Samuel Miner
Chapter 5 examines the reopening of German courts and the first trials for Nazi-era crimes in the postwar. When reopening courts in Hesse, Georg August Zinn gave speeches about how a new type of judge was needed for postwar Germany: Judges had to be attached to democracy and they had to analyze statutes for their adherence to democratic principles rather than solely their formal legality. This was a key part of the reason why postwar Social Democrats embraced judicial review as it could prevent the release of Nazi war criminals. The chapter discusses several cases where courts accepted the continuity of Nazi law and released war criminals. It talks about the case of the murderer of Matthias Erzberger, Heinrich Tillessen. A postwar court accepted a padon passed after 1933. In other cases, courts recognized Nazi labor law or death penalty cases carried out against deserters and resisters at the end of the war as part of the so-called end phase crimes.