Abstract
The Nazis had been placed on the defensive in their own court because of the countertrial, so the emphasis was more on exonerating themselves than convicting the Communists. The fairness of their judicial process was being scrutinized by the world’s media due to the countertrial’s publicity: Could a German court consider the fate of the alleged insurrectionists impartially, or would political considerations turn the defendants into prejudged scapegoats?1 A right-wing Leipzig newspaper declared: “Only a person with historical perspective can understand the court’s plan. The issue is to deal world communism an annihilating blow.” Ominously, eleven Communists had been sentenced to death on September 7 in two separate cases of alleged attacks on Nazis.2
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Notes
Arthur Garfield Hays, City Lawyer ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942 ), p. 353.
Babette Gross, Willi Munzenberg: A Political Biography ( East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1974 ), p. 253.
Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives ( London: HarperCollins, 1991 ), p. 480;
Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948 ), p. 309.
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© 2002 Arthur Jay Klinghoffer and Judith Apter Klinghoffer
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Klinghoffer, A.J., Klinghoffer, J.A. (2002). Showdown in Leipzig. In: International Citizens’ Tribunals. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299163_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299163_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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