Vergangenheitspolitik durch Strafrecht

The criminal proceedings on National Socialist crimes conducted in German courts in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War have long stood in the shadow of the Nazi war-crime trials conducted by the Allies and the criminal proceedings, such as the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt, conducted by Germany with renewed vigour from the end of the 1950s on. Focusing on the supreme court for the British zone of occupation (1947–50), this historical academic study shifts attention onto an important protagonist in the aforementioned earlier series of criminal prosecutions. Using a broad spectrum of sources as its starting point, it is the first to present and analyse in detail that the ruling on crimes against humanity pronounced by this court, which was the only German appellate court responsible for an entire occupied zone, signified a pioneering yet quickly forgotten contribution to the legal proceedings against Nazi injustices. As a result, it portrays the court as a significant player in an embattled policy for dealing with the past using criminal law and thus as an important part of contemporary legal history.