Hitler's prisons : legal terror in Nazi Germany / Nikolaus Wachsmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wachsmann, Nikolaus.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prisons--Germany.

Prisons.

Prisoners--Germany.

Prisoners.

Political prisoners--Germany.

Political prisoners.

Germany.

Germany--History--1933-1945.

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 538 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2004]

Summary:

State prisons played an indispensable part in the terror of the Third Reich, incarcerating many hundreds of thousands of men and women: political opponents, 'racial aliens' and many other social outsiders. For most of the Nazi era, these prisons held more inmates than SS concentration camps. This important book illuminates the previously unknown world of Nazi prisons and their victims, and the judicial and penal officials who built and operated this system of 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 to racial abuse, brutal violence, slave labour, 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. He concludes with a discussion of the whitewash of the Nazi legal system in postwar West Germany.

Contents:

The Weimar prison, 1918-1933

Inside the Nazi prison

The campaign against 'community aliens'

The Nazi web of terror

Law in wartime

Prison conditions : from bad to worse

Privilege and punishment

Killing prisoners

Final defeat

The Nazi prison in perspective.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [404]-522) and index.

ISBN:

030010250X

OCLC:

53138578