Devin O. Pendas. Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945–1950.

Abstract

In Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945–1950, Devin Pendas has written a thoughtful reexamination of the complicated relationship among transitional justice, Nazi trials, and democratization in Germany. Studies of transitional justice generally focus on transitions from dictatorships to democracies. Looking at Germany after World War II, Pendas explores a transition to democracy and a transition to a new dictatorship. He also reviews West and East together in their related but differing responses to Nazi crimes and democratization. Allied efforts to prosecute Nazi crimes had mixed results. The Nürnberg and other Allied trials did make clear the Nazi regime’s criminal behaviors as war crimes and crimes against humanity. But any trial, Pendas notes, has two narratives: the prosecution’s and the defense’s. Most Germans embraced the defense narrative—that Nazi crimes were solely the responsibility of a miniscule cabal of senior leaders, most of whom were conveniently dead. That embrace allowed virtually all Germans who had supported the Third Reich to disclaim any culpability for its crimes. And the Allies soon transferred responsibility for prosecuting Nazi crimes against Germans to Germans and German law.