The Third Reich was a police state characterized
by arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of political
and ideological opponents in concentration
camps.
With the reinterpretation of “protective
custody” (Schutzhaft) in 1933,
police power became independent of judicial
controls. In Nazi terminology,
protective custody meant the arrest — without
judicial review — of real and potential opponents
of the regime. “Protective
custody” prisoners were not confined
within the normal prison system but in concentration
camps under the exclusive authority of the SS (Schutzstaffel; the elite guard of the
Nazi state).
The Third Reich has been called a dual state,
since the normal judicial system coexisted
with the arbitrary power of Hitler and the
police. Yet, like most areas of public life
after the Nazi rise to power in 1933, the
German system of justice underwent “coordination” (alignment
with Nazi goals). All professional associations
involved with the administration of justice
were merged into the National Socialist League
of German Jurists. In April 1933, Hitler
passed one of the earliest antisemitic laws,
purging Jewish and also Socialist judges,
lawyers, and other court officers from their
professions. Further, the Academy of German
Law and Nazi legal theorists, such as Carl
Schmitt, advocated the nazification of German
law, cleansing it of “Jewish influence.” Judges
were enjoined to let “healthy folk
sentiment” (gesundes Volksempfinden)
guide them in their decisions.
Hitler determined
to increase the political reliability of
the courts. In 1933, he established special
courts throughout Germany to try politically
sensitive cases. Dissatisfied with the ‘not
guilty’ verdicts rendered by the Supreme
Court (Reichsgericht) in the Reichstag Fire
Trial, Hitler ordered the creation of the People's
Court (Volksgerichtshof) in Berlin in 1934 to try treason and other important “political
cases.” Under Roland
Freisler, the People's Court became
part of the Nazi system of terror, condemning
tens of thousands of people as “Volk
Vermin” and thousands more to death
for “Volk Treason.” The trial
and sentencing of those accused of complicity
in the July
Plot, the attempt to kill Hitler
in July 1944, was especially unjust.
After the war, prominent Nazi jurists like
Curt Rothenberger, Franz Schlegelberger,
and Josef Altstoetter were tried in the Jurists’ Trial of
the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings on charges
of “judicial murder” and
other atrocities.