Trials and Errors: Transitional Justice in Post-War Germany

• In Event: Causes and Consequences of Civilian Victimization

Abstract

After repressive regimes are defeated, countries must decide how to deal with the perpetrators. Many opt for some form of transitional justice, as suggested by the growing use of lustration, trials, truth commissions, and amnesties. Yet we still know little about whether and when transitional justice works as intended. Existing research is predominantly cross-national and examines macrolevel outcomes, which are more vulnerable to endogeneity problems. To address these limitations, we study subnational political consequences of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial (1963-65). Scholars disagree on whether the trial, considered the largest and most publicized in West Germany, forced a true reckoning with the past. We use a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach to evaluate the political effects of the trial. We find a greater increase in the vote share of the far-right NPD in the districts and municipalities where more Jews had lived before the war. This effect was more pronounced in the French-occupied territory, where post-WWII denazification trials were more numerically encompassing, but also more lenient than in the US-occupied territory.

Author

• Sascha Riaz, Harvard University