Konrad Morgen The Conscience of a Nazi Judge

Georg Konrad Morgen was a judge in the SS courts, placed in charge of prosecuting crimes committed in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz. Although delegated by Heinrich Himmler to root out corruption, Morgen remarkably went on to prosecute camp officers for the murder of prisoners. He secured the convictions of several concentration camp commandants, two of whom were executed for their crimes. Yet, despite being face-to-face with the horrors of the Nazi killing machine, he was unable to prosecute anyone for the systematic extermination of the Jews. Instead he tried unsettle the system by seeking an arrest warrant for Adolf Eichmann, albeit for minor offences, and the chief of the Auschwitz gestapo.

This is a moral biography of Morgen, focusing on how he felt, thought, and deliberated about the challenges of his unique position. In wartime memos and correspondence, both official and private, as well as his post-war interrogations and his gripping testimonies at war-crimes trials, Morgen's moral and legal reasoning is placed at the fore. What emerges is a deeply equivocal figure whose strong but flawed sense of justice was unequal to the extraordinary circumstances of the Third Reich.
 
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Herlinde Pauer-Studer is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria. She has held fellowships from the Austrian Academy of Science and Fulbright; from 2010-21015 she held an Advanced Research Grant from the European Research Council.

J. David Velleman is a Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics at New York University, USA. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Timeline
People in the Book
Map of the German Reich and Polish Territories
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Introduction
2. The SS Man
3. The SS Judiciary
4. Criminals and Spies
5. The Criminal Character
6. Karl-Otto Koch
7. From Corruption to Murder
8. Partners in Crime
9. 'Legal' Killing
10. The Final Solution: Conflicting Stories
11. Aktion Erntefest
12. KL Auschwitz
13. Adolf Eichmann
14. The Weimar Trials
15. Rudolf Hoess and Eleonore Hodys
16. Out of the Fray
17. Postscript
Appendix 1. List of Sources
Appendix 2. Documents
Appendix 3. Photos