Living in a time where expressing opinions or threatening the status quo were met with outrage, death threats and ostracism, our hero dedicated his life to make Nazis and Germans accountable for the Holocaust. Fritz Bauer, a gay, Jewish jurist fled Nazi Germany but felt compelled to come home after the war.

Bauer was upset because he felt that the Nuremberg trials were only the beginning of a reckoning; however, the Americans and Adenauer’s West Germany wanted to leave the past behind. Bauer could not abide by this. He was made attorney general of two remote jurisdictions where he made it his mission to go after Nazis responsible for Auschwitz. He was thwarted by having Nazi jurists preside over his trials. He enlisted the help of younger lawyers to work with him.

Bauer received a lead to the whereabouts of Adolph Eichmann. Knowing that the German government employed several ranking SS officials, Bauer took his information to the Israelis. He then decided to put several Nazis on trial for their murderous roles at Auschwitz, having the younger attorneys as prosecutors. Through Bauer’s efforts the trial became an international phenomenon as well as an embarrassment for the German people.

While Nuremberg trials put the spotlight on the upper echelons of Nazi elite, Bauer wanted the camp personnel and Germany to understand their complicity. Jack Fairfield did a Herculean amount of research in documenting the times and Bauer’s insatiable desire for justice. He took you from Germany to Israel to Argentina to Poland. He made you feel the isolation, fear and loneliness Bauer felt in not being able to explore his homosexuality in pursuit of a greater cause. The graphic descriptions will have you crying along with survivors.

This is a book everyone should read. Given the status of the world today, it is important to see heroes not backing down.

Thank you NetGalley and Crown Publishing for this advance copy. All opinions are my own.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5/5)

The Prosecutor by Jack Fairweather is a compelling and meticulously researched biography that brings to light the life of Fritz Bauer, a German Jewish prosecutor who dedicated himself to bringing Nazi war criminals to justice. Fairweather's storytelling is both engaging and informative, making this a must-read for those interested in post-war history and the pursuit of justice.

At the end of the Nuremberg trial in 1946 the Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten. Some Germans weren’t going to admit what happened. Fritz Bauer, a gay, Jewish judge from Stuttgart was not going to let that happen. Bauer survived the Nazis and made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide.

The Prosecutor is a fantastic, researched book (including unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews), and made me emotional. I was angry, sad and scared. I am scared for our country after reading this. I hope one day we have a Bauer.

Thank you NetGalley and Crown for the advanced reader copy. #TheProsecutor #NetGalley

When Fritz Bauer came back to Germany from exile at the end of World War II, he soon found that he was still surrounded by Nazis. Denazification was mostly a failure (for a variety of reasons) and law enforcement, the judiciary, and so many businesses were staffed with an alarming number of former Nazis. But unlike a lot of other Germans, Bauer was able to get into a position to do something about it. He parlayed his pre-war degree and experience into a job as director of the district courts in Braunschweig (like a district attorney for the Americans reading this) and later Frankfurt am Main. In The Prosecutor: One Man’s Battle of Bring Nazis to Justice, Jack Fairweather recounts Bauer’s decades-long fight not just against Nazis but also the refusal of a lot of Germans to reckon with their recent past.

The early chapters of The Prosecutor are a galloping biography of Bauer, a gay, Jewish man who tried to climb the judicial ladder but was stymied by the anti-semitic policies of the Nazis. He was able to escape to Denmark with most of his family after he was briefly imprisoned. When he came back, however, the anti-semitism and homophobia were still there—as were many known Nazis. Fairweather does excellent work setting the post-war political stage by highlighting the reliance of the first West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, on former Nazis like Hans Globke and Reinhard Gehlen. Globke played an important part in the drafting of the Nuremberg Race Laws. Gehlen, who went on to build and run West Germany’s intelligence service, used his experience running intelligence against the Soviets during the war into jobs with the Americans and the West Germans. Neither Globke nor Gehlen faced any legal prosecution or punishment for their actions before and during World War II. Fairweather notes that Gehlen went to extraordinary lengths to conceal his and Globke’s past from discovery.

The middle section of The Prosecutor builds towards the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials (1963-1968) and the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961-1962) in Jerusalem. Because of his position, Bauer wasn’t able to directly prosecute cases in West Germany, though he was able to select cases for prosecution and locate evidence. He coordinated with the prosecutors who would actually appear in court, helped to convince witnesses to speak, and appeared in numerous press conferences to get people interested not just in these new trials but also the atrocities so many Germans were unwilling to talk about even fifteen years or more after the end of the war. In the case of Adolf Eichmann, Bauer played an important role in locating that monster in Argentina.

The chapters discussing the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial were electric. Fairweather puts us right in the courtroom with details about how witnesses—especially Holocaust survivors—were treated. Some of the defendants and court spectators would laugh at, mock, and threaten witnesses. Things got so bad that Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s sister-in-law, Emmi Bonhoeffer, took it upon herself to arrange escorts for witnesses so that they wouldn’t be harassed. (Fairweather shares the appalling fact that witnesses and defendants were sometimes housed in the same hotel during the trials.) The turning point seems to come when members of the court and some of the defendants go to Auschwitz. Once in Auschwitz, it was impossible for anyone to ignore the testimony of the witnesses and the sheer scale of the genocide partially carried out there. I have read a lot of books about the Holocaust but few details have hit me as hard as the one Fairweather includes about one of the court’s guides dipping his hand into a ditch to retrieve a handful of human ash and mud.

For all the work Bauer, his prosecutors, and others helping to bring former Nazis to trial did, Bauer spent a lot of time fretting that it wasn’t enough to break through the deliberate silence maintained by Germans who lived through the war and the Nazi regime. He thought that many of the shockingly light sentences handed out at the end of the trial were insults to survivors and victims of the Holocaust. Bauer passed away in 1968, before he could see how Germans born after the war would engage in Vergangenheitsbewältigung (from Wikipedia, “‘struggle of overcoming the past’ or ‘work of coping with the past'”), with more honest teaching of history, monuments, literature, art, and so on. Fairweather also notes that Bauer’s work created legal precedent in Germany that was used to prosecute other former Nazis and Holocaust perpetrators like John Demjanjuk, who went to trial in Germany in 2009.

The Prosecutor is not an easy book to read. Fairweather is unflinching about sharing testimony that emphasizes the depraved brutality of the Holocaust. But I very much appreciated learning about Fritz Bauer, who had the bravery and determination to bring former war criminals into a courtroom to account for their actions during the Holocaust. He faced down countless death threats, threats to his job, and deliberate bureaucratic inertia and obstruction to try and deliver justice. We need more people like Bauer in this world to push us towards our own Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

An interesting look at Germany and one man’s legal fight to keep the Nazis from returning to power after WWII. It is scary to think how close the Nazis came to regaining power after Hitler was gone.

An excellent read for any and all readers! Author comes at you with both barrels and knocks you out of your shoes! Great job fleshing out all the characters. I give this book FIVE stars! Definitely recommend!

I had never really heard of Fritz Bauer before and was so glad I read this book. It had that element that brought Fritz to life and was glad everything worked together. It had that overall feel that I was looking for and was glad I read this. Jack Fairweather wrote this perfectly and am excited for more nonfiction books.

It is a quirk of any book on the Holocaust that the quality of the writing is proportional to how badly you feel while reading it. Sure, you may feel bad because the book is not good, but the truly transcendent narratives ensure the reader truly feels the horror. In the case of Jack Fairweather's The Prosecutor, I felt depressed, angry, and quite annoyed. Yes, all of those feelings are to Fairweather's credit.

The Prosecutor is about Fritz Bauer, a gay, Jewish, German judge who has to flee from Germany during World War II because...well, pick any of the previous descriptors of Bauer. I should make it clear that if you are looking for an in-depth biography of Bauer, then you will be disappointed. Fairweather does give background and explains Bauer's motivations but the author is much more interested in the why and how of what Bauer does after World War II.

The main thrust of the story is Germany wiped its hands after the Nuremberg trials and effectively said, "Well, thank goodness THAT is over with." Bauer believed deeply that Germans had not looked in the mirror and reckoned with how so many people could take part in mass murder. Even more galling, Bauer felt the Nuremberg trials should have been the start, not the finish. Fairweather meticulously explains the motivations of various people and the numerous hurdles Bauer faces. (Side note: When I say "meticulously", I am not kidding. Fairweather's list of sources is insanely long in a good way!) If you are a huge fan of Fairweather's previous work, The Volunteer, then you will definitely want to grab this one.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Crown Publishing.)

Thank you, Crown Publishing, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This book will be published on February 25, 2025.

I just finished The Prosecutor: One Man’s Battle To Bring Nazis To Justice, by Jack Fairweather.

This is a biography of Fritz Bauer, who was a Jewish judge who was arrested by the Nazis in 1933 as an enemy of the state, for his political opposition to them, and sent to a concentration camp (prior to them being used as death camps). He was eventually released after six months, but his legal career appeared to be over. Even after being released from the prison camp, he was still in constant legal peril, not only because of his religion, but due to their harsh laws against homosexuals. Eventually, after close calls, he was able to safely flee from the Nazis.

Bauer eventually returned to Germany after the war and, as a prosecutor, went after Nazis. He was involved in bringing Eichmann to justice.

I give this book an A.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on December 5, 2024.