Law of Nazi Germany


From 1933 to 1945, the Nazi regime ruled Germany and, at times, controlled most of Europe. During this time, Nazi Germany shifted from the post-World War I society which characterized the Weimar Republic and introduced an ideology of "biological racism" into the country's legal and justicial systems. The shift from the traditional legal system to the Nazis' ideological mission enabled all of the subsequent acts of the Hitler regime to be performed legally. For this to succeed, the normative judicial system needed to be reworked; judges, lawyers and other civil servants acclimatized themselves to the new Nazi laws and personnel. As of 2021, a few laws from the Nazi era still remain codified in German law.

History

After World War I, Germany considered the law a "most respected entity" as the country regained stability and public confidence. Many German lawyers and judges were Jewish. Adolf Hitler was inspired by Benito Mussolini's October 1922 March on Rome, which brought Mussolini's National Fascist Party to power in Italy.
Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch took place in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923. The attempted coup was halted by Bavarian police; 15 Nazis were killed, and Hitler was imprisoned. Hitler exploited Weimar's economic hardships, which included hyperinflation and the effects of the Great Depression. His actions and goals have been described as using the "constitution to destroy the constitution" and the "rules of the republic to destroy the republic".
Nazi influence increased after the party became the largest in the Reichstag. Increasing public pressure, including marches, lawlessness and racism, forced president Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933; this was known as the Machtergreifung.
The 27 February 1933 Reichstag fire was used as a pretext to suspend many of the key civil liberties guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution and impose a four-year state of emergency. The Reichstag Fire Decree would "safeguard public security" by restricting civil liberties and granting increased power to the police, and the SA arrested 4,000 members of the Communist Party. Legislative power was given to Hitler so his government could create laws without Reichstag consent.
Several principles were invoked during the state of emergency. The Führerprinzip designated Hitler as above the law. The Volkist Principle of Racial Inequality organised the judiciary by race; anyone not considered part of the Volksgemeinschaft was seen as undeserving of legal protection.
In 1933, The Reich Ministry of the Interior was utilised by the Nazi government to consolidate Hitler's rise to power. New civil-service legislation enabled the removal of non-Aryans and the "politically unreliable." Autonomy was removed from individual German states and provinces through a process of coordination, and Nazi ideology was imposed by racial and ancestral legislation which defined who was a German. In 1936, SS leader and RMI state secretary Heinrich Himmler was placed in charge of the civil police. With the growth of Nazi Germany, the RMI organized the administration of newly-acquired countries and territories.
During the Night of the Long Knives, which began on 30 June 1934, 80 stormtrooper leaders and other opponents of Hitler were arrested and shot. Von Hindenberg's death on 2 August 1934 enabled Hitler to usurp his presidential powers, and his dictatorship was built upon his position as Reich president, Reich Chancellor and Führer. The 9–10 November 1938 Kristallnacht had attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses and citizens. Over 100 were killed, and thousands were arrested. Two hundred sixty-seven synagogues in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland were destroyed; firefighters were instructed to only prevent the flames from spreading. About 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned or interned in concentration camps. The government blamed the Jewish people for the attacks, and imposed a fine of one billion ℛℳ. After Kristallnacht, additional decrees removed the Jews from German economic and social life; those who could emigrated elsewhere.

Laws

After the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Enabling Act of 1933 amended the Weimar Constitution to allow Hitler and his government to enact laws without going through the Reichstag. Nazi agreements with other right-wing parties, and the persecution of the Communist members of parliament, resulted in a vote of 444 to 94.

Flag law

According to the Reich Flag law, Germany's national colors were black, white, and red and its flag incorporated the swastika. In the words of Hitler, this was to "repay a debt of gratitude to the movement under whose symbol Germany regained its freedom, fulfilling a significant item on the program of the National Socialist Party".

Malicious Practices Act

The Malicious Practices Act was passed on 20 March 1933 and was one of the first decrees passed by the Nazis to ensure that any enemies of the state were punished by either being sent to concentration camps or executed. The act allowed people deemed to be social outcasts such as Jews, homosexuals and political opponents to be punished by the law.

Treachery Act

The Treachery Act, its official title was the "Law against Treacherous Attacks on the State and Party and for the Protection of Party Uniforms" was passed on 20 December 1934. The act restricted the freedom of speech amongst civilians and penalised any criticism of the Nazi state or the Nazi Party.

Nuremberg Laws

When Germany was completely under Nazi rule, the number and severity of laws increased. The Nuremberg Laws were announced after the annual Nazi party rally in Nuremberg on 15 September 1935. The two laws authorized arrests of, and violence against, Jews. Initially imposed in Germany, Nazi expansion during the Second World War resulted in the imposition of the Nuremberg Laws in occupied territories.

Citizenship Law

The Citizenship Law formally defined who among the Staatsangehörige of the Reich would retain full political rights as a 'citizen of the Reich', consequently leaving the remaining population as effective non-citizens with no guaranteed rights. The law's definition of what constituted a citizen of the Reich utilized particularly ambiguous language: a citizen was defined as a "German or kindred blood... who, through his conduct... is both desirous and fit to serve the German people and the Reich faithfully". This ambiguity resulted in some of the human rights violations following the law's passage being justified by bureaucrats, law enforcement and medical professionals as legal acts under the 1935 law.
In particular, the first condition ensured that many of the non-European ethnic and religious minorities residing in Germany were no longer to be considered citizens whereas the latter condition allowed the same to occur to any group that might be considered "unfit for reproduction", including groups such as the mentally ill, alcoholics, those with congenital and/or chronic illness, among many others. The details as to which rights would be stripped in the latter case were specified in the companion "Law for Hereditary Hygiene", also included in the Nuremberg Laws. This law effectively legitimized the Nazi eugenics movement, inspired by various meetings between Hitler and American and British eugenicists, as legal. The extent to which the British originators and American early adopters of the pseudo-science influenced Nazi eugenics is perhaps best exhibited by an openly acknowledged inspiration used in drafting the Nazi social hygiene laws being the 1924 US Virginia state law known as the "Eugenical Sterilization Act.

Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor

This law had five articles:
  1. Marriages between Jews and Germans or relatives were forbidden, and existing marriages of this kind were void.
  2. Sexual relations outside marriage between Jews and Germans or relatives were forbidden.
  3. Jews were not allowed to employ female German citizens or relatives as domestic servants.
  4. Jews were forbidden to display the national flag and/or colours
  5. Violations of the first article were punishable by hard labor; violations of the second article were punishable by imprisonment, and violations of the third article were punishable by fine and imprisonment.
A 14 November 1935 supplemental decree defined Jewishness. No longer limited to religious beliefs, the decree classified those who followed the Jewish faith, belonged to the Jewish religion when the decree was promulgated, or later entered the Jewish religion, anyone who had three or more Jewish grandparents or two Jewish grandparents and was married to a Jewish spouse and anyone who joined a Jewish community as Jewish, regardless of whether they still followed the religion.
Over 1,900 "special Jewish laws" emphasized Aryan morality and antisemitic stereotypes of "Jewish counter-morality". Jewish lawyers and notaries had already been prohibited from working for the city of Berlin in a local decree in March 1933, and Nazi ideology continued to creep into the legal system:
  • Non-Aryans could not be lay judges or jury members.
  • The Berlin Gestapo ordered measures to be taken to end the perception that Aryan students were receiving assistance from Jews in preparing for their exams, and later the Justice Ministry decreed that candidates for the final juridical exam had to expressly declare that they had received no assistance from Jews.
  • The kosher slaughter of animals was prohibited.
  • Laws pertaining to athletes excluded Jewish boxers from competition, and Jews were banned from public swimming places.
  • The use of Jewish names for clarifying spelling in the telephone delivery of telegrams was banned.
For a brief period before and during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, antisemitic laws and attacks were moderated and discriminatory signage removed. Although this was regarded as an attempt by Hitler to appease the international audience and limit criticism and interference, nearly all German Jewish athletes were excluded from Olympic competition.