Following a November 1930 attack by Nazi SA (Stormtroopers) on workers at Berlin’s Tanzpalast Eden (Eden Dance Palace)—which left three people dead and many injured—Litten sought to prove the violence was a systematic, top-down strategy ordered by party leaders.
A young Berlin lawyer forced Adolf Hitler to defend his movement under questioning. On May 8, 1931, Hans Litten summoned the Nazi leader as a witness in a criminal trial involving a violent attack by Nazi stormtroopers. Hitler was trying to present his party as a lawful political movement capable of gaining power through elections. Litten confronted him with evidence suggesting that violence and revolutionary ambitions remained central to Nazi politics. The encounter humiliated Hitler before he became dictator. Less than two years later, Litten was arrested by the regime he had challenged.
The case began with an attack at the Eden Dance Palace in Berlin on November 22, 1930. A group of approximately twenty Nazi stormtroopers assaulted a gathering organized by a left-wing workers’ club. Gunshots were fired, and several people were wounded. Germany’s Weimar Republic was already suffering intense political violence, with clashes involving Nazis, communists and other militant groups. The Nazi Party was expanding electorally while its paramilitary organization, the SA, intimidated opponents in the streets. Hitler publicly emphasized a legal route to power, but Litten believed the party’s violent methods contradicted that promise.
Litten represented injured participants in proceedings against those accused of the assault. His approach was unusual. Instead of confining his questions to the immediate actions of the defendants, he sought to establish the broader relationship between the Nazi leadership and organized political violence. He requested that Hitler himself be summoned to explain the party’s position. The court accepted the request. On May 8, Hitler appeared as a witness before a Berlin judge, required to answer questions rather than deliver a speech to supporters. For a politician who depended on controlling his public image, the courtroom created a situation in which a young opposing lawyer could press him directly.
Litten challenged Hitler about Nazi propaganda and the behavior of the SA. He drew attention to writings that promoted revolutionary methods and argued that the movement’s public commitment to legality was difficult to reconcile with its rhetoric and street violence. Hitler insisted that the Nazi Party intended to obtain power through lawful means and distanced himself from statements suggesting otherwise. The questioning was combative, and contemporary accounts describe Hitler becoming visibly agitated. Litten did not obtain a confession that Hitler personally ordered the Eden attack. The significance of the examination was that he made the party leader answer publicly for the contradiction between Nazi claims of legality and the actions associated with his movement.
The hearing damaged Hitler’s preferred presentation of his party and placed Litten in a dangerous position. Other lawyers were challenging Nazi violence, but Litten had confronted the movement’s leader personally at a moment when Nazi political power was growing. He continued working on cases involving political extremism and defending people targeted by the far right. The trial did not stop the Nazi Party’s rise. Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933, and his government rapidly dismantled constitutional protections. The Reichstag fire in February provided a pretext for mass arrests of political opponents.