In reality, many, perhaps most, of Bauer’s prosecutions failed: the defendants were often acquitted by German courts even in the 1960’s. Bauer himself was frequently the target of verbal attacks and even of death threats. Instead, the significance of Bauer’s work was that he, a German, in German courts, demonstrated to the German public again and again, in excruciating detail, the beliefs and deeds of Germans during the Nazi era.
