Law of Nazi Germany

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.

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.

[2][3][4][5] After World War I, Germany considered the law a "most respected entity"[6] as the country regained stability and public confidence.

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.

[7] 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"[8] by restricting civil liberties and granting increased power to the police, and the SA arrested 4,000 members of the Communist Party.

[8] The Volkist Principle of Racial Inequality organised the judiciary by race; anyone not considered part of the Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) was seen as undeserving of legal protection.

[11] Two hundred sixty-seven synagogues in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland were destroyed; firefighters were instructed to only prevent the flames from spreading.

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".

Initially imposed in Germany, Nazi expansion during the Second World War resulted in the imposition of the Nuremberg Laws in occupied territories.

[13][16] In particular, the first condition ensured that many of the non-European ethnic and religious minorities residing in Germany (targeting the Jewish population in particular) 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.

This law effectively legitimized the Nazi eugenics movement, inspired by various meetings between Hitler and American and British eugenicists, as legal.

[18] 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.

The Nuremberg Charter, decreeing an International Military Tribunal (IMT), was announced on 8 August 1945 to conduct 13 trials made up of judges from the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union.

Those acquitted were Hjalmar Schacht (Economics Minister), Former Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche (Head of Press and Radio).