Starting in the early 1960s, the prosecution of Nazi war criminals became an important political and diplomatic tool for the Eastern bloc countries in their ideological struggle against the West German Republic. In addition to the moral dimension of unenforced international justice, the issue served to pressure the socialist camp against the judicial and military systems of the Western European countries. The communist regime staked its justification on the eradication of Nazism, and not only in its own sphere of influence.