In the end Rosa Hofmann was taken to Berlin for trial by the special "People's Court" that had been established in 1934 in response to government dissatisfaction with decisions handed out by the existing court system, notably in respect of political cases. Hofmann's tial took place before the court's "sixth senate" on 15 December 1942 just as the government's military ambitions - along with the lives of thousands of military conscripts - were being crushed in and around Stalingrad. Her brother Josef had been kiiled on the Russian front two months earlier'. The presiding judge was Walter Hartmann (1887-1945). Rosa Hofmann was found guilty of undermining the war effort and advantaging the enemy. She was sentenced to death and life-long deprivation of citizen's rights. The court gave as justification for the death sentence its finding that the accused had participated in the distribution of certain documents intended to degrade the German army. It is certainly the case that Rosa Hofmann acknowledged her resistance actions before the court. But she also insisted that certain formulaic statements in the Gestapo evidence, that she had acted as "a fanatical communist" and "hoped for social betterment from the world revolution" did not correspond with anything she had or would have said.