Nazi Law

Nazi Law

Dermot Donovan highlights Germanys nightmare criminal justice system of the 1930s and certain uneasy parallels with current events both at home and abroad.

Labour has just about doubled the prison population during their ten years in power. To all intents and purposes they have also made over 150 crimes imprisonable for life with the introduction of the Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection, as well as creating ASBO's, Parenting Contracts and Control Orders to name just a few of the measures designed to make everyone safer. Though you may notice certain parallels in what follows with the present day, you can thank your lucky stars you weren't deemed a criminal or even antisocial in Nazi Germany.

In 1933, not long after Hitler came to power, the Reichstag (German Parliament) was burnt down. Conveniently, Communists (who were now considered the terrorists of the day) were blamed for the attack and Hitler brought in legislation to combat the communist threat to national security (for what it's worth, the communist party were the largest opposing political party also). And so it was that the 'Reichstag Fire Decree' became law. This decree took all personal rights and freedoms that everyone in Germany took for granted at the time. Soon after, thousands of known communists and subversives were rounded up and put in concentration camps for an indefinite period, though in practice the average stay was two or three years with a condition of release being not to talk of their imprisonment otherwise they would be recalled. Within a couple of years, investigations into detainee deaths involving guards were abolished and worse still, any guard who prevented a detainee escaping would earn a bonus day off. Escapes usually being prevented by guards opening fire. Paradoxically, violence and killings amongst the detainees were always investigated. It should be noted these concentration camps, whilst brutal and squalid, should not be confused with the death camps that came later.

In July 1933 `The Law of Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Progeny' was brought in. This permitted the sterilization of any person who fitted the criteria. It included eight so-called hereditary defects, the most common amongst them being Schizophrenia and Depression; 220 Hereditary Courts were set up across the country and anyone with a history (or family history) of the eight defects was made to attend. Failure to do so would result in an arrest warrant being issued. Within a couple of years the criteria went a lot wider, now including alcoholics, prostitutes, repeat criminals and anyone whom the courts might deem as having antisocial behavior; 400,000 people would go on to be sterilised under this law, resulting in the deaths of thousands of women through botched operations. Under the logic of the Nazis ideology of an Aryan super race, if everyone with flaws was prevented from breeding it stood to reason eventually such flaws would no longer be in the German Peoples gene pool. Perhaps it should be noted that Germany was not the first country to practice what was known as Eugenics - 35 American states made it obligatory for the mentally handicapped from 1899, although only for a few years.

Then came `The Law Against Dangerous and Habitual Criminals'. This made it compulsory for the physical castration of repeat sex offenders. The law also brought about the indefinite detention of any serving prisoner (regardless of what sentence they might actually have been serving) if they were deemed an ongoing risk to the public.

One night in 1934, Hitler's right-arm man Himmler (creator of the infamous SS) executed The Night of the Long Knives and coordinated over 85 individual killings across Germany. Anyone who posed a risk to Hitler's leadership was taken out; this included prominent Nazi party members. In a press release afterwards Goebbels (Minister of Propaganda) called it .... the settling of scores. This confirmed Hitler's Germany beyond all doubt as a Gangster State.

Between 1933 and 1939, the number of capital offences rocketed from just 3 to 40. Worse still, any serving convicts (having already had their sentences extended indefinitely) now faced execution if any offence past or present was now a capital crime, as all changes in the law were applied retrospectively to Germany's beleaguered criminals. It should be noted the smart ones became Nazis themselves in the beginning, once it became apparent that to be a criminal outside of the protection of the party was not conducive to one's health.

1935 saw the implementation of the infamous Nuremberg Race Laws. This enshrined in law the full segregation of all German Jews and Jewish people, denying them any rights whatsoever. They could be robbed and beaten (an incident in 1938 known as The Night of Broken Glass saw an organised nationwide attack on Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues; hundreds died in the violence) at will by anybody with no protection from the law. Under this law it was an imprisonable offence to consort with Jewish people or for them to have any relationships with any non-Jewish German. In 1937, Pope Pious XI condemned those who worship the idols of race, people or state. Goebbels responded by engineering sex scandals in the church, saying at the time, "A general corruption of morals such as the history of civilisation has scarcely ever known.

The Law against Malicious Attacks made it an imprisonable offence to disrespect the Nazi Party in any way. This resulted in an epidemic of false accusations being made, which of course were all duly investigated - often resulting in people being jailed.

Then in 1939 the Nazis embarked on what they called the Child Euthanasia Programme. What it amounted to was the organised murder of disabled German children. They did not fit into the Nazis ideology of the Aryan super race to which they aspired. The Nazis believed that the German people might not fully understand the necessity of it, so no law was passed making it legal. Instead, what ensued was a nationwide conspiracy, with 305 bogus Childrens Paediatric Clinics being set up. Parents were encouraged to bring their children. To cover their tracks, the Nazis made sure the children were always placed a long way from home; this avoided any one clinic being known as a place of death by the locals, simply due to the fact nobody local had died there. Documents and later testimony shows there was actually a checklist of 50 illnesses drawn up that could be used for guidance when filling out death certificates. Approximately 5,000 disabled children would be killed in these clinics; usually with a morphine overdose.

After this, the Nazis pressed forward with mass murder by way of poison gas. Their victims: the mentally ill in the asylums. To begin with, airtight coaches were used. Inmates in the asylums are recorded as going berserk when one of these coaches turned up, it being an open secret that nobody was ever heard from or seen again after boarding one. This method was found to be both laborious and time-consuming with no real value: they didn't kill sufficient people quickly enough. Dummy showers were created and Operation Akton T4 was launched. Over 70,000 people would go to their death in these asylum shower rooms, 20,000 of whom were political or unmanageable criminal prisoners.

All this, of course, was only the prelude to the Holocaust of millions of men, women and children.

As stated earlier, you may notice certain disturbing parallels with current events both at home and abroad.

Whilst we vote in our politicians in the belief they have our best interests at heart, we should keep in mind the Jewish saying Never Forget. Hitler didn't seize power by force, he was voted in democratically. It was under the guise of National Security that he removed all previously enjoyed human rights and freedoms from the German people. He then created his Criminal Justice System in the interest of the Greater Good.

What might affect only a minority today might affect all of us tomorrow.