Before the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, the prosecution under Fritz Bauer asked the Institute for Contemporary History for expert reports. Four historians, Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, analyzed the structures of the SS state. Their reports were to provide indispensable background information for the trial.
The trial began on 20 December 1963. In 1965 the reports were published as a book, Anatomie des SS-Staates, the anatomy of the SS state.