of Medicine, University of Leeds, graduating in 1970. He began working at Pontefract General Infirmary in Pontefract, West Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1974 took his first position as a general practitioner (GP) at the Abraham Ormerod Medical Centre in Todmorden. In the following year, Shipman was caught forging prescriptions of pethidine (Demerol) for his own use. He was fined £600 and briefly attended a drug rehabilitation clinic in York. He became a GP at the Donneybrook Medical Centre in Hyde, near Manchester, in 1977.

Shipman continued working as a GP in Hyde throughout the 1980s and established his own surgery at 21 Market Street in 1993, becoming a respected member of the community. In 1983, he was interviewed in an edition of the Granada Television documentary World in Action on how the mentally ill should be treated in the community. A year after his conviction, the interview was re-broadcast on Tonight with Trevor McDonald.

Detection
In March 1998, Linda Reynolds of the Brooke Surgery in Hyde expressed concerns to John Pollard, the coroner for the South Manchester District, about the high death rate among Shipman's patients. In particular, she was concerned about the large number of cremation forms for elderly women that he had needed countersigned. Police were unable to find sufficient evidence to bring charges and closed the investigation on 17 April. The Shipman Inquiry later blamed the Greater Manchester Police for assigning inexperienced officers to the case. After the investigation was closed, Shipman killed three more people. In August, taxi driver John Shaw told the police that he suspected Shipman of murdering 21 patients. Shaw became suspicious as many of the elderly customers he took to the hospital, who seemed to be in good health, died in Shipman's care.

Shipman's last victim was Kathleen Grundy, who was found dead at her home on 24 June 1998. He was the last person to see her alive; he later signed her death certificate, recording the cause of death as old age. Grundy's daughter, lawyer Angela Woodruff, became concerned when solicitor Brian Burgess informed her that a will had been made, apparently by her mother, with doubts about its authenticity. The will excluded Woodruff and her children, but left £386,000 to Shipman. At Burgess's urging, Woodruff went to the police, who began an investigation. Grundy's body was exhumed and found to contain traces of diamorphine (heroin), often used for pain control in terminal cancer patients. Shipman claimed that Grundy had been an addict and showed them comments he had written to that effect in his computerised medical journal; however, examination of his computer showed that they were written after her death. Shipman was arrested on 7 September 1998, and was found to own a Brother typewriter of the kind used to make the forged will. Prescription for Murder, a 2000 book by journalists Brian Whittle and Jean Ritchie, suggested that Shipman forged the will either because he wanted to be caught, because his life was out of control, or because he planned to retire at 55 and leave the UK.

The police investigated other deaths Shipman had certified and investigated 15 specimen cases. They discovered a pattern of his administering lethal doses of diamorphine, signing patients' death certificates, and then falsifying medical records to indicate that they had been in poor health.

In 2003, David Spiegelhalter et al. suggested that "statistical monitoring could have led to an alarm being raised at the end of 1996, when there were 67 excess deaths in females aged over 65 years, compared with 119 by 1998."

Trial and imprisonment
Shipman's trial began at Preston Crown Court on 5 October 1999. He was charged with the murders of 15 women by lethal injections of diamorphine, all between 1995 and 1998:
   
Shipman's legal representatives tried unsuccessfully to have the Grundy case tried separately from the others, as a motive was shown by the alleged forgery of Grundy's will.
 
On 31 January 2000, after six days of deliberation, the jury found Shipman guilty of 15 counts of murder and one count of forgery. Mr Justice Forbes subsequently sentenced Shipman to life imprisonment on all 15 counts of murder, with a recommendation that he never be released, to be served concurrently with a sentence of four years for forging Grundy's will. On 11 February, eleven days after his conviction, Shipman was struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC). Two years later, Home Secretary David Blunkett confirmed the judge's whole life tariff, just months before British government ministers lost their power to set minimum terms for prisoners. While authorities could have brought many additional charges, they concluded that a fair hearing would be impossible in view of the enormous publicity surrounding the original trial. Furthermore, the 15 life sentences already handed down rendered further litigation unnecessary. Shipman became friends with fellow serial killer Peter Moore while incarcerated.

Shipman consistently denied his guilt, disputing the scientific evidence against him. He never made any public statements about his actions. Shipman's wife, Primrose, steadfastly maintained her husband's innocence even after his conviction.

Shipman is the only doctor in the history of British medicine found guilty of murdering his patients. John Bodkin Adams was charged in 1957 with murdering a patient, amid rumours he had killed dozens more over a ten-year period and "possibly provided the role model for Shipman"; however, he was acquitted. Historian Pamela Cullen has argued that because of Adams' acquittal, there was no impetus to examine the flaws in the British legal system until the Shipman case.

Death

Shipman hanged himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield at 6:20 a.m. on 13 January 2004, the eve of his 58th birthday. He was pronounced dead at 8:10 a.m. A statement from Her Majesty's Prison Service indicated that he had hanged himself from the window bars of his cell using his bed sheets. After Shipman's death, his body was taken to the mortuary at the Medico Legal Centre for a post-mortem examination. West Yorkshire Coroner David Hinchliff eventually released the body to his family after an inquest was opened and adjourned shortly after.

Some of the victims' families said they felt cheated, as Shipman's suicide meant they would never have the satisfaction of a confession, nor answers as to why he committed his crimes. Home Secretary David Blunkett admitted that celebration was tempting: "You wake up and you receive a call telling you Shipman has topped himself and you think, is it too early to open a bottle? And then you discover that everybody's very upset that he's done it."

Shipman's death divided national newspapers, with the Daily Mirror branding him a "cold coward" and condemning the Prison Service for allowing his suicide to happen. However, The Sun ran a celebratory front-page headline; "Ship Ship hooray!" The Independent called for the inquiry into Shipman's suicide to look more widely at the state of UK prisons as well as the welfare of inmates. In The Guardian, an article by General Sir David Ramsbotham, who had formerly served as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, suggested that whole life sentencing be replaced by indefinite sentencing, for this would at least give prisoners the hope of eventual release and reduce the risk of their ending their own lives by suicide as well as making their management easier for prison officials.

Shipman's motive for suicide was never established, though he reportedly told his probation officer that he was considering suicide to assure his wife's financial security after he was stripped of his National Health Service pension.
Primrose Shipman received a full NHS pension; she would not have been entitled to it if Shipman had lived past the age of 60. Additionally, there was evidence that Primrose, who had consistently protested Shipman's innocence despite the overwhelming evidence, had begun to suspect his guilt. Shipman refused to take part in courses which would have encouraged acknowledgement of his crimes, leading to a temporary removal of privileges, including the opportunity to telephone his wife. During this period, according to Shipman's cellmate, he received a letter from Primrose exhorting him to, "Tell me everything, no matter what." A 2005 inquiry found that Shipman's suicide "could not have been predicted or prevented," but that procedures should nonetheless be re-examined.

After Shipman's body was released to his family, it remained in Sheffield for more than a year despite multiple false reports about his funeral. His widow was advised by police against burying her husband in case the grave was attacked. Shipman was eventually cremated on 19 March 2005 at Hutcliffe Wood Crematorium. The cremation took place outside normal hours to maintain secrecy and was attended only by Primrose and the couple's four children.

Aftermath
In January 2001, Chris Gregg, a senior West Yorkshire Police detective, was selected to lead an investigation into 22 of the West Yorkshire deaths. Following this, The Shipman Inquiry, submitted in July 2002, concluded that he had killed at least 218 of his patients between 1975 and 1998, during which time he practised in Todmorden (1974–1975) and Hyde (1977–1998). Dame Janet Smith, the judge who submitted the report, admitted that many more deaths of a suspicious nature could not be definitively ascribed to Shipman. Most of his victims were elderly women in good health.

In her sixth and final report, issued on 24 January 2005, Smith reported that she believed that Shipman had killed three patients, and she had serious suspicions about four further deaths, including that of a four-year-old girl, during the early stage of his medical career at Pontefract General Infirmary. In total, 459 people died while under his care between 1971 and 1998, but it is uncertain how many of those were murder victims, as he was often the only doctor to certify a death. Smith's estimate of Shipman's total victim count over that 27-year period was 250.

The GMC charged six doctors, who signed cremation forms for Shipman's victims, with misconduct, claiming they should have noticed the pattern between Shipman's home visits and his patients' deaths. All these doctors were found not guilty. In October 2005, a similar hearing was held against two doctors who worked at Tameside General Hospital in 1994, who failed to detect that Shipman had deliberately administered a "grossly excessive" dose of morphine. The Shipman Inquiry recommended changes to the structure of the GMC.

In 2005 it came to light that Shipman may have stolen jewellery from his victims. In 1998, police had seized over £10,000 worth of jewellery they found in his garage. In March 2005, when Primrose asked for its return, police wrote to the families of Shipman's victims asking them to identify the jewellery. Unidentified items were handed to the Assets Recovery Agency in May. The investigation ended in August. Authorities returned 66 pieces to Primrose and auctioned 33 pieces that she confirmed were not hers. Proceeds of the auction went to Tameside Victim Support. The only piece returned to a murdered patient's family was a platinum diamond ring, for which the family provided a photograph as proof of ownership.

A memorial garden to Shipman's victims, called the Garden of Tranquillity, opened in Hyde Park, Hyde, on 30 July 2005. As of early 2009, families of over 200 of the victims of Shipman were still seeking compensation for the loss of their relatives. In September 2009, letters Shipman wrote in prison to friends were to be sold at auction, but following complaints from victims' relatives and the media, the sale was withdrawn.

Shipman effect
The Shipman case, and a series of recommendations in the Shipman Inquiry report, led to changes to standard medical procedures in the UK (now referred to as the "Shipman effect"). Many doctors reported changes in their dispensing practices, and a reluctance to risk over-prescribing pain medication may have led to under-prescribing. Death certification practices were altered as well. Perhaps the largest change was the movement from single-doctor general practices to multiple-doctor general practices. This was not a direct recommendation, but rather because the report stated that there was not enough safeguarding and monitoring of doctors' decisions.

The forms needed for a cremation in England and Wales have had their questions altered as a direct result of the Shipman case. For example, the person(s) organising the funeral must answer, "Do you know or suspect that the death of the person who has died was violent or unnatural? Do you consider that there should be any further examination of the remains of the person who has died?"

In media
Harold and Fred (They Make Ladies Dead) was a cartoon strip in a 2001 issue of Viz comic, also featuring serial killer Fred West. Some relatives of Shipman's victims voiced anger at the cartoon.

Harold Shipman: Doctor Death, an ITV television dramatisation of the case, was broadcast in 2002; it starred James Bolam in the title role.

A documentary also titled Harold Shipman: Doctor Death, with new witness testimony about the serial killer, was shown by ITV as part of its Crime & Punishment strand on 26 April 2018. The programme was criticised as offering "little new insight".

A play titled Beyond Belief – Scenes from the Shipman Inquiry, written by Dennis Woolf and directed by Chris Honer was performed at the Library Theatre, Manchester, from 20 October to 22 November 2004. The script of the play comprised edited verbatim extracts from the Shipman Inquiry, spoken by actors playing the witnesses and lawyers at the inquiry. This provided a "stark narrative" that focused on personal tragedies.

A BBC drama-documentary, entitled Harold Shipman and starring Ian Brooker in the title role, was broadcast in April 2014.

The satirical artist Cold War Steve regularly features Harold Shipman in his work.

The Shipman Files: A Very British Crime Story, a three-part documentary by Chris Wilson, was broadcast on BBC Two on 28–30 September 2020 and focussed on the victims and how he went undetected for so long.

Podcast episode Catching a Killer Doctor from the Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford podcast series features the story of Harold Shipman and how it could have been detected much earlier with good statistical models.

See also

 List of serial killers by country
 List of serial killers by number of victims
 Euthanasia
 John Bodkin Adams
 Colin Norris
 2011 Stepping Hill Hospital poisoning incident
 Niels Högel
 Jayant Patel
 Beverley Allitt
 Michael Swango
 Leonard Arthur
 Howard Martin
 David Moor
 Thomas Lodwig
 Nigel Cox
 Christopher Duntsch
 Charles Cullen
 Doctor Jack Kevorkian

References

External links
 Shipman Inquiry (archived)
 BBC – The Shipman Murders
 List of suspected murders
 Harold Shipman's Clinical Practice 1974–1998 
 Caso abierto, Dr Death: The Shipman Case

1946 births
2004 deaths
20th-century English criminals
20th-century English medical doctors
Alumni of the University of Leeds
Criminals from Nottinghamshire
English people convicted of murder
English prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
English serial killers
Male serial killers
Medical doctors struck off by the General Medical Council
Medical practitioners convicted of murdering their patients
Medical controversies in the United Kingdom
People convicted of murder by England and Wales
People educated at Nottingham High Pavement Grammar School
People from Nottingham
People with antisocial personality disorder
People who committed suicide in prison custody
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by England and Wales
Prisoners who died in England and Wales detention
Serial killers who committed suicide in prison custody
2004 suicides
Suicides by hanging in England
History of Tameside
Medical serial killers
The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela is a biography of South African activist and politician Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, written by Sisonke Msimang in 2018. The biography "unashamedly" attempts to redeem the character of Mandela, a controversial figures.

Background

Winnie Mandela was the second wife of former South Africa President Nelson Mandela. After he was imprisoned for his political activities, Winnie became his representation and continued working to end apartheid. Winnie was constantly being monitored by the government. She was arrested under the Suppression of Terrorism Act. She spent over a year in solitary confinement and when she was released she continued being an activist.

Winnie began to become widely known for validating deadly retaliation against citizens who cooperated with the apartheids regime. The Mandela United Football Club, which was a group of her bodyguards, developed a reputation for cruelty. They are said to be responsible for the abduction and killing of a 14-year-old boy named Stompie Moeketsi. Winnie was also known for endorsing "necklacing" which was when a tire was placed around someone's neck and then set on fire.

Assessment of Mandela, and criticism
Extracts of the book were published in The Sydney Morning Herald and News24.

Msimang's biography was published in September 2018, a month before another biography of Mandela, Truth, Lies and Alibis: A Winnie Mandela Story by Fred Bridgland. Msimang admired Mandela to a certain extent, and says she came to have a more nuanced view of Mandela. Where Mandela was typically cast either as a saint or a demon, Msimang acknowledges the good Mandela did without, she says, denying her guilt in the death of Stompie Moeketsi, or in the disappearance of two young men accused of being police informers who were abducted in 1988 and murdered soon after. Msimang's interest is in giving what she considers a more honest appraisal: Mandela's actions need to be regarded in the context of other violence condoned or enacted by the ANC and its members; in other words, she was no radical. In addition, she needs to be judged also in the light of the racism and sexism of her time; sexist double standards were often applied in judging her. Msimang disagrees with Bridgland on some factual details; for instance, Mandela's alleged culpability in the shooting death of Abu Baker Asvat is based on nothing but rumors, she wrote. 

Keith Gottschalk, commenting on Msimang and Bridgland books in a review article published originally in The Conversation, did not criticize or praise either one, focusing on the difference between the two books, and to which extent they indicated that the controversy over Mandela's life and work continues. Heribert Adam, writing on the same two books for the London Review of Books, does give explicit criticism in an extensive review. Noting that Msimang explicitly wanted to redeem Mandela (whereas Bridgland says he focuses on the victims of her actions), he comments that her interest, as she explained to him in an email message, was not so much in the facts but rather in the meaning of Mandela for South Africans. He criticizes her for denying the evidence that, according to Adam, points at Mandela's guilt in the murder of Asvat. But he is most critical of what he sees as a failure to actually hold Mandela to account: "Msimang fails to resolve a crucial contradiction in her argument: if Winnie was indeed the independent, free and politically committed person she portrays, she can also be held responsible for her deeds--something Msimang refuses to do."

References

2018 non-fiction books
Mandela family The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt () was a declaration issued on October 19, 1945, by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (, EKD), in which it confessed guilt for its inadequacies in opposition to the Nazis and the Third Reich.

Text

The Declaration states in part:

The Declaration makes no mention of any particular atrocities committed during the Third Reich or of the church's support for Hitler during the early years of the regime.

One of the initiators of the declaration was pastor Martin Niemöller.

History
After the EKD conference at Treysa achieved some administrative unity, critics still found a lack of contrition in the church. Niemoller stated, with some frustration, that "you should have seen this self-satisfied church at Treysa."

American representatives reporting from the Treysa conference voiced views similar to Niemoller. Robert Murphy, a career diplomat in the US State Department, commented:

Other Americans were perhaps more diplomatic in their statements but the meaning was no doubt the same:

It cannot be said that the attitude of the church toward its political responsibility is as yet satisfactory, let alone clear.—Stuart Herman

The Declaration was prepared in response to church representatives from the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Britain and the US who came to Stuttgart to reestablish ties with the German Protestant Church, based on a "relationship of trust." The representatives believed that any relationship would fall apart in the absence of a statement by the German churchmen, due to the hatred felt in their home countries toward Germany in 1945.

But the eleven members of the Council had differing ideas on the moral responsibility of their churches for Nazi Germany. One prepared a draft laying blame on "our fellow citizens" in Germany, thus implicitly denying or diffusing the responsibility of the church. This language was stricken from the draft, and Niemoller insisted on the language "Through us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries."

...Hans Asmussen, Martin Niemöller... and Wilhelm Niesel ... needed no prodding to express lament over their own and the church's failure to speak out loudly and clearly against Nazism. Nevertheless, the Stuttgart Declaration was not simply an act of conscience. Persistent pressure by foreign church leaders for ... recognition of the ... inadequate response to Nazism played a significant role.

Reactions
The Declaration was viewed by many Germans as a further capitulation to the Allies and a betrayal of German interests; one signatory asked the foreign churchmen to refrain from publishing the Declaration, entirely contrary to the purpose of obtaining it in the first place. Various interpretations and arguments were raised by some members the EKD Council to try to deflect the criticisms raised against them by irate parishioners: 
that the Declaration was merely an internal church document that did not attempt to address political guilt for the war;
that only the German leadership had to be ashamed; or
that it was not traitorous to confess guilt.

Of the eleven signatories, only Niemöller chose to publicize it: "For the next two years", he claimed, "I did nothing but preach the Declaration to people." This bold approach, along with his internment at Dachau, helped create his controversial reputation.

Effects
Many Germans objected to the confession of guilt, on the ground that they had also suffered in the war, as a result of Allied wrongdoing (particularly Soviet).

...the dreadful misery of 1945-1946 held the Germans back from all remorse. Because--most people believed this--the occupation troops were responsible for the misery. "They're just as inhuman as we were", was how it was put. And with that, everything was evened up.

Some Germans quickly drew comparisons to the "war guilt" clause of the Versailles Treaty, as the Declaration admitted that there was a "solidarity of guilt" among the German people for the endless suffering wrought by Germany. They feared that, once again, the victors would use such logic to impose punishment upon Germany, as Versailles had widely been viewed after the conclusion of World War I.

Furthermore, was "solidarity of guilt" a code word for "collective guilt"—the notion, advocated by some of the more hawkish Allied spokesmen, that all Germans (except the active resistance) bore all responsibility for the Nazi crimes, whether or not they had personally pulled triggers or ejected gas pellets on children? The Declaration did not expressly stipulate collective guilt, but neither did it expressly adopt the more moderate doctrine that guilt and responsibility, like all things human, were generally matters of degree.

Niesel, a former student of Karl Barth and one of the signatories of the Declaration, concluded that there was a general unwillingness by the German people to accept responsibility for the Nazi rule. As Hockenos puts it:

The righteous intermingling of self-justification and self-pity was as important a factor in creating a hostile environment for a public confession as were postwar fears of another Versailles or Allied charges of collective guilt.

One German churchman reflected on his contacts with his Swiss church comrades as those were renewed after the war; they had remained in contact even during the war, but there were boundaries still to overcome after the war's end. His reflections are revealing, both for the revelation and articulation of those boundaries and of his own post-war attitude of "helplessness" in the face of totalitarianism, his underlying premise that individual Germans could do nothing because the obstacles imposed by Nazi totalitarianism were simply too great, so the clergy had no choice but to collaborate:

Many Germans raised the practical objection that the Declaration would be interpreted by the Allies as an expression of collective guilt, which would in turn justify harsh treatment by the Allies in the postwar world. Most Protestants were willing to admit some degree of responsibility, provided that the Allies reciprocated and admitted their own wrongdoing.

Others, who saw the Declaration more in theological than in practical or political terms, recognized that confession is made before God and not before men, and that such "conditional confessions" were theologically wrong-headed and misunderstood the meaning of Christian confession. As one Protestant rather wryly noted, neither the Allies nor the World Council of Churches "are our father confessor."

Hockenos identifies three basic reasons that Germans were reluctant to confess wrongdoing:

Many Germans had in fact supported the Nazis and were in fact unrepentant. Their racist and nationalist mentality was intact, perhaps even heightened by the defeat which triggered feelings of anger and resentment.
The nature and extent of the Nazi barbarities was difficult to comprehend, even for some of those who participated in them. Bystanders were reluctant to take responsibility for a campaign that was, in both quantitative and moral terms, nearly incomprehensible.
Germans were suffering also and they naturally gave priority to their own suffering.

See also
 Karl Barth
 Dietrich Bonhoeffer
 Martin Niemöller
 Theophil Wurm
 Warschauer Kniefall
 Denazification § Responsibility and collective guilt

References

External links
 Text of the Declaration in German and English
 Niemoller article
 Bonhoeffer article
  Barnett article
 Book review Hockenos
 The Declaration of Guilt in the post war discussions of the Confessing Church (Exhibition Auf dem Weg zur mündigen Gemeinde; German)

World War II documents
Evangelical Church in Germany
1945 in Germany
Nazi Germany and Protestantism
1945 documents