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Crossing
Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on
the Witness Stand
by Benjamin
Carter Hett
During a 1931 trial of four Nazi
stormtroopers, known as the Eden Dance
Palace trial, Hans Litten grilled Hitler
in a brilliant and merciless three-hour
cross-examination, forcing him into
multiple contradictions and evasions and
finally reducing him to helpless and
humiliating rage (the transcription of
Hitler's full testimony is included.) At
the time, Hitler was still trying to prove
his embrace of legal methods, and
distancing himself from his stormtroopers.
The courageous Litten revealed his true
intentions, and in the process, posed a
real threat to Nazi ambition.
When the Nazis seized power two years
after the trial, friends and family urged
Litten to flee the country. He stayed and
was sent to the concentration camps, where
he worked on translations of medieval
German poetry, shared the money and food
he was sent by his wealthy family, and
taught working-class inmates about art and
literature. When Jewish prisoners at
Dachau were locked in their barracks for
weeks at a time, Litten kept them sane by
reciting great works from memory. After
five years of torture and hard labor-and a
daring escape that failed-Litten gave up
hope of survival. His story was ultimately
tragic but, as Benjamin Hett writes in
this gripping narrative, it is also
redemptive. "It is a story of human
nobility in the face of barbarism."
The first full-length biography of
Litten, the book also explores the
turbulent years of the Weimar Republic and
the terror of Nazi rule in Germany after
1933.
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