The transition from a liberal democracy to an authoritarian state in Germany began in 1930 and culminated in 1933 with the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship. A vital component in this process was the courtroom practice of German judges and state prosecutors. The judiciary, guided by its own set of political values and social prejudices, waged a campaign against ‘rough’ working-class communities thought to be the loci of social and political challenge to the authority of the state. In doing so, it found itself in alliance with the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), itself locked in a struggle for control of such communities.

This chapter explores the complex relationship between judicial authority and communal resistance to nazism. In order to do this, it takes a particular case of political violence from the summer of 1932, the ‘Altona Bloody Sunday’ and its judicial aftermath as illustration. The so-called ‘Altona Bloody Sunday trial’ began on 8 May and ended on 2 June 1933 in death sentences for four of the fifteen defendants. These were the first judicial killings of the Third Reich and anticipate the flood of miscarriages of justice that followed the introduction of the lex van der Lubbe in 1934. But, as we shall see, the ‘Bloody Sunday’ trial was not solely a Nazi miscarriage of justice.

This book had its origins in History Workshop 26, held at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle in 1992. Most of the chapters were presented as papers in a conference strand on ‘Popular Resistance to Fascism’. The aim of this strand was not to assemble a series of papers which would provide a systematic or representative ‘coverage’ of the theme for all parts of Europe; that would have been impossible in any case. It was, rather, to invite papers which re-examined the perspectives of the postwar historiography of fascism, a theme which has only slowly begun to free itself from the taboos and political imperatives of the Cold War. There were important gaps in the geographical range of the collection, and new contributions had to be solicited. The intention in doing so, however, was never merely to fill a national or regional gap but to extend the range of critical perspectives and new approaches. The editors would like to thank the original conference participants for their patience with this process, and the authors of the additional chapters for the efficiency with which they delivered their contributions. We should also like to thank Sarah Kane, who translated Yves Le Maner's article. Thanks are also due to the University of Northumbria Small Research Grants Committee for its support during the preparation of the manuscript for publication; and to the Department of Historical and Critical Studies at the University of Northumbria, and the Research Committee of the School of History and International Relations at the University of St Andrews for their financial support for the translation of Le Maner's article.

Increasingly, history impinges on the attention of the public through the celebration of anniversaries as conveyed by the media. In Europe at the end of the twentieth century this form of commemoration has been dominated by the fiftieth anniversaries of the origins and course of the Second World War: the appointment of Hitler as chancellor of Germany in 1933, the outbreak of war in 1939, the liberation of Europe from fascism in 1945. Commemorating recent history in this way has not been unproblematic for the leaders of post-war western Europe. Indeed, two such public anniversaries celebrated in Europe in 1994 threw the problem into sharp relief. Britain and France celebrated the D-Day landings in June with their former war-time Allies, but Germany was excluded, and commemorated alone the bomb plot against Hitler in July. In its own way, each of these events reiterated powerful points in our collective and public memory of fascism and the war. For the Allies, the conflict had been one of nation against nation and was decided on the battlefield by Allied forces and armed resistance organisations operating as adjuncts of those armies. That version of the war excluded the idea of a broader resistance to fascism on the continent (including Germany itself).