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 and especially, the West Berlin government, who were left to foot the Spandau bill yet suffered a lack of space in their own prison system. The debate surrounding the imprisonment of the seven war criminals in such a large space, with such a numerous and expensive complementary staff, was only heightened as time went on and prisoners were released. Acrimony reached its peak after the release of Speer and Schirach in 1966, leaving only one inmate, Hess, remaining in an otherwise under-utilized prison. Various proposals were made to remedy this situation, ranging from moving the prisoners to an appropriately sized