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.