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Business as Usual

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Drawing on extensive archival records, Business as Usual shows how the legal system in Germany continued to operate with the same personnel, administrative routines, and institutional habits between 1943 and 1948, despite violence, mass murder,...
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  • 15 August 2026
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Drawing on extensive archival records, Business as Usual shows how the legal system in Germany continued to operate with the same personnel, administrative routines, and institutional habits between 1943 and 1948, despite violence, mass murder, bombings, and regime change. This strict adherence to legal formalism acted as a “normalization machine” for mass atrocities, facilitating the compromised but seamless transition into the post-war administration. By tracing everyday judicial work in extraordinary circumstances, it reveals how legal institutions endure, adapt, and serve an inestimable purpose even in moments of profound upheaval. Moreover, only within the framework of the normal, ordinary law could the ideological exception of Nazi law unfold. In other words: besides the banality of evil, there is also evilness in banality.
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Price: £104.00
Pages: 328
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Imprint: Berghahn Books
Publication Date: 15 August 2026
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781836956266
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

LAW / Legal History, European history, HISTORY / Europe / Germany, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / General, Legal history

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Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Pleasures of Duty: Legal Service and the Final Battle
Chapter 2. Good People’s Law: On the Trail of the German Soul
Chapter 3. Parceling Death: The Auschwitz Local Court and the IG Farben Land Register
Chapter 4. Severance Pay: The Sondergericht Aachen and Its Last Judge
Chapter 5. On the Run: The Relocation of the Judicial Authorities in the Winter f 1944/45
Chapter 6. Between the Years: The Suspension of Law in the Summer of 1945
Chapter 7. Winding Up: The War and Its Long End

Epilogue: The Dream of Real Life

Bibliography
Index