I found this to be both an interesting as well as valuable case study on how the German legal system functioned before and after the Nazi takeover of political power.  The focus is the brilliant but radical Berlin lawyer Hans Litten (1903-1938).  Litten developed a pungent reputation for defending leftists of all sorts during the late 1920's and early 1930's, including Communists and other radicals.  Bear in mind that it was in Berlin, shortly after the end of the first war, that the Spartacist uprising, involving Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, turned the city into a virtual war zone. A decade later Litten is defending radicals on behalf of the Red Aid, the legal support group of the Communist Party, at the very time that the Nazis are engaged in radical activity from the right, and Weimar democracy is disintegrating. These groups clashed violently and repeatedly in Berlin, and Litten's practice after 1930 was devoted almost entirely to this type of combustible litigation.  It was during one of these trials that Litten conducted an effective cross-examination of Hitler.  As one can imagine, Hitler was not happy about this and proved to have a long memory. On the night of the Reichstag fire, Litten was arrested and spent the rest of his short life in prisons and concentration camps, where he suffered the most severe of physical punishment, not being helped by his Jewish family background even though his parents had converted years before. His friends and family fought very hard to gain his release, but he died in captivity and apparently not from natural causes.