And the defendant Schlegelberger expressed the same thought in 1936:
Accordingly there can be no doubt that now the moral order and Weltanschanng, as recognized in the party program, has to be taken into consideration in the interpretation and application of every norm of the existing law.
We may now retrace some of the steps which the law lords of the Third Reich took to turn the judicial system into a subservient but effective agent of the regime. Some of these we have already noted. The centralization of the administration of justice in the Reich government, the vesting of overall authority in the Reich Ministry of Justice, and the creation of extraordinary courts, were essential steps in the process. Standing alone, these acts might have been unobjectionable, though the creation of special courts was expressly prohibited by Article 105 of the Weimar Constitution. But these first moves wore only the prelude to a series of deadly thrusts at the vitals of the judicial system. The early history of this organized attack on the fundamentals of law is summarized in the decision of the International Military Tribunal:
Similarly, the judiciary was subjected to control. Judges were removed from the bench for political or racial reasons. They were spied upon are made subject to the strongest pressure to join the Nazi Party as an alternative to being dismissed. When the Supreme Court acquitted three of the four defendants charged with complicity in the Reichstag fire, its jurisdiction in eases if treason, was thereafter taken over and given to a newly established "People's Court" consisting of two judges and five officials of the party. Special courts were set up to try political crimes and only party members were appointed as judges. Persons were arrested by tho SS for political reasons, and detained in prisons and concentration camps 3 and the judges were without power to intervene in any way. Pardons were granted to members of the Party who had been sentenced by the judges for proved offenses.
In 1935; several officials of tie Hohenstein concentration camp were convicted of inflicting brutal treatment on the inmates. High Nazi officials tried to influence the Court, and after the officials had been convicted, Hitler pardoned them all. In 1942, "judges" letters were sent out to all German judges by the Government, instructing them as to the "general lines" that they must follow.
The destruction of the judicial process continued throughout the era oi the third Reich. The period from the beginning of the new regime in 1933 until the outbreak of the war was characterized by the rise of special tribunals, and the steady decrease of procedural guaranties, niter 1939; the war accelerated the conversion of criminal justice into dictatorial administrative procedure until, at the end of the war, all resemblance to legal process had vanished. We turn now to an examination of the particular steps in the process.
Immediately after the seizure of power, the Nazis struck hard at the independence and integrity of the judiciary by dismissing or demanding politically unreliable judges and officials of the ministry of Justice. The temporary decree of 7 April, 1933, under which this was done, provided that:
Officials, whose former political activity docs not offer a guarantee that they, at all times without reservation, act in the interest of the national state, can be dismissed from service. For a period of three months after dismissal, they are accorded their former salary. From this time on, they receive 3/4 of their pension and corresponding survivor's benefits.
In 1937, similar language was embodied in permanent legislation in the Civil Service Act. The result of these measures was the elimination of all Jews and part-Jews, Social Democrats, and other opponents of the Nazi regime, from the bench and from the staff of the Ministry cf Justice.
Substantive criminal lav during this period was radically affected by the introduction of tho author itarian ideology of Third Reich, and the concept of the original as the enemy of the nation. The prime purpose of the new criminal provisions was to make the new,holders of power secure against all competition or attack. The Decree for the Protection of the German People immediately never-endeng_ stream of legislation intended to protect the persons, institutions, and. symbols of the Third Reich against all attacks of political enemies. The I field for the application of treason and high treason was vastly enlarged. by investing the most preparatory and auxillwtory acts with the character of treason. The range of application of the death penalty, in the past restricted to murder and some cases of homicide, was greatly widened, hand in hand with the sharpening of penalties and the extension of the scope of punishable atrocities went the attempt to widen the scope of German criminal jurisdiction beyond its territorial limits. The nova "race defilement" prohibitions, for example, were male applicable to offences committed abroad.
Examples of such draconic and tyrannical decrees arc legion. The decree of 24 April 1934 provided that the death penalty, or hard labor for life, or hard labor for two yours or more, should be inflicted:
1. If the act aimed at establishing or maintaining an organized combination for the preparation of high treason; or 2. If the act was directed toward making the Armed Forces or Police unfit for the execution of their duty to protect the stability of the German Reich from internal or external attacks; or 3. If the act was directed toward influencing the masses by making or distributing writings, recordings and pictures, or by the installation of wireless, telegraph, or telephone; or 4. If the act was committed abroad or was committed in such a manner that the perpetrator undertook to import writings, recordings or pictures from abroad for the purpose of distribution within the country.
Four years later, by August 1938, this tendency had progressed to a point where the following acts were all made punishable by death:
1. Whoever openly solicits or incites others to evade the fulfillment of compulsory military service in the German or an allied armed force, or otherwise openly seeks to paralyze or undermine the will of the German people or a.n allied nation to self-assertion by bearing arms;
2. Whoever undertakes to induce a soldier or conscriptee in the reserves to disobedience, opposition or violence against a superior, or to desertion or illegal absence or otherwise to undermine the discipline of the German or an allied military force; and 3. Whoever undertakes to cause himself or another to avoid the fulfillment of military service entirely, or to a limited extent, or temporarily by means of selfmultilation, or by means designed to deceive or by other methods.
But the Nazi jurists were not content to sharpen the letter of the laws; they subverted the spirit and method of interpretation of the criminal law in order to enable the courts to impose punishment, outside the law, in accordance with the political indology of the regime. Thus in June, 1935, Article 2 of the renal Code was amended to read as fellows:
Whoever commits an act which the law declares as punishable or which deserves punishment according to the fundamental idea of a penal law or the sound concept of the people, shall be punished. If no specific penal law can be directly applied to this act, then it shall be punished according to the law whose underlying spirit can be most readily applied to the act.
At the same time, the following articles were added to the Code of criminal Procedure:
ARTICLE 170a - If an act deserves punishment according to the common sense of the people, but is not declared punishable in the code, the prosecution must investigate whether the underlying principle of a penal law can be applied to the act and whether justice can be helped to triumph by the proper application of this penal law.
THE PRESIDENT: Because of electrical difficulties, it might be well to take the recess at this time. We will take a recess of 15 minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
ARTICLE 267a - If the main proceedings show that the defendant committed an act which deserves punishment according to the common sense of the people, but which is not declared punishable by the law, then the court must investigate whether the underlying principle of a penal law applies to this act and whether justice can be helped to triumph by the proper application of this penal law.
And, simultaneously, the Reich Supreme Court was ordered at this same time to set aside its prior decisions in order to bring the law into conformance with the ideology of the Third Reich. The decree is as follows:
The Reich Supreme Court, as the highest German Tribunal, must consider it its duty to effect an interpretation of the law which takes into account the change of ideology and of legal concepts which the new State has brought about. In order to be able to accomplish this task without having to show consideration for the decisions of the past brought about by other ideology and other legal concepts, it is ruled as follows: when a decision is made about a legal question, the Reich Court can deviate from a decision laid down before this law went into effect.
This tyrannical doctrine of "punishment by analogy" was given a sugar coating by Dr. Hans Frank:
In the future, criminal behavior, even if it docs not fail under formal penal precepts, will receive the deserved punishment if such behavior is considered punishable according to the healthy feelings of the people.
But once again, Joseph Goebbels was shameless enough to state the doctrine with complete frankness:
"While making his decisions the judge is to proceed less from the law than from the basic idea that the offender is to be eliminated from the community. During a war it is not so much a matter of whether a judgment is just or unjust but only whether the decision is expedient.
The stat must protect itself in the most efficient way and wipe them out entirely.... One must not proceed from the law, but from the resolution that the man must be wiped out."
On the administrative side, the pre-war years were characterized by ever closer collaboration between Himmler's Gestapo and the Reich Ministry of Justice. In February, 1937, Himmler directed that all Gestapo matters be made available to the district public prosecutors. Next month, the Reich Minister of Justice (Guertner) addressed a letter to all the district public prosecutors, calling attention to Himmler's directive and stating:
"In order to have this decree fulfill its purpose and in the interest of the closest possible collaboration between the Office of the Public Prosecutor and the authorities of the Gestapo, I hereby issue this supplementary decree that in future, public prosecutors routinely address ail requests for investigations to be conducted on the basis of reports of political nature received by them directly, to the Local and District Police authorities via the competent State Police Offices. When in cases based on such reports, the necessary interrogations of the accused or the witnesses are procured by the court itself or by the expert of the prosecution, and the police authorities are not at all involved in the proceedings, I request at the State Police Offices be informed of the proceedings as soon as possible."
The German jurists, who collaborated so closely with Himmler's minions, were equally willing to protect "over-zealous Nazis" against the penal consequences of their worst excesses. Late in 1933, a group of stern troopers (Sturmabteilung) committed vicious assaults and tortures on some political prisoners who had been confined in the concentration... camp of Kemna, near Wuppertal in the Ruhr. The description of this outrage by the Reich Minister of Justice reads as follows:
In the camp, some of the prisoners were exposed to the severest mishandling.
In most cases, shortly after their shipment had come in and when they were being interrogated, they would be beaten, partly upon their bare bodies, with rubber-cudgels, horse-whips, sticks, ox lashes and other objects. In many cases they had to lie down over a special caningbench, or were forced down onto it by guards, and their mouths were kept shut or they were gagged with balls of paper, pieces of cloth, bags or similar things, in order to prevent them from screaming. Other members of the guard in the meantime would begin to beat them up. Prisoners who fainted were kicked back to consciousness or had water thrown over them to wake them up and make them stand up again. After this, prisoners who were mistreated were frequently locked up in a small space under the stair-way or in an elevator without being given any medical attention or food and drink. In some cases, the injuries the prisoners received from their beatings made it necessary to transfer them to hospitals.
Several prisoners also were forced to eat unwashed herrings from the barrel, which had also been sprinkled with salt.......When they had finished the herrings, the prisoners, who were naturally suffering from the tormenting thirst, were not allowed to have water brought them.
Proceedings against the storm troop leaders in a disciplinary tribunal of the Nazi party ended in a more reprimand and deprivation of the right to held public office for one year. The files of the ministry of Justice concerning this at airocious episode contain the recommendations of various officials, including the defendant Joel, that criminal proceedings against the perpetrators should be canceled.
This recommendation was adopted and forwarded to Hitler by Minister Guertner, who, for justification, pointed to the circumstances hat the culprits were not experienced concentration camp guards, that the majority of the victims were Communists, that in some cases, the victims had been obstinate and insubordinate, and that Communism had an especially strong hold in the Wuppertal area.
Before the outbreak of war, the main objective of Nazi penal innovations was to suppress internal opposition to the new regine, and to render life intolerable for the Jews. During the early years of the war, the Nazi jurists were largely concerned with legal problems incident to the occupation of Poland, France, and the other nations overrun by the Wehrmacht. The extension of German law to the occupied areas, and the outrages committed thereunder, constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity on a grand scale, which will be described in due course. German criminal law was also applied extensively to acts committed outside the Reich, even when committed by foreigners. Acts committed by a foreigner outside the Reich could even constitute treason against the Reich.
But the war also brought a mass of new criminal legislation within company. This new legislation was influenced by the necessities of war, but also contained matured concepts of National Socialist criminal policy. The principal aim was to guarantee the security of the Nazi regime, and bolster the economic and military strength of Germany, through extremely harsh criminal punishments. The chief weapon was the unsparing and almost indiscriminate use of capital punishment.
Later on, as Germany's military situation worsened, the death penalty became an ordinary sentence for a great variety of offences. The increased severity of air raids resulted in capital punishment or long prison sentences for crimes committed during black-outs, even very miner looting. Economic hardship and shortages of materials were accompanied by laws prescribing penal servitude, or even death, for anyone who destroyed or removed food or other supplies. Toward the end of the war, a desperate attempt was made to cope with the growing defeatism by imposing the death penalty for spreading rumors, listening to foreign broadcasts and even for the most minor derogatory remarks about the Hitler regine or pessimism concerning Germany's chances of military success.
The war brought new and extraordinary procedures, as well as new crimes. Despite all that had been done in pre-war years, the courts wore still handing down some sentences which, in the eyes of Berlin, were too mild, and once such a final judgment had. been given, nothing could be done about it.
The whole idea of the finality of judgments had long been a thorn in the flesh cf the Nazi jurists. Accordingly two weeks after the cut-break of war, a decree was promulgated which provided that, if the Chief Reich Prosecutor had "serious misgivings" concerning the justice of a sentence, he could, within year thereafter, file a special around and secure a second trial of the case. The officials of the Reich Ministry cf Justice, who controlled the Public Prosecutors, reviewed the criminal decisions and directed the Chief Prosecutor to file appeals in cases where they deemed the punishment insufficient. If the first decision had been rendered by the regular courts, the second trial was held by the Special Penal Senate of the Reich Supreme Court. If the first decision had been made by the People's Court, on the ether hand, the second trial was held by the Special Senate of the People's Court.
In 1940, an analogous procedure was authorized under which the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Reich could lodge with the Supreme Court a petition for "nullification" against final judgments of the regular criminal courts or the Special Courts "if the judgment is not justified because of an erroneous application of law on the established facts." The Supreme Court was authorized either to render a new judgment or to send the case back to a lower court for a new trial under binding instructions as to the legal principles which should govern. Not content with this elaborate system for punitive double jeopardy, the right of the Chief Public Prosecutor to attack final judgments by means of the nullification procedure was again enlarged in 1942, by extension to questions of law and to the adequacy of the punishment. This now regulation provided the prosecution, tut not the defense, with an unlimited right to ask for a new trial within one year after the decision had been rendered.
On the day of the attack on Poland, a new assault on the tenure and independence of the judiciary was made. By this new decree, judges were alleged to take any assignment whatsoever, as judge, prosecutor, or administrative official, and on any regular or special court, according to the orders of the Reich Minister of Justice. Similar powers were given to the Presidents of the district courts of appeal within their respective districts.
It might have been thought that, after the purge of Jewish and politically dissident judges in 1933, the permanent subjection of the judiciary to dismissal for political reasons in 1937, and their complete subordination to the Reich Ministry of Justice in 1939 Hitler would have at last obtained a suitable judiciary for his most extreme purposes. Apparently, however, pre-Hitler legal training sometimes had the unfortunate effect that even trusted Nazi judges failed, in their decisions, to measure up to the edeology and expectations of the Third Reich. At all events, something like a crisis in the German judicial system occurred in 1942.
On 26 April, 1942, Hitler made a speech before the Reichstag in which he reviewed the effects of the hard winter of 1941-1942, and exhorted the German people to even greater sacrifices in order to achieve victory. In the course of this speech, Hitler made certain remarks about the German legal profession and the administration of justice which had an immediate and pronounced effect. Hitler said:
"I do expect one thing: that the nation gives me the right to interwere immediately and to take action myself wherever a person had failed tc render unqualified obedience and service in the performance of the greater task which is a matter of to be or not to be. The front and the homeland, the transport system, administration and justice must obey only one idea, that of achieving victory. In times like the present, no one can insist on his established rights, but everyone must know that today there are only duties.
I therefore ask the German Reichstag to confirm expressly that I have the legal right tc keep everybody to his duty and to cashier or remove from office or position, without regard for his person or his established rights, whoever, in my view and according to my considered opinion, has failed to do his duty.
Furthermore, I expect the German legal profession to understand that the nation is not here for them, but that they are here for the nation; that is. The world, which includes Germany, must not decline in order that formal law may live, but that Germany must live, irrespective of the contradictions cf formal justice.
To quote one example, I fail tc understand why a criminal who married in 1937, illtreated his wife until she became insane and finally died as a result cf the last act of illtreatment, should be sentenced to five years in a penitentiary at a moment when tens of thousands of honourable German men must die tc save the homeland from annihilation to the hands of Bolshevism.
"From now on, I shall intervene in these cases and remove from office these judges who evidently do not understand the demand cf the hour."
Immediately after Hitler's speech, the Reichstag, adopted the following resolutions:
There can be no doubt in this present state of war, when the German nation wages its fight for its very existence, that the Fuehrer must exercise the right, which he claims, to do everything which serves or helps to achieve victory. Therefore, the Fuehrer, in his office as the Leader cf the Nation, Supreme Commander of the termed Forces, the Head of the Government, and in supreme possession of all Executive Power, as Supreme Law Lord, and as Leader of the Party, has to be in a position to enforce with all means which he may consider suitable, every German's duties, whether he might be a common soldier or an officer, a subordinate or high civil servant or judge, a leading or subordinate functionary of the Party, a worker, or an employee. In case of violations of duties, he had the right to impose the proper penance, after a conscientious examination of the case. This can be done without consideration for the so-called civil service rights. In particular, he may remove him from office, his rank and his position, without resort tc the established procedures.
This menacing blast from the Fuehrer, and the resolution cf the Reichstay, wiped away the last remains of judicial independence in Germany. Furthermore, within a few months a complete reorganization of the upper levels of the Ministry of Justice took place. Schlegelberger, who had seen the storm coming and made desperate efforts to meet Hitler's wishes, was nevertheless retired and replaced by Thierack. A special Hitler decree in August, 1942 gave the new Reich Minister sweeping powers to bring the administration of justice into conformity with the needs of the regime; it read:
A strong administration of justice is necessary for the fulfillment of the tasks cf the great German Reich. Therefore, I commission and empower he Reich Minister of Justice to establish a National Socialist administration of Justice, and to take all necessary measures in accordance with the Reich Ministry and Chief of the Reich Chancellery and the Leader of the Party-Chancellery. He can hereby deviate from any existing law.
At the same time, Roland Freishler left the Justice Ministry to become President of the People's Court, and the defendant Rothenterger took Freisler's old job as Under-Secretary. Earlier in the year, Rothenberger, previously president of the district court of appeals at Hamburg, had attracted the Fuehrer's attention by submitting to him a long thesis on "judicial reform." This thesis is a curious document; it speaks at length of the honor and dignity of the judges' function and of the need for justice as the foundation of the Third Reich, but the reason it won the Fuehrer's approval can perhaps be mere clearly inferred from the two following quotations:
........The present crisis in the administration of justice today is close to such a climax. A totally new conception cf the administration cf justice must be created, particularly a National Socialist judiciary, and for this the druggist's salve is not Sufficient; only the knife of the surgeon, as will later be shown, can bring about the solution.
......The criterion, however, for the functions of justice, and particularly of the judge in the National Socialist Reich, must be a justice, which meets the demands cf National Socialism.
He who is striding gigantically toward a new world order cannot move in the limitation of an orderly administration of justice. To accomplish such a far-reaching revolution in domestic and foreign policy as only possible if, on the one hand, all outmoded institutions, concepts, and habits have seen done away with - if need be, in a brutal manner - and if, on the other hand, institutions that are in themselves necessary but are not directly instrumental in the achievement of a great goal and which, in fact, impede it, are temporarily thrust to the background.
All clamer about lawlessness, despotism, injustice, etc., is at present nothing but a lack of insight into the political situation............
At the time he was appointed Minister, Thierack also became the President of the German Academy of Law, and of the National Socialist Association of Jurists. The temper of the now administration of justice was reflected in Thierack's announcement to the Germany academy, as follows:
The formulation of law is n, t a matter of science and a goal in itself, but rather a matter of political leadership and organization. Therefore, the activities of the academy relating to the formulation of law must be coordinated with the aims of political leadership.
At the time of their appointments, Thierack and Rothenberger envisaged an ambitious program for simplifying the hierarchy of German courts, drastically reducing the number of judges, and "modernizing" the education and training of judges in accordance with prevailing political thought. Much of this program was never realized, but Thierack and Rothenberger did succeed in developing new devices for direct control of judicial decisions by the government. This has been also foreshadowed in Rothenberger's thesis submitted to Hitler:
.....a judge who is in direct relation of fealty to the Fuehrer must judge "like the Fuehrer." In order to guarantee this, a direct liaison officer without any intermediate agency must be established between the Fuehrer and the German judge, that is, also in the form of a judge, the supreme judge in Germany, the "Judge of the Fuehrer." He is to convey to the German judge the will of the Fuehner by authentic explanation of the laws and regulations. At the same time he must, upon the request of the judge, give binding information in current trials concerning fundamental political, economic or legal problems which cannot be surveyed by the individual judge.
In part, this executive control was accomplished by conferences between the prosecutors and the judges, in which the prosecutor advised the judge what measure cf sentence the Ministry cf Justice thought fitting in a particular case.
But an even more effective device was a series of confidential circulars tc the judges known as "judges letters" (Richterbriefe) which Thierack dispatched, over his own signature as Minister of Justice, to the judges and prosecutors throughout the German judician system, Thier-ack announced this forthcoming series in September, 1942, in the following letter to judges and prosecutors throughout the Reich:
"To aid the judge in fulfilling his high duty in the life of our people, I decided to publish the "Judges' Letters." They shall be distributed tc all German judges and prosecutors."
These Judges' Letters will contain decisions that seen to be especially worth while mentioning, on account of result or argumentation. On these decisions, I will show how a better decision night or should have been found; on the other hand good, and for the national community important, decisions shall be cited as examples.
The Judges'Letters are not meant to create a new casuistry, which would lead to a further ossification of the administration of justice and to a guardianship over the judges. They will rather tell how judicial authorities think National Socialist justice should be applied and thereby give tho judge tho inner security and freedom to cone to the right decision.
The contents of these letters are confidential; the chief of an office shall keep them, and lot every judge and prosecutor take notice of them against receipt.
For tho publication of the Judges' letters, tho collaboration of all the judges and prosecutors is needed. I expect that suitable decisions from all branches of justice will be presented to me On publication, neither the judge nor the deciding court will be named.
I am convinced that tho Judges' Letters will help to orient the administration of justice uniformly according to National Socialist doctrines.
The first letter was published on 1 October, 1942. In a sort of hertatory prelude, many thoughts and ideas from the Rothenberger thesis were embodied. Thereafter, a number of criminal cases and tho sentences therein imposed were set forth and commented upon.
Four cases dealing with crimes committed during blackouts were described; those decisions in which tho loathe penalty had been imposed were approved, tho others were all criticized for being too mild. Six cases dealing with sex offences followed; the sentences in five of than were condemned as utterly inadequate. No case was cited whore the sentence was thought too severe.
At the end of the letter, three cases dealing with Jews were discussed in great detail. On of these dealt with the racial law which required all Jews to adopt the surname "Sarah" or"Israel" according to their sex. A Jewish women had neglected to apply to the telephone company to change her listing by the addition of the name "Sarah". The district court sentenced her to a fine of thirty Reichsmarks, or 19 days in prison. The court set forth in its opinion that certain other courts had construed the law as not requiring an application to change a telephone listing, and that the Jewess might have relied on these decisions. Thierack's letter described the Jewess' action as "typical Jewish camouflage in her business dealings" and stated that the lack of uniformity in the decisions in no way justified leniency in the punishment.
In the second case, a special coffee ration had been distributed in a certain town, in the autumn of 1940. A large number of Jews had applied to receive the ration, However, since Jews were automatically excluded from the distribution, they did not receive any coffee. The following year, the food authorities imposed a fine on the Jews for the offense of having applied for tho coffe; thereupon several hundred Jews sought relief against the fine in tho district court. The judge rescinded tho fine on the basis of the statute of limitations and for other legal reasons, and expressed tho opinion that the Jews had not committed any punishable act in merely applying for the coffee. On this decision, tho Reich Minister's letter commented as follows:
The ruling of tho district court, in form and content borders on embarrassing a German administrative authority to tho advantage of Jewry. Tho judge should have asked himself the question: what is the reaction of the jew to this 20-page-long ruling, which certified that he and the 500 other Jews are right and that ho won over a German authority, and does not devote one word to the reaction of our own people to this insolent and arrogant conduct of the Jews. Even if the judge was convinced that the food office had arrived at a wrong judgment of the legal position, and if he could not make up his mind to wait with his decision until the question, if necessary, was clarified by time higher authorities, he should have chosen a form Its ruling which, under my circumstances, avoided her tho prestige of the food office and thus putting the Jew expressly in the right toward it.
In the third case, a wealthy young Jew had committed certain violations of the German foreign currency regulations. The district court, although it found certain estenuating circumstances, imposed a heavy fine on the jew and sentenced him to two years' imprisonment. This decision particularly provoked the Reich Minister Justice who said:
The court applies tho same criteria for the award of punishment as it would if it were dealing with a German follow citizen as defendmt. This cannot be sanctioned. The Jew is the enemy of the German people, who has plotted, stirred up, and prolonged this. In doing so, he has brought unspeakable misery upon our people. Not only is he of different, but he is rise of inferior race. Justice, which must not measure different matters by the same standard, demands that just this racial respect must be considered in the award of punishment. Here, where a profiteering transaction typical for tho defendant as a Jew, and to the disadvantage of the German people had to be judged, the verdict, in rewarding punishment, must take into consideration in the first place that the defendant for years had deprived the German people of considerable assets...........This typical Jewish parasitical attitude required the most severe judgment and heaviest punishment.
Beginning with this issue in October 1942, the Judges' Letters were issued regularly and continued to be filled with exhertations to the utmost ruthlessness in the imposition of sentences. Later on, they were supplemented by "Lawyers' Letters" (Rechtsanwaltbriefe). As time wont on, German criminal law and procedure scarcely retained my other elements than that of throatoning wavering elements of the population into submission. The sholesale destruction of legal process culminated at the very end of the war in the creation of the emergency civilian courts martial, which have already been mentioned. Those courts martial were given jurisdiction "for all kinds of crimes endangering the German fighting power or undermining the people's defensive strenght", And, if they found tho defendant guilty, could impose only the death sentence.
The end of the war out short the life of those tribunuls, after ten weeks of judicial terrorism.
"roughout the war, the administrative and penal brunches of the Ministry of Justice continued to cooperate in protecting loyal followers of the Third Reich from criminal prosecution for their innumerable atrocities against Poles, Jews, and other "undersirable clements". At the successful conclusion of the Polish campaign, an unpublished decree suspended all prosecution against racial Germans in Poland for any punishable offences which they night have committed against Poles during the polish was "due to to anger aroused by the cruelties committed by the Poles." In 1941, tho defend Schlegelberger assured Rudolf Hess that ho would consider "benevolently" an umnesty in any particular case of atrocities committed after the conclusion the polish campaign. An example of this "benevolent consideration" may be worth noting. Have Germans, one of whom was a sergeant of police, shot two Polish priests in Poland in the spring of 1940 "for no reason other than hatred for the Catholic clergy." A Special Court imposed 15 yours' penal servitude for manslaughter. After two years of the sentence had been served, Himmler asked that the Germans be pardoned, and that it be made possible for them to "win their reprieve" through service at the front. At Himnler's request, the Ministry of Justice reduced the sentence to five yours and both non were released from confinement and assigned to duty in a waffen-SS unit.
After the advent of Thierack and Rothenberger, cooperation between tho Ministry of Justice and Himmler's police become oven closer. On the 18th of September, 1942, Thierack and Rothenberger hold a long conference with Himmler and other high-ranking SS loaders at Hitler's headquarters. Thierack's notes of the meeting included the following: