The purge after World War II has been widely debated, partially because small offences were sentenced quicker and generally more severely than trials for greater offences which lasted longer, while moods were cooling down after the end of the war. Another point of critique was the retroactivity of the law. Contrarily, proponents in the 1945 debate argued that if the death penalty was not re-applied, war criminals would be subject to mob justice or lynchings. According to a 1945 opinion poll, about 90 percent of the population were in favour of a death penalty for certain war criminals.