The Law in Nazi Germany

Alan E. Steinweis is the Miller Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies and Director of the Carolyn and Leonard Miller Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont. His books include Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (1993); Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany (2006); and Kristallnacht 1938 (2009). In 2011 he held the visiting professorship in Interdisciplinary Holocaust Studies and German-Jewish History at the Fritz Bauer Institute at the University of Frankfurt, Germany.

Preface

List of Illustrations



Introduction: The Law in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

Alan E. Steinweis and Robert D. Rachlin



Chapter 1. The Conundrum of Complicity: German Professionals and the Final Solution

Konrad H. Jarausch



Chapter 2. Civil Service Lawyers and the Holocaust: The Case of Wilhelm Stuckart

Hans-Christian Jasch



Chapter 3. Roland Freisler and the Volksgerichtshof: The Court as an Instrument of Terror

Robert D. Rachlin



Chapter 4. Guilt, Shame, Anger, Indignation: Nazi Law and Nazi Morals

Raphael Gross



Chapter 5. Discrimination, Degradation, Defiance: Jewish Lawyers under Nazism

Douglas G. Morris



Chapter 6. Evading Responsibility for Crimes against Humanity: Murderous Lawyers at Nuremberg

Harry Reicher



Chapter 7. Judging German Judges in the Third Reich: Excusing and Confronting the Past

Kenneth F. Ledford



Appendices





Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, 11 August 1919

Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State (Reichstag Fire Decree), 28 February 1933

Law to Remove the Distress of the People and the State (The Enabling Act), 23 March 1933

Hitler’s Call for a Nazi Lawyers’ League, 12 September 1928

Circular No. 8/1938 from Dr. Karl Leitmeyer, League of National Socialist Guardians of the Law, 4 March 1938

Law Amending Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure (Excerpts), 24 April 1934

White Rose - Leaflet 5, February 1943

The Sentencing of Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, 22 February 1943

The Fate of Markus Luftglass: Excerpt from the Record of the Nuremberg Justice Case, October 1941

Opinion and Sentence of the Nuremberg Special Court in the Case of Leo Katzenberger, 13 March 1942

Testimony of Curt Rothenberger at the Nuremberg Justice Case (Excerpts), 1947

Gustav Radbruch, “Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law” (excerpt), 1946



Contributors

Select Bibliography

Index