Crimes and Punishments

In this chapter, we turn our attention to another feature of the resister’s story, one that has typically been less scrutinised and certainly is not as well understood: their experience once they had been arrested and entered custody. It was there in the interrogation chambers, cells and court rooms of the Nazi regime that the personal consequences of their actions were to be first painfully brought to bear. The chapter begins with an outline of the nature and structure of the Nazi legal system and how it evolved to deal with the most serious of political crimes it confronted: treason and high treason. It then moves on to explore aspects of the reality of the resister’s actual engagement with that system. In particular, the chapter considers the length of time it took to get from arrest to sentence, the type of charges resisters were likely to face, the verdicts they could expect, the determinants of the sentence they were ultimately to receive and what role, if any, the discretion of the judge presiding over the case would play in that process. The chapter also investigates a critical choice that all resisters in custody, irrespective of their background or motivations, had to make, a choice that would directly impact their and their co-defendants’ fate: should they cooperate with the authorities or not?