The investigations into the crimes of the Auschwitz perpetrators by the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office began in 1958. The trial opened in 1963. Why did it take five years? In the 1960s, scholars such as Theodor Adorno, Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, and Hannah Arendt emphasized West German reticence, indifference, or even unwillingness to confront the Nazi past as explanations for the late start of investigations of Nazi criminals. They argued that the 1950s were dominated by a collective silence about Nazism and crimes against the Jews in Germany. According to them, politically, culturally, and also legally, the new West German state refused to acknowledge the Nazi past of anyone but the highest ranking Nazis, whose trial at Nuremberg marked the Schlussstrich (drawing the line) under the topic of National Socialism and its crimes against humanity. Recent historiography of postwar German trials has also pointed to lingering Nazi beliefs not only on the part of judges and lawyers but in the minds of the public as well.