Eliza Parr - History
duties...towards society”” 39 epitomized the Nazi view that the legal system should
operate according to the interests of the state and not the individual. The Civil Service
Law of 1933 ruled that “judges whose political beliefs conflicted with Nazism lost
their positions,” 40 and “lawyers had to be members of the Nazi Lawyers
Association” 41 and to swear an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. The German Civil
Service Law of 26 January 1937 provided that “civil servants could be compulsorily
retired if they could not be relied upon to support the State at all times.” 42 These
measures meant that “the judiciary was increasingly reduced to the status of a mere
administrative agency of the Ministry,” 43 with the result that the independence of the
courts and therefore justice in Nazi Germany was completely undermined, further
consolidating the Nazis' power through a range of apparently legal means.
Although the key anti-Semitic laws were adopted by the Nazis after 1934, including
the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour,” passed on 15
September 1935 which provided that Jews “were now officially second-class
citizens” 44 , they were facilitated by the Enabling Act and completely undermined the
Weimar Constitution and are therefore a relevant consideration. In particular Article
135, which provided that “Undisturbed practise of religion is guaranteed by the
constitution and is placed under the protection of the state” 45 was nullified by the
Nazis' anti-Semitic legislation and led to the extreme revolutionary outcome of the
Holocaust, again seemingly by legal means.
The Revolutionary Outcome
The outcome of the Nazis' consolidation of power through the ostensibly legal and
democratic means summarised above was the emergence of a fascist, amoral state
with values completely inconsistent with the Weimar Constitution. Ingo Müller, who
is a former Law professor and official in the Justice Department of Bremen, states that
“there was...no area of the law which National socialist ideas failed to permeate
eventually...[all areas] were “fertilized” with Nazi legal thinking.” 46 Although his
book (translated from German) was published in 1991, a significant length of time
after the Nazis came to power, Müller's legal background means that he is likely to
have a greater legal insight than most historians into the validity of the Nazis' use of
legal measures. The Nazi Party's use of legislative acts and decrees was an essential
tool in fundamentally undermining the legal and political systems and obtaining
complete control over Germany, in particular because it enabled them to persuade the
German people that their actions were legal and should therefore be supported. In
addition, by using apparently legal means, the Nazis were able to commit “the most
39
Müller, I., 1991. Hitler’s Justice. 1 st ed. Harvard, USA: Harvard. Translated from German by
Deborah Lucas Schneider, p. 64
40
Todd, A. & Waller, S., 2011. History for the IB Diploma, Authoritarian and Single-Party States. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 85
41
ibid
42
Miller, R.L., 1995. Nazi Justiz, Law of the Holocaust. Westport, USA: Praeger, p. 291
43
ibid
44
Müller, I., 1991. Hitler's Justice. Harvard: USA: Harvard. Translated from German by Schneider,
D.L., p. 34
45
Miller, R.L., 1995. Nazi Justiz, Law of the Holocaust. Westport, USA: Praeger, p. 51
46
Müller, I., 1991. Hitler’s Justice. Harvard, USA: Harvard. Translated from German by Schneider,
D.L., p. 74
194
8