Hitler's Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany

by Nikolaus Wachsmann

Overview

State prisons played an indispensable part in the terror of the Third Reich, incarcerating many hundreds of thousands of men and women during the Nazi era. This important book illuminates the previously unknown world of Nazi prisons, their victims, and the judicial and penal officials who built and operated this system of brutal legal terror.
Nikolaus Wachsmann describes the operation and function of legal terror in the Third Reich and brings Nazi prisons to life through the harrowing stories of individual inmates.
Drawing on a vast array of archival materials, he traces the series of changes in prison policies and practice that led eventually to racial terror, brutal violence, slave labor, starvation, and mass killings. Wachsmann demonstrates that “ordinary” legal officials were ready collaborators who helped to turn courts and prisons into key components in the Nazi web of terror. And he concludes with a discussion of the whitewash of the Nazi legal system in postwar West Germany.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300228298
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	05/26/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	560
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Nikolaus Wachsmann is lecturer in modern European history at Sheffield University.

Table of Contents

	List of Plates	viii
	List of Figures	x
	Acknowledgements	xi
	List of Abbreviations	xiv
	Map of German penal institutions	xvi
	Introduction	1
Part I	Setting the Scene	15
Chapter 1	The Weimar Prison, 1918-33	17
	Crime and Correction	18
	The Prison and the Public	36
	Fighting the 'Incorrigible'	46
	The Prison in Crisis	54
Part II	Enforcing Legal Terror, 1933-39	65
Chapter 2	Inside the Nazi Prison	67
	Terror, Crime and Punishment	68
	Hitler's Jurists and the Prison	71
	Everyday Life behind Bars	83
	Prison Camps	101
Chapter 3	The Campaign against 'Community Aliens'	112
	Political Resistance and Repression	113
	'Dangerous Habitual Criminals' and Security Confinement	128
	Sex Crimes, Castration and Homosexuality	139
	The Sterilisation of Prisoners	149
	German Jews and Legal Terror	156
Chapter 4	The Nazi Web of Terror	165
	The Rise of the Police and the SS	165
	Conflict and Compromise: the Law and the Police	171
	Denouncing Prisoners to the Police	176
	Prisons and Concentration Camps	184
Part III	Escalating Legal Terror, 1939-45	189
Chapter 5	Law in Wartime	191
	Terror on the Home Front, 1939-41	192
	The Legal System under Attack, 1942	208
	Total War and Extermination, 1942-44	218
Chapter 6	Prison Conditions: from Bad to Worse	227
	Prisons as Penal Factories	228
	Life and Death in Prisons	237
	Torment in Prison Camps	248
Chapter 7	Privilege and Punishment	257
	'National Comrades' behind Bars	258
	Soldiers as Prisoners--Prisoners as Soldiers	262
	Foreign Political Prisoners	269
	Enforcing Racial Policy: Polish Prisoners	274
Chapter 8	Killing Prisoners	284
	'Annihilation through Labour': the View from Above	284
	'Annihilation through Labour': the View from Below	299
	Extending the Killings: 'Asocials' and the Disabled	306
	Capital Punishment	314
Chapter 9	Final Defeat	319
	The Last Stand of Nazi Terror	319
	Prison Evacuations	323
	Chaos, Murder, Liberation	331
Part IV	Aftermath	339
Chapter 10	The Nazi Prison in Perspective	341
	Bloody Hands, Clean Conscience: Nazi Jurists and Postwar Justice	341
	Back to Work: Prison Officials in West Germany	347
	East Germany and the Perversion of the Law	356
	Special Path? A Comparative View	361
	Conclusion	372
	Figures	392
	Notes	404
	Bibliography	488
	Index	523