The central moment of Hans Litten’s life was his cross-examination of Adolf Hitler, and this moment forms the heart of the book as well. In the narrative leading up to that encounter I try to show what made Hans Litten into the man who would do this; the last section of the book illustrates the dreadful consequences of arousing Hitler’s hatred.The middle section of the book, “Crossing Hitler,” starting on page 65, relates the story of that cross-examination. It took place in what was called the “Eden Dance Palace Trial.” The defendants were four Nazi storm troopers, members of what Nazis called the “SA”, who had attacked a dance put on by a Communist hiking club, firing blindly into the crowd and wounding three people.Hans Litten thought Hitler’s testimony would show that the violence of the Nazi Party was systematic and carried out on Hitler’s orders. He thought he could force Hitler to acknowledge the contradiction between this violence and Hitler’s repeated claims that his party was “strictly legal.” The Eden Dance Palace trial in fact took place just after the Berlin SA, whose members wished to follow a more violent and revolutionary path, had rebelled against Hitler’s “legal” policies. This background raised the stakes for Hitler. Litten tied Hitler in knots over Hitler’s sacking of the Berlin SA leader Walter Stennes. In April 1931 Hitler had published a newspaper article denouncing Stennes, accusing him, among other things, of having formed “roll commandos,” or hit squads to attack opponents. What had Hitler meant by this? Was this not an acknowledgement of the Party’s violence? Litten quoted from a pamphlet by the Berlin Nazi Party boss Joseph Goebbels, in which Goebbels had written of the Nazis’ goal of revolution and their desire to “crush the enemy to a pulp.” How could Hitler allow official statements of this sort? It was precisely as Litten had Hitler on the ropes with this line of questioning that the presiding judge intervened to save the Führer, insisting that the question was not relevant to the case.Hitler wasn’t finished yet though. In the summer of 1931 authorities investigated him for perjury for his testimony at the Eden Palace. Hitler was forced to give a long deposition defending himself. (He could refer here to his private transcript of the cross examination – he had brought a stenographer along with him). In the end Hitler dodged the charges, but evidence from Nazi sources shows how serious the threat of this prosecution had been and how much it stoked Hitler’s hatred for Litten.My hope is that readers will take several things from this book.The first is simply that I want Hans Litten to become better known on this side of the Atlantic. He was as brave as other well-known resistance fighters against the Nazis – Sophie Scholl or Count Claus von Stauffenberg – and he paid the same price for his courage. But his memory has been neglected since the Second World War. Much of the reason for this neglect lies in his own complex character and beliefs. But Litten is finally starting to receive some of the honor due to him. Since 2001, the German Bar Association has had its headquarters in the Hans Litten House on Hans Litten Street in Berlin. Every two years, a German and a European lawyers’ association together give a prize for human rights advocacy in Hans Litten’s name (the 2006 winner was an American, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights). I hope with my book to contribute to the spread of Hans Litten’s name – and the names of his equally brave friends, such as Max and Margot Fürst, who risked their lives to save him from a concentration camp.The second thing is that what happened to Hans Litten is a warning: a warning of what happens to a society when fear, crisis, and a sense of emergency drive people to lose faith in human rights and the rule of law. A lawyer who knew Hans Litten once wrote that the powerful are always inclined to get along with law if they can; law is the tool for the rest of us. This is a timeless danger, and a timeless warning.