ABSTRACT
The two basic motivating forces behind National Socialist law were the desire to achieve a ‘racial renewal’ (völkischer Erneuerung) and to reinforce the ‘leadership principle’. The law was to contribute to the negative Utopian aim of purifying the German race and to remove all traces of disease, genetically conditioned crime, antisocial behaviour, perversity and degeneration. The deterrent effect of criminal justice was subordinate to the National Socialist concept of ‘biological justice’. No legal restrictions or moral scruples could stand in the way of this task. The will of the Führer, not the written law, was the ultimate legal authority and was to ensure that these aims were fulfilled. Hitler’s wishes were to be swiftly executed by his devoted subordinates in a smoothly functioning chain of command. The racially, socially, medically and politically undesirable elements of the race were to be extirpated and the master race united in an organic community. This approach was admirably summarised in an article in the official journal ‘Deutsches Recht’ (German Law) in 1937: ‘National Socialist law has put National Socialist ideology (Weltanschauung) into practice. The aim of this ideology and thus the purpose of the law is the purity, preservation, protection and improvement of the German race.’ ‘A judge’, wrote the the professional legal newspaper Deutsche Juristenzeitung in 1936, ‘is not set above the German people as an authority but is a part of the living community of the German people. It is not his task to apply a legal system which is superior to the German racial community or to act according to a generally accepted system of values. He must strengthen the concrete order of the racial community, destroy that which damages the race, punish behaviour which is offensive to the community and arbitrate quarrels between members of the community’. The fact that the will of the Führer was identical with the law was fundamental to the concept of 176leadership in National Socialism. Were this not the case, a leading legal text insisted, Hitler would merely be a dictator.
