Eden Dance Palace Shooting

In the last years of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Party often used political violence to gain attention and influence. On the night of November 22, 1930, about 20 Nazis attacked a dance being held for a leftwing social club at the Eden Dance Palace in Berlin. The Nazis fired several times into the crowd of dancers, wounding three men. The following spring, a trial was held. Prosecuting attorney Hans Litten called Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as a witness. He sought to expose the Nazi Party’s pattern of violence and its revolutionary agenda. The public humiliation Hitler experienced on the witness stand made Litten a target of the regime when the Nazi Party took power in 1933. Litten was arrested and imprisoned in the Nazi camp system. He endured terrible abuse for several years before dying in 1938.