Ernst Lautz

Confirmed findings

• From 20 September 1939 to the end of the war, Lautz was chief public prosecutor at the People's Court in Berlin.
• The Justice Trial judgment found that he instructed subordinates to retain before the People's Court those cases in which responsibility for a possible death sentence could be accepted.
• Trial material examined his role in cases under the decree on criminal law for Poles and Jews and found him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Place in the chain of responsibility

The profile shows the prosecutorial stage of the chain of repression: choosing court jurisdiction, preparing indictments and expecting a death sentence. It does not equate Lautz's office with personally issuing every judgment or carrying out every execution.

Key events and mechanisms

• his assumption of office as chief public prosecutor at the People's Court in September 1939
• the application of repressive law to Poles and Jews in annexed territories
• the Nuremberg Justice Trial in 1947

Postwar accountability

At the Nuremberg Justice Trial, Lautz was sentenced in 1947 to ten years' imprisonment. He was released in 1951.

Limits of the evidence

Sources

The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.

• Harvard Law School Nuremberg Trials Project
• Library of Congress
• museums.nuernberg.de