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Dan Snow's History Hit

After Nuremberg

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.712.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2022

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The 1950s in West Germany saw a sharp decline in Nazi war crimes investigations and trials. Instead, there were campaigns for amnesties and reductions of earlier sentences, many led by former high-level Nazis and supported tacitly by conservative politicians. Prosecutions lacked any serious or systematic effort, and in both German states, the emphasis was more on integration and rehabilitation, with the aim of stabilising their war-torn societies, rather than the rigorous investigation of Nazi crimes. This began to change in West Germany following scandals about former Nazis in prominent positions. As the 50s wore on, several new trials spotlighted the horrors and scale of Nazi atrocities.


Rainer Schulze, Professor of Modern European History at University of Essex and Editor of The Holocaust in History and Memory, joins Dan on the podcast for a conversation about the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in post-war Germany. They discuss the turning point of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, how the 1963-1965 Auschwitz Trials in Frankfurt brought the Holocaust back into broad public consciousness and the legacy of Nuremberg in the present day with the case of the 100-year-old man who stood trial in Germany in 2021, charged with assisting in the of the murder of 3,518 people as a former SS guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, welcome to Dance and Noise History here. This week we have been thinking about the

0:05.1

Holocaust on History here. We have heard from a Holocaust survivor, a man who survived

0:08.8

Auschwitz. We heard from Sir John Chousa who wrote a book about the Neuronberg trials,

0:13.3

the attempt to bring the perpetrators of those terrible crimes to justice. And today we're

0:17.5

going to talk to Professor Reiner Schultz. He's a Professor Modern European History University

0:22.5

of Essex and he's editor of the Holocaust in History and Memory, founder of the Doora

0:28.4

Love Prize. We're going to talk about what happened after Neuronberg really in 1950s,

0:33.3

they're going to have half-hearted efforts to pursue justice within Germany and how that

0:37.4

process really came to a standstill. There were a few trials but they weren't pursued very

0:41.9

rigorously. The 1960s and beyond, thanks to the Eichmann trial, we see renewed energy

0:47.6

around this and then we bring things up to present day and recently we saw the case

0:51.6

for a hundred-year-old man who's to trial in Germany in October 2021 for his role in

0:57.0

mass murder. What's that the right thing to do? What's that right thing to do? We discuss

1:00.6

that in this podcast. All fascinating stuff, particularly this week with Holocaust Memorial

1:05.6

Day, we should be thinking and talking about these things. If you want to learn more about

1:10.1

the Holocaust, you've got plenty of documentaries and podcasts available at History Hit TV. Just

1:13.6

further link in the description of this podcast. You've got taken us right away and you can

1:16.9

join the revolution. But in the meantime, folks, in the meantime, enjoy this chat with

1:22.0

Professor Rayner Schultz.

1:27.8

Rhonda, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for inviting me. So we've

1:32.9

done many podcasts about the Neuronberg trials. I guess it's too easy for people to the international

1:39.7

community to give themselves a pat on the back and think, well, that was that job done,

...

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