Summary
Title: Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany
Author: Nikolaus Wachsmann
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030010250X
Pro:
• Massive amount of well-researched information
• Stories and details not available elsewhere
• Excellent prose that makes the text very readable
Con:
• None
Description:
• History of the prison system in Germany, from pre-Weimar through post-Nazi Germany
• Explains how the Nazi prison philosophy developed and was implemented
• Explains how prisons played a role in the Nazi control of society
Book Review
If so many people were held in prisons, penitentiaries, and penal camps, why has the regular prison system received so little attention when compared to the concentration camps? The simple fact is that many people held in the prison system were not innocent. There was certainly a significant population of political, racial, and religious prisoners, but over time many of them were transferred to the concentration camp system run by the SS. They are perceived as innocent victims of the Nazi regime and so receive the lion’s share of attention.
Thieves, looters, and violent criminals were not innocent and therefore can’t properly be considered “victims” of the Nazis — right? Not necessarily. They may not have been innocent, but that doesn’t mean that they were treated justly by the Nazi government. Part of the appeal of the Nazis to traditional conservative elements in German society was their tough “law and order” stand, promising to undo various prison reforms launched under the Weimar Republic which were designed to help rehabilitate prisoners rather than simply punish them.
Germans believed that the social fabric of their community was unravelling, the Nazis promised to restore order in part by toughening up the prison system, ensuring that criminals would not be pampered. This they did, and far more. Sentences were lengthened extraordinarily for minor crimes. Criminals deemed by the state to be dangerous and habitual were held in “protective custody” long after their sentences were over.
Eventually, the state began to simply exterminate them, treating them as long-term threats to the health of the Aryan community — especially once German soldiers began dying in larger numbers. These prisoners are “awkward” victims because they weren’t brave rebels or subjects of the Nazi’s racial madness. Just because their prosecution was appropriate, though, doesn’t mean that they also deserved to be persecuted as well.
Another awkward element in their story is the fact that Germany didn’t really came to terms with this part of their Nazi past. Judges who participated in the legal terror were almost immediately returned to the bench after the war. Their actions were never fully explored or condemned and almost no one was held accountable. Judges presided over hearings for their fellow judges and found them guiltless — it was all very convenient. Only under the Soviets in Eastern Germany were judges with bloody hands dealt with appropriately — and then replaced with people who engaged in their own reign of terror. It’s hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at such circumstances.
All of this is recounted in great detail in Nikolaus Wachsmann’s Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany. This is not so much a book about the nature of prisons in Germany as it is about how prisons and the justice system in general were perverted by the Nazis to become, as Wachsmann describes it, instruments of “legal terror.” The Nazis believed that law and order could be achieved at least partially through terrorizing those deemed to be enemies of the state — and they also believed that the public would approve of and support such measures. Turns out that they were right.
“Detail” is the operative word here — at over 400 pages of text and figures plus more than 100 more of notes and bibliography, there’s a wealth of data here that might threaten to overwhelm some readers. Yet Wachsmann’s prose is so engaging that what could have been a very dry historical text of interest to none but the most committed scholars is actually a very fascinating read. It’s not gripping page-turner, but if you have any interest in Nazi Germany or penal systems, you will want to read and finish this book.
