In the immediate aftermath of World War II, there was a great deal of German sympathy for their war criminals. The British High Commissioner in occupied Germany felt compelled to remind the German public the criminals involved had been found guilty of participating in the torture or murder of Allied citizens.[53] In the late 1940s and 1950s there was a flood of polemical books and essays demanding freedom for the "so-called 'war criminals'".[53] The phrasing implied that those convicted of war crimes were in fact innocent.[53] German historian Norbert Frei wrote that the widespread demand for freedom for the war criminals was an indirect admission of the whole society's enmeshment in National Socialism.[54] He added the war crimes trials were a painful reminder of the nature of the regime with which many ordinary people had identified. In this context, there was an overwhelming demand for the rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht.[55] in part because the Wehrmacht could trace its descent back to the Prussian Army and before that to the army founded in 1640 by Frederich Wilhelm, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, making it an institution deeply rooted in German history, which presented problems for those who wanted to portray the Nazi era as a "freakish aberration" from the course of German history.