others anathematize it. Some idolize and anathematize it simultaneously. Our epoch does so. Perhaps we are living in a period of transition. Perhaps a transformation of values is taking place. Perhaps world community will become the supreme political treasure for the peoples, in place of their own particular States, which have at any rate hold this position hitherto. Perhaps we shall reach a point where the unleashing of a war deserving moral and also legal condemnation will, for the general legal conscience, constitute high treason against the world community. Perhaps we shall reach a point where it will be permissible, or even compulsory, to betray a government which starts such a war to foreign countries without a legal justification for calling this high treason towards one's country. At the moment in no nation is there a majority-let alone unanimity -- in support of this opinion. for breach of the peace between states can thus be ordered only if the fundamental principles of the international law currently valid and the scale of values which has for centuries been firmly rooted in the feeling of the European nations, are abandoned -that scale of values according to which the state, one's own sovereign state, forms the indispensa ble foundation for free personality. time when it stood upright in its full strength and acted through its organs. It must do so if it desires to prosecute individual persons for a breach of the peace between states. It must turn the defendants into private individuals. But it then combines them -so to speak on the private plane --with the help of the criminal law concept of a conspiracy which is taken from Anglo-Saxon law and is strange to us, gives them the many millions strong substructure 4 July M LJG 6-3 of organization and groups which are designated as criminal, and thereby again places a superperson before us.
it lays down fundamentally new law, if - with the British chief prosecutor - one measures them against existing international law. That which, originating in Europe, has finally spread to the whole world and is called international law, is, in essence, a law of the coordination of sovereign states. If one measures the regulations of the Charter against this law, one must say: The regulations of the Charter negate the basis of this law, they anticipate the law of a world state.
They are revolutionary. Perhaps in the hopes and longings of the nations the future is theirs. establish that they are now - revolutionarily new. The laws regarding war and peace between states had no place for them could not have any place for them. Thus they are criminal laws with retroactive force.
sovereignity of states in his humanly very moving speech and quite rightly saw that an unbridgeable gulf exists between the Charter and the international law at present valid, when it wants to see individuals punished as criminals for breach of international peace. He therefore shifts the trial from the plane of international law to that of constitutional law. It might possibly have happened that a German state power would have settled accounts after the war with those people who were responsible for launching the war. As the whole life of the German people is crippled today, those foreign powers who, in cooperation with each other on the basis of treaties, have territorial power in Germany, are undertaking this settlement of accounts. The Charter has laid down the rules which are to guide the Court in its investigation and verdict. One can here leave unexamined whether this opinion is legally right or not. Even if it is right, our question is not altered therby: When looking at the problem from this point of view, no less than from that of international law, we must know how far the Charter creates penal law with retroactive force. But we must now measure the regulations of the Charter not only against the international law which was valid for Germany and was transformed into national law - as people are wont to say - but also against the national criminal law which was binding on the defendants at the time of the deed. It is, after all, possible for a state, a member of the community of states, to be more cosmpolitan in its criminal law than the current international law. The rule of the Charter which is new with regard to existing international law may correspond to an already existing national law, and then it would not be a criminal law with retroactive force. So how was the breach of peace between states - particularly the breach of non-aggression pacts - treated in the national criminal law to which the defendants were subject at the time of the preparation and launching of the war? It is possible that, in a state, those people are threatened with punishment who have prepared or launched or waged a war in breach of the international obligations of that state. (78) That would actually be completely unpractical. For the result of a war also decides the internal settling of accounts. No criminal court threatens a victorious government.
But, in case of defeat, the defeat itself gives the measures of the settlement of account. In any case the regulations of the Charter regarding punishment for breach of the peace between states are new for the national criminal law which the defendants were subject to at the time of the deed. But if one does not understand the phrase "null um crimen, nulla poena sine lege" as it is understood on the European continent, i.e. as meaning that law in the sens of "lex" is a rule laid down by the state, a state law, but is of the opinion which - as far as I can see - is peculiar to English legal thinkers, that law in the sense of "lex" can also be a deeply rooted rule of ethics, or morality, we have one question left: As things happened to be, did the defendants, - formerly ministers, military leaders, directors of economy, heads of higher authorities, feel at the time of the deed,or could they have felt - that a behaviour which is now made punishable by a Retroactive law was against their duty? The answer to this question cannot be given unless one has an insight into the nature of the constitution of the German Reich at the moment of the deed. form, with that constitution, which it happened to have at any given moment. Such is the case with every member of the community of states. The United States and the British Empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the French Republic, Brazil and Switzerland stand inthe framework of the family of nations with that constitution which they happen to have at the time. this concrete legal structure of the Reich. For, without trying to do this, no one in this trial will be able to arrive at a decision regarding right and wrong. In addition it seems to me that many ethical question s which have been raised here require such an attempt to be made. But I am afraid that, with the picture presented by the prosecution, it is not possible to arrive as close to the truth as is possible in spite of the complex nature of the subject. the world on the part of a few dozen criminals. The German State, if one looks upon things in this way, becomes a mere shadow or tool. But this State had long been in existence; no one could set aside the enormous weight of its history.
It was only various things in this history, at home and especially abroad, that made Hitler's rise to power at all possible or which made it easier for him, and it was many things in this history that guided, urged on, limited or put a brake on Hitler in his choice of aims and means, and helped to decide the success or failure of his measures and undertakings. The prosecution was certainly right in lawying great stress on the so-called Fuehrer principle. This so-called Fuehrer principle was, in fact, for the eyes and even more for the cars of the German people and of the world in general, the organizational guiding principle in the development of the Reich constitution after 1933. character during the course of the years. In the life of men, leading and commanding present inherent contradictions. mankind, which is to rule by issuing commands, and there is another one, which is to lead the way by setting an example and to be followed voluntarily, which is to lead or whatever one wishes to call it. This differentiation between two fundamentally different methods of governing men is often already made difficult by the words used; in the German languages for instance, this is so because leading is sometimes called unconscious ruling, and ruling is sometimes called leading. Furthermore, the differentiation is rendered more difficult by the fact that it is at one time leading and at another commanding that governs the relations between the same persons or by the fact that methods which are actually applicable to leading are used for ruling, and vice versa. Every State has been is, and will be faced by the question of how it is to link up both these methods, so that they complement, advance and keep a check on each other.
Both methods appear continually and everywhere. There has never yet been a really great ruler who was not also a leader. But minor rulers are also subject to this law. And the Hitler regime brought about - at least to begin with - a synthesis of both method's which had at least the appearance of being tremendously efficient. To this synthesis has been attributed - perhaps not unjustly - much of what the world saw with wonder, sometimes approvingly but more often disapprovingly, as the result of an unheard of mobilization, concentration and increase in the energies of a nation. This particular synthesis of leading and commanding found its strongest expression in the person of Hitler himself, in his actions of leading, for instance in his speeches and in his commands. Hitler's acts of leading and commanding became the motive power of the German political life of that time. Justice must be done above all to this phenomenon. It is of absolutely decisive importance for judging the enormous mass of facts which has been produced here. With all the caution which is natural to men who think along scientific lines and which imposes on them an almost unconquerable mistrust of any attempt to comprehend and evaluate events which havehappened so recently, one can perhaps risk this assertion: In the course of the years, Hitler gave commanding an increasingly favoured place to the detriment of acts of loading, and finally brought it so much to the fore that commands and not the act of leading became the all decisive factor. Hitler the man of the people became more and more the dictator. The speeches in which he repeated himself ad nauseam even for his most willing followers and overshouted to the irritation even of members of his entourage who had faith in him, became rarer, but the legislative machine worked faster and faster. A later age will perhaps realize how far the great change in the attitude of the German people to Hitler, which was beginning even before the war, was the cause or effect of this change. While, on the question of something superficial, i.e., the question as to how he wished to be designated, Hitler pressed not to be called "Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor" any longer but only "Fuehrer", the way in which the state was being governed was following the exactly opposite path; leading disappeared more and more and there remained naked domination.
The Fuehrer's orders became the central element of the German state edifice. In the public hierarchy, this development brought with it rather an increase than a decrease in Hitler's power. The great majority of German officials and officers had seen nothing behind the organized leadership but a machinery of domination with a new label and, if possible, of an even more bureaucratic nature, side by side with the inherited state machinery. When Hitler's orders became the Alpha and Omega, they felt themselves, so to speak, back in the old familiar path. The queer and puzzling part was gone. They were back in their world of subordination. But anyway this development had given the Fuehrer's orders a special aura of sanctity for them too; there was no contradicting the Fuehrer's orders. One could perhaps raise objections but if the Fuehrer stuck to his order, the matter was decided. His orders were something quite different from the orders of any official of the hierarchy under him.
Here we have come to the fundamental question in this trial: What position did Hitler's orders occupy in the German constitution? Did they belong to the type of orders which were set aside by theCharter of this Court as grounds for the exclusion of punishment? so-called constitutional state ("Rechtsstaat") than for other people to witness the slow and then ever more rapid disintegration of the guarantees of the constitutional state; for he never came to feel at home in the new order and always stood half outside it. But, for this very reason, he probably knows more than anyone else about the peculiarities of this new order. An attempt must be made to make it comprehensible. State orders, whether they lay downrules or decide individual cases, can always be measured against the existing written and unwritten law, but also against the rules of international law, morals and religion.
Someone, even if only 4 July A LJG 8-1a the conscience of the person giving the orders ordered something which he had no right to order?
Or has he formed and published his order by an inadmissible procedure? But an unavoidable problem for all domination lies in this: Should or can it grant the members of its hierarchy, its officials and officers, the right or even impose on them the duty - to examine at any time any order which demands obedience from them, to determine whether it is lawful, and to decide accordingly whether to obey or refuse? an affirmative answer to this question. Only certain members of the hierarchy were ever granted this right; and they were not granted it without limits. This was also the case, for instance, under the extremely democratic constitution of the German Reich during the Weimar Republic and is so today under the occupation rule of the four great powers over Germany. members of the hierarchy, the order has legal force for them. acts of state which must be respected by the authorities even when they are defective. Certain acts of laying down rules, certain decisions on individual cases which have received legal force, are valid even when the person giving the order has exceeded his competence or has made a mistake in form. order must finally come to an end, orders must exist under every government that are binding on the members of the hierarchy under all circumstances and are therefore law where the officials are concerned, even if outsiders may see that they are defective as regards content or form, if measured against the previous laws of the state concerned or against rules imposed from outside the state. result of a plebiscite of the nation is a fully valid rule or an absolutely binding decree. Rousseau knew how much the " volonte de tous" can be in contradiction to what is right, but he did not fail to appreciate that the orders of this "volonte de tous" are 4 July A LJG 8-2a binding.
a national assembly or of a parliament may have the same force. Constitution of the German Reich, the laws resolved by a majority of the Reichstag large enough to alter the constitution and proclaimed by the president were under all circumstances law for all functionaries, including the independent courts of law, even if the legislator - knowingly or unknowingly - might have violated rules not imposed by the state but by churches or by the community of states. In the latter case the Reich would have been guilty of an international offence. For it would not have seen to it that its legislation was in accordance with international law. It would, therefore, have been responsible in accordance with the international regulations regarding reparation for international offences. But until the law concerned had been eliminated in accordance with the rules of German constitutional law, all officials of the hierarchy would have had to obey it. to examine its legal binding force with the aim of obeying or refusing to obey it, depending on the result of this examination. This is not different in any other state in the world. It never was and never can be different. Every state has had the experience of its ultimate orders, its highest orders, which must be binding on the hierarchy if the authority of the state is to exist at all, being on occasion in conflict with rules not imposed by the state-to divine law, to natural law and to the laws of reason. Good governments take trouble to avoid such conflicts. To the great sorrow - indeed to the despair - of many Germans, Hitler frequently brought about such conflicts - and serious conflicts. And, if only for this reason, his way of governing was not a good one, even though it was for some years successful in some spheres. Only it must here be asserted straight away: These conflicts never affected the entire nation or the entire hierarchy - at least 4 July A LJG 8-3a not immediately - but always merely groups of the nation or individual offices of the hierarchy; and it was only some of the people concerned who were fundamentally affected, many being only superficially involved; not to mention those conflicts that remained unknown to the overwhelming majority of the people and of the hierarchy, nor, therefore, those orders by which Hitler not only showed himself to be inhuman in individual cases, but simply outside the pale of what is human.
It is a purely academic question; Would Hitler's power have taken such deep root, or would it have maintained itself if these inhumanities had become known to larger sections of the people and of the hierarchy? They just did not? sions is concentrated in the hands of a single individual, the orders of this one man are absolutely binding on the members of the hierarchy. This individual is their sovereign, their legibus solutus, as was first formulated-as far as I can see-by French political science with as much logic as eloquence. After all, the world is not faced by such a phenomenon for the first time. In former times it may even have seemed to be normal. In the modern world, a world of constitutions based on the separation of powers under the supervision of the people, absolute monocracy does not seem to be right in principle. And even if this is not yet the case today, one day the world will know that the vast majority of thinking Germans did not think any differently on this matter from the majority of thinking people of other nations of Europe and outside it. come about as the result of events which no individual can grasp in their entirety and even less control at will . This is what happened in Germany from the beginning of 1933 onwards. This is what happened gradually, stage by stage to the parliamentary Weimar Republic, which under Hindenburg was changed into a presidential republic, in a process which partly furthered the development by acts of state which stressed legal forms and which can be read in state documents, but partly simply formed the rules by accepted custom. The Reich law of the 24 March 1933, by which the institution of Reich government laws was created and thus the separation of powers in the sense in which it had been customary was, in practice, eliminated, was, according to the transcript of the Reichstag session, brought about with a majority sufficient for altering the constitution.
Doubts about the legality of the law have nevertheless been raised on the grounds that a section of the elected deputies had been kept away from the session by the police and another section of the deputies who were present had been intimidated so that only an apparent majority sufficient for altering the constitution had passed the law. It has even been said that no Reichstag, not even if everybody had been present and all of them had voted, could have abolished the fundamental constitutional principle of the separation of powers, as no constitution could legalise its own suicide. We need not go into this: the institution of government laws became so firmly rooted as a result of undisputed practice that only a formal jurisprudence that is entirely cut off against the realities of life and to ignore the constitutional change which had taken place. And for the same reason one's arguments are misguided if one ignores how the institution of government laws, i. e. of cabinet laws, was later changed by custom into one of several forms in which the Fuehrer legislated. At the base of every state order, as of any order whatsoever, there lie habit and custom. From the time when Hitler became head of the state, practice quickly led to Hitler standing both before the hierarchy and before the whole people as the undisputed and undisputable possessor of all competence. The result of the development was at any rate that It was not least of all under the impression of the surprising successes, or what were considered successes in Germany and abroad, above all during the course of this war, that he became this. Perhaps the German people is - even though with great differences between North and South, West and East - particularly easily subjected to actual power, particularly easily led by orders, parti cularly used to the idea of a superior.
Thus the whole process may have been made easier. Finally the only thing that was not quite clear was Hitler's relationship to the judiciary. For, even in Hitler-Germany, it was not possible to kill the idea that it was essential to allow justice to be exercised by independent courts, at least in matters which concern the wide masses in their everyday life. Up to the highest group of party officials - this has been shown by some of the speeches by the then Reich Justice Leader. The defendant, Dr. Frank, presented here - there was resistance, which was actually not very successful, when justice in civil and ordinary criminal cases was also to be forced into the "sic volo sic jubeo" of the one man. But: apart from the judiciary, which was actually also tottering, absolute monocracy was complete. The Reichstag's pompous declaration about Hitler's legal position, dated the 26 April 1942 was actually only the statement of what had become practice long before.
The Fuehrer's orders were law already a considerable time before this second World War. a partner by the other states, and this in the whole field of politics. In this connection I do not wish to stress the way (so impressive to the German people and so fatal to all opposition) in which this took place in 1936 at the Olympic Games, a show which Hitler could not order the delegations of foreign nations to attend, as he ordered Germans to the Nurnberg party rally in the case of his state shows. I should like rather only to point out that the governments of the greatest nations in the world considered the word of this "almight" man the final decision, incontestably valid for every German and based their decisions on major questions on the fact that Hitler's order was incontestably valid. To mention only the most striking cases, this fact was relied upon when the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, after the Munich conference, displayed the famous peace paper when he landed at Croyden. This fact was adhered to when people went to war against the Reich as the barbarous despotism this one man.
it or who feel its effects abroad. The German political system in the Hitler era displeased a particularly large and ever increasing number of people at home and abroad. But that does not in any way alter the fact that it existed, not lastly because of the recognition from abroad and because of its effectiveness, which caused a British Prime Minister to make the new world-famous statement at a critical period, that democracies need two years longer than the totalitarian governments to attain a certain goal. Only one who has lived as if expelled from amongst his own people, amidst blindly believing masses who idolized this man as infallible, knows how firmly Hitler's power was anchored in the anonymous and innumerable following who believed him capable only of doing what was good and right. They did not know him personally, he was for them what propangada made of him, but this he was so uncompromisingly that everybody who saw him from close to and saw otherwise, knew clearly that resistance was absolutely useless and, in the eyes of other people, was not even martyrdom. if both the following assertions were to be realized at the same time in the rules of this trial?:
1.) The Reich was the despotism of this one man, and
2.) Every functionary had the right - in fact the duty amine the orders of the monocrat to determine their legality. For them these orders could not be illegal at all, with one exception which will be discussed later - an exception which, if carefully examined, is seen to be only an apparent one - namely with the exception of these cases in which the monocrat placed himself - ac cording to the indisputable values of our times - outside every human order, and in which a real question of right or wrong was not put at all and thus a real examination was not demanded.
Hitler's will was the ultimate authority for their consi derations on what to do and what not to do.
The Fuehrer's order cut off every discussion.
Therefore: A person who, the Fuehrer's, is not trying to provide a ground for being the assertion that his conduct is illegal; for the order ception of the difficult inner struggles which so many German officials had to fight out in these years in face of many a decree or resolution of Hitler's. For them such cases were not a question of a conflict between right and wrong:
disputes about legality sank into insignificance. For them the problem was one of legitimacy: as time went on, human and divine law opposed each other ever more strongly and more frequently.
Therefore: Whatever the Charter understands by the orders which it sets aside as a ground for exemption from punishment, can the Fuehrer's order be meant by this? Can it come within the meaning of this rule? Must one not accept this order for what it was according to the interior German constitution as it had developed, a constitution which had been explicitly or implicitly recognized by the community of states? Many Germans did not like Hitler's position of power from the very beginning, and to many Germans who welcomed it at first because they yearned for clear and quick decisions, it later became a horror.
But that does not in any way alter the following fact: must not those people who did their duty in this hierarchy, willingly or unwillingly, in accordance with this consittution, feel that an injustice was being done to them if they were sentenced because of a deed or an omission which was ordered by the Fuehrer ? as such states as have a despotic constitution. But up, to now this has not been the case. If it is to be different in the future, the non-despotic powers must take the necessary steps to prevent any member of the family of states truning into a despotic power and to prevent any despotic power entering the family circle from outside. Today people are realising more and more clearly that this is the crux of our question. The circumstances must be very special if a modern people lets itself be governed despotically, ever if it is as well disciplined as the German people. But as soon as such circumstances do exist, there are no internal counter-measures left. Then only the outside world can help. But if, instead of this, the outside world recognizes this constitution, it is impossible to see where successful internal resistance can come from. In pointing to these special circumstances and to the recognition by the outside world, we draw attention to facts, for the existence of which no German was, in our case, responsible but which cannot be ignored when one asks how all this was possible. knowledge of which one cannot fully grasp the fact that Hitler's absolute monocracy was able to get such a terribly firm hold. Hitler combined in his person all the powers of issuing legislative and administrative orders on the highest level, orders which could not be questioned and were absolutely valid but immediately below him the power of the state was divided up into a vast mass of spheres of competence. But the dividing lines between these spheres were not always sharply drawn. In the modern state, particularly in the major states of a technical era, this cannot be avoided.
But the tendency to exagerate questions of competence is certainly no less marked in Germany than in any other country. This facilitated the erection of dividing lines between the departments. Every department watched jealously to see that no other one trespassed into its field. It everywhere suspected tendencies of other departments to expand ; considering the great mass of tasks which the so-called "totalitarian" state had heaped upon itself, cases where two or three departments were competent for the same matter could not be avoided. Conflicts between departments were inevitable. If a conspiracy existed, as the Indictment assumes, the conspirators were remarkably incompetent organizers. Instead of co-operating and going through thick and thin together, they fought each other. Instead of a conspiracy we rather have a dispiracy. under Hitler has still to be written . And let us now remember that in the relations between all departments, and within each department, people surrounded themselves with ever increasing secrecy: between departments and, within the departments, between ranks and within the various ranks, more and more matters were classed as "secret". Never before has there been so much "public life", i.e. non-private life, in Germany as under Hitler; but also never before was public life so screened from the people, above all from the individual members of the hierarchy themselves, as under Hitler.
It became the mechanical connecting link for the whole. A functionary who met with objections or even resistance to one of his orders from other functionaries only needed to refer to an order of the Fuehrer's to get his way. For this reason many, very many, among those Germans who felt Hitler's regime to be intolerable, who indeed hated him like the devil, looked ahead only with the greatest anxiety to the time when this man would disappear from the scene : for what would happen when this connecting link disappeared It was a vicious circle.
I repeat : an order of the Fuehrer's was binding - and indeed legally binding- on the person to whom it was given, even if the directive was contrary to international law or to other traditional values.
But was there really no dividing line ? During the first period at any rate i.e. just at the time when the foundations of power were being laid, at the time when the monocratic constitution was being developed step by step Hitler's followers amongst the people saw in their Fuehrer a man close to the people, a selfless, almost superhumanly intuitive and clear thinking pilot, believed only the best of him and only had one worry : whether he was also choosing the right men as his assistants and whether he was always aware of what they were doing. The tremendous power, the unlimited authority were given to this Hitler. As in every state it also included harsh orders. But it was never intended as authority to be inhuman. Here lies the dividing line. But this line has at no time and nowhere been quite clearly drawn Today the German epople are completely disrupted in their opinions, feelings and intentions; but they are probably in agreement on one thing, with very few exceptions : they would not wish to draw this line with less severity as accusers than other peoples do towards their leaders. Beyond that line, Hitler's order constituted no legal justification. but follows a different course in peace to what it does in war time, when so many values are changed, and when men of all nations, especially in our days, take pride in deeds which would horrify them at any other time. And the decision to wage war does not in itself overstep that line, in spite of its tremendous consequences. Not in any nation in the world. Hitler himself, at any rate, did not recognise this dividing line of inhumanity of non-humanity, as a limit of obedience in his relations with his subordinates, and here also opposition would have been considered a crime punishable by death in the eyes and for the decisions of this man with limitless power who controlled an irresistible machine. What should a man who received an order overstepping this line, have done ? A terrible situation . The reply of Greek tragedy, the reply of Antigone in such a conflict cannot be imposed. It would be Utopian to expect it, or even deman it, as a mass phenomenon. the power of deciding about war and peace, a further word remains to be said about the forms which Hitler's orders assumed.
Hitler's orders are solely the decisions of this one man, whether they were given orally or in writting, and in the latter case, whether they were clothed in more or less ceremony. diately. They are called "Erlass" (Decree) like the Decree concerning the setting up of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia of 16 March 1939, or "Verordnung" (order), like the order for the execution of the Four-Year Plan of 19 October 1936, or "Weisung" (Directive), like the strategic decisions, so often cited during this trial or simply "Beschluss" (Decision) or "Anordnung" (Instructions) often they are signed in Hitler's name only; sometimes we find the signatures of one or more of the high or highest civil or military functionaries as well. But it would be fundamentally wrong to assume that this was a case of counter-signatures as they are understood in the modern democratic constitutional law of nations ruled constitutionally or by a parliament - of a counter-signature which makes the sighatory responsible to a parliament or to a State Court of Law. Hitler's orders were his own orders and only his own orders. He was much too fanatical a champion of the one-doctrine, i.e. of the principle that every decision must be made by one -and only one- man, to consider anything else even possible, above all things in the case of his own decisions. We will leave his high opinion of himself entirely aside in this connection. Whatever the more or less decorative significance of such counter-signing may have been, there was never any doubt that the Fuehrer's orders represented only his own decision and no one else's. Special attention must here be drawn to those laws which appeared as Reich Cabinet laws or Reichstag laws. Hitler's signing of a law of the Reich Cabinet represented the formal certification of a Cabinet decision. In actual fact, however, a stage was reached where the Reich Cabinet laws were also solely decisions by Hitler who had previously given some of his ministers the opportunity to state the opinion of their departments. And when Hitler signed a law which, according to its preamble, had been decreed by the Reichstag, this was again only a case of a formal certification. In reality, however, it was a decision by Hitler.
From November 1933 onwards at the latest, the German Reichstag was not a parliament but an assembly for the acclamation of Hitler's declarations or decisions. These scenes of legislation appeared to many people at home and abroad almost to be an attempt to make democratic forms of legislation ridiculous by caricaturing them; nobody -either at home or abroad- regarded them as proceedings during which an assembly of several hundred men arrived at a decision after consideration, speeches and counter-speeches. but which can immediately be recognised as his orders. They are drawn up by a Reich Minister or some other high functionary, who states in the introduction "The Fuehrer has ordered" the"Fuehrer has decreed". We have before us not an order by the signatory, but a report by the signatory on an order given orally by Hitler. The order by Hitler as Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces were thus often clothed in the form of such a report. by a member of the public if he possesses knowledge of the constitutional position. When the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (The OKW) issues an order, it is always an order by Hitler, Hitler himself, together with his working staff, was the OKW. The power to issue OKW orders rested solely with Hitler.