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More About This Textbook
Overview
During a 1931 trial of four Nazi stormtroopers, known as the Eden Dance Palace trial, Hans Litten grilled Hitler in a brilliant and merciless three-hour cross-examination, forcing him into multiple contradictions and evasions and finally reducing him to helpless and humiliating rage (the transcription of Hitler's full testimony is included.) At the time, Hitler was still trying to prove his embrace of legal methods, and distancing himself from his stormtroopers. The courageous Litten revealed his true intentions, and in the process, posed a real threat to Nazi ambition.
When the Nazis seized power two years after the trial, friends and family urged Litten to flee the country. He stayed and was sent to the concentration camps, where he worked on translations of medieval German poetry, shared the money and food he was sent by his wealthy family, and taught working-class inmates about art and literature. When Jewish prisoners at Dachau were locked in their barracks for weeks at a time, Litten kept them sane by reciting great works from memory. After five years of torture and hard labor-and a daring escape that failed-Litten gave up hope of survival. His story was ultimately tragic but, as Benjamin Hett writes in this gripping narrative, it is also redemptive. "It is a story of human nobility in the face of barbarism."
The first full-length biography of Litten, the book also explores the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic and the terror of Nazi rule in Germany after 1933. [in sidebar] Winner of the 2007 Fraenkel Prize for outstanding work of contemporary history, in manuscript. To be published throughout the world.
Editorial Reviews
Library Journal
Hett (history, Hunter Coll.) analyzes the career of Hans Litten (1903-38), a prominent anti-Nazi lawyer. Hett describes how Litten, the son of a Protestant mother from an old Prussian family and a Jewish father who converted to Lutheranism, actively identified with both his Christian and his Jewish roots yet broke with his parents politically. For example, many of his friends were German Jews active in Socialist politics, while one of his favorite intellectual pursuits was the study of Christian art. While Litten despised the German Communist Party, he defended communists who fought street battles with Hitler's storm troopers (SA). During the prosecution of four SA men in 1931, Litten forced Adolf Hitler to the witness stand, embarrassing the Nazi Party at a critical time in its quest for electoral respectability. Hett adroitly explains the workings of the Weimar legal system and challenges the conventional wisdom that the German legal profession was, prior to 1933, so right wing that its transition to Nazism was an easy and logical step. After 1933, Litten was sent to a concentration camp, where after years of abuse he committed suicide. Recommended for all libraries.
—Frederic Krome
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Meet the Author
A former trial lawyer, Benjamin Carter Hett is now Associate Professor of History at Hunter College and the author of Death in the Tiergarten. He lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Summoning Hitler 1
The Whole Person
The Litten Court 13
The Black Mob 22
The Grizzly, the Camel, and the Seal-Bear 27
You Must Change Your Life 34
Litten & Barbasch 44
May Day 53
Crossing Hitler
The Witness 65
Political Soldiers 67
The Eden Dance Palace 76
"Murder Storm 33" 80
Roll Commandos 85
The Oath 99
A Snag with Hitler 100
Verdicts 103
The Double Edge of the Deed 108
Bulow Square 115
Richard Street 118
They Know What They Do 121
Underground Influences 127
Felseneck 134
"A Dangerous Irritant in the Administration of Justice" 138
Expelled 143
Threats 151
Toward Dachau
The Reichstag Burns 155
Sonnenburg 159
"Coordination" 165
Spandau 171
Diels's List 173
"I Must Burden You with My Suicide" 180
Means of Escape 186
Madonna in the Rose Bower 195
Long Knives 197
The Fuhrer's Clemency 200
Thoughts Are Free 210
The Jew Block 218
Isolation 224
Lord Allen 228
Passion 236
News 241
Epilogue: "Only Where There Are Graves Are There Resurrections" 247
Hans Litten's Cross-Examination of Adolf Hitler, May 8, 1931 263
A Note on Sources 277
Acknowledgments 283
Notes 287
Index 341