Why the Allies did not count every Axis war-crimes participant

Did the Western Allies try to determine how many Germans and Japanese had participated in war crimes?

They did not pursue a comprehensive count. Responsibility varied widely, indiscriminate punishment risked insurgency, and occupation authorities still had to govern defeated societies.

The answer argues that Allied authorities had practical reasons to avoid an exhaustive count of Germans and Japanese involved in war crimes, because they still had to work with defeated societies. It distinguishes senior direction and direct killing from administrative support, using staff at Auschwitz as a difficult example of how to assign responsibility. The distinction is presented as a problem of culpability and punishment, without excusing the administrative role. The discussion also warns that making an entire population expect imprisonment or execution could provoke an insurgency. At the battlefield level, it uses continued fire after an unseen surrender to illustrate the difficulty of establishing intent amid combat. Fog of war and uneven knowledge of the rules among wartime recruits are further reasons offered for concentrating investigations on clearer high-level responsibility. These are the panel's explanations for the limits of postwar accountability.