LEADER 03904cam a2200421Ia 4500001 90730 005 20240621174316.0 008 040128s2000 xx rb 000 0 eng d 035 (OCoLC)ocm54781287 035 90730 049 LHMA 040 LHM |beng |erda |cLHM 090 KK73.5.A98 |bP46 2000 100 1 Pendas, Devin O. |q(Devin Owen) 245 10 Displaying justice : |bNazis on trial in postwar Germany / |cby Devin O. Pendas. 264 1 [Place of publication not identified] : |b[publisher not identified], |c2000. 300 409 pages 336 text |btxt |2rdacontent 337 unmediated |bn |2rdamedia 338 volume |bnc |2rdacarrier 502 Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2000. 504 Includes bibliographical references (pages 395-409). 520 To argue that trials cannot adequately grasp historical reality, that the judge makes a poor historian, is by now hardly a shocking thesis. It is surprising, though, how rarely this claim has been investigated in any great detail. Particularly with regard to the Holocaust trials conducted in German courts (as opposed to Nuremberg) after World War II, the absence of any concrete analyses is particularly glaring. My dissertation seeks to remedy this situation. What are the limits and possibilities of the law for addressing a complex historical problem like Nazism and the Holocaust? What, in short, is the relationship between truth and justice in the wake of mass atrocity and genocide? My dissertation is a detailed investigation of the largest and most comprehensive German Nazi trial, the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965). I argue that the basic legal structures of German law constrained and channeled the activities of the participants in the Auschwitz Trial. In other words, although the various trial actors came to the trial with diverse agendas and resources, they were all forced to respond to and operate within the boundaries of the law. I further argue that the Auschwitz Trial thus responded to and reflected certain problematic aspects of German law, most crucially the assumption of a causal nexus between subjective motivation and individual action. This assumption is deeply embedded in German criminal law, in the way it defines murder, distinguishes perpetrators from accomplices and understands the meaning of guilt. This assumption of an identity between motives and causes, while useful in ordinary criminal cases, distorts the complex social reality of the Holocaust. In particular, it cannot grasp the way that Holocaust perpetrators were motivationally interchangeable, that persons acting from different motives produced identical genocidal results. This was reflected in the trial, for example, in that perpetrators of torture were generally more severely punished than were accomplices to genocide. As a result the historical understanding of the German past that emerged from the Auschwitz Trial was inadequate to the historical reality of the German past. 530 Electronic version(s) |bavailable internally at USHMM. 533 Photocopy. |bAnn Arbor, Mich. : |cUMI Dissertation Services, |d2004. |e23 cm. 590 Dissertations and Theses 591 Record updated by Marcive processing 21 June 2024 650 0 War crime trials |zGermany (West) 650 0 War crime trials |zGermany. 650 0 Auschwitz Trial, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1963-1965. 650 0 Justice, Administration of |zGermany (West) 650 0 Justice, Administration of |zGermany |xHistory |y20th century. 856 41 |uhttp://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=728320251&sid=24&Fmt=6&clientId=54617&RQT=309&VName=PQD |zElectronic version from ProQuest 956 41 |u http://dc.ushmm.org/library/bib90730/9978059.pdf |z Hosted by USHMM. 994 X0 |bLHM 852 0 |bstacks |hKK73.5.A98 |iP46 2000 852 |bwww 852 |bebook