Nazi Germany at War by Martin Kitchen

Author:Martin Kitchen [Kitchen, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Germany, Military, World War II
ISBN: 9780582073876
Google: 2t9mAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 6538775
Publisher: Longman
Published: 1994-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Law

The two basic motivating forces behind National Socialist law were the desire to achieve a ‘racial renewal’ (völkischer Erneuerung) and to reinforce the ‘leadership principle’. The law was to contribute to the negative utopian aim of purifying the German race and to remove all traces of disease, genetically conditioned crime, antisocial behaviour, perversity and degeneration. The deterrent effect of criminal justice was subordinate to the National Socialist concept of ‘biological justice’. No legal restrictions or moral scruples could stand in the way of this task. The will of the Führer, not the written law, was the ultimate legal authority and was to ensure that these aims were fulfilled. Hitler’s wishes were to be swiftly executed by his devoted subordinates in a smoothly functioning chain of command. The racially, socially, medically and politically undesirable elements of the race were to be extirpated and the master race united in an organic community. This approach was admirably summarised in an article in the official journal ‘Deutsches Recht’ (German Law) in 1937: ‘National Socialist law has put National Socialist ideology (Weltanschauung) into practice. The aim of this ideology and thus the purpose of the law is the purity, preservation, protection and improvement of the German race.’ ‘A judge’, wrote the the professional legal newspaper Deutsche Juristenzeitung in 1936, ‘is not set above the German people as an authority but is a part of the living community of the German people. It is not his task to apply a legal system which is superior to the German racial community or to act according to a generally accepted system of values. He must strengthen the concrete order of the racial community, destroy that which damages the race, punish behaviour which is offensive to the community and arbitrate quarrels between members of the community’. The fact that the will of the Führer was identical with the law was fundamental to the concept of leadership in National Socialism. Were this not the case, a leading legal text insisted, Hitler would merely be a dictator.

National Socialist justice eagerly accepted this challenge and was merciless in the pursuit of those who were felt to endanger the racial community. During the Third Reich more than 40,000 people were condemned to death: 16,000 by the civil courts, of whom about three-quarters were actually executed, and 25,000 by courts martial. By contrast there were 393 executions between 1907 and 1932, a figure which includes those executed by courts martial during the war and in the troubled times until 1923. Mussolini’s Italy did not reintroduce the death penalty until 1931 and there were only 88 executions during his dictatorship.

The vast majority of these death sentences were passed during the war. 15,000 of them were handed down between 1940 and 1945, mostly by the People’s Court or by the Special Courts. The accused were not allowed to appeal against the judgments of these courts, whereas under the provisions of a decree in 1940 the state prosecutors could reopen any case if the authorities considered that that the accused had been treated with undue leniency.

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