Spandau Prison journalist and DJ Robert Elms, saw the name 'Spandau Ballet' scrawled on the wall of a nightclub lavatory during a visit to Berlin. This gallows humour graffiti refers to standard drop method hangings at Spandau Prison when the condemned would twitch and jump at the end of a rope. The prison featured in the 1985 film "Wild Geese II", about a fictional group of mercenaries who are assigned to kidnap Rudolf Hess (played by Laurence Olivier), and in the book "Spandau Phoenix" by Greg Iles, which is a fictional account of Hess and Spandau Prison. Notes Bibliography Spandau Prison Spandau
Spandau Prison which housed hundreds of former officers and other lower-ranking Nazi men who were under a comparatively lax regime. Western commentators accused the Russians of keeping Spandau prison in operation chiefly as a centre for Soviet espionage operations. Every day, prisoners were ordered to rise at 06:00 hours, wash, clean their cells and the corridor together, eat breakfast, stay in the garden until lunch-time at noon (weather permitting), have a post-lunch rest in their cells, then return to the garden. Supper followed at 17:00 hours, after which the prisoners were returned to their cells. Lights out was at 22:00 hours. Prisoners