WEBINAR WEDNESDAYS

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

NAZI IDEOLOGY AND THE COURTS IN THE THIRD REICH

Presented by:

William Frederick Meinecke Jr. Historian United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Distributed by:

ARIZONA PROSECUTING ATTORNEYS’ ADVISORY COUNCIL 3838 N. Central Ave., Suite 850 Phoenix, Arizona 85012

ELIZABETH BURTON ORTIZ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Nazi Ideology and the Courts in the Third Reich: Assigned Readings

INSTRUCTOR: Dr. William Meinecke Jr, Ph.D. Historian, Levine Institute for United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

This seminar will outline the major tenants of Nazi racial ideology and explore two case studies—the Nuremberg Race Laws and the illegal “Euthanasia” killing program. Prosecutors played a key role in state direction of court decisions and in transmitting the tenants of Nazi racial ideology to the courts, in particular the prioritization of the needs of the "national community" over those of the individual. This emphasizes the need for prosecutors to uphold a culture that safeguards democratic principles, including individual rights and the due process of law.

ASSIGNED READINGS:

1) Nazi Ideology and , pp. 10-20 2) Law, Justice, and the Holocaust: Part II: Selected Documents showing Key Mechanisms used to Implement the Nazi Agenda, pp. 23-34 3) Case Study: Prosecutors and the T-4 “Euthanasia” Program, pp. 1-3 4) Judge , pg. 4

OPTIONAL FILM:

Path to Nazi Genocide (A 38 minute film on the Holocaust, divided into four chapters – participants may also choose to just view the first chapter of the film, “From 1918-1933”.)

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum nazi ideology etween 1933 and 1945, germany’s government, led by and the National Socialist (Nazi) party, carried out a deliberate, calculated attack on European Jewry. Basing their actions on antisemitic ideology and using World War II as a primary means to achieve their goals, they targeted Jews as their main enemy, killing six million Jewish men, women, and children by the time the war ended in 1945. This act of genocide is now known as the Holocaust. As part of their wide-reaching efforts to remove from German territory all those whom they consi­ dered racially, biologically, or socially unfit, the Nazis terrorized many other groups as well, including Roma (also known as Gypsies), Germans with mental and physical disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war. In the course of this state-sponsored tyranny, the Nazis left countless lives shattered and millions dead. Much has been written about what took place during the era of the Holocaust and where, when, and how the Nazis carried out their murderous plans. To fully comprehend the Nazis’ actions, however, one must consider and understand the theoretical underpin- nings that led them to conceive of such plans in the first place. In other words, what did the Nazis believe and how did they put their theories into practice? Adolf Hitler formulated and articulated the ideas that came to be known as Nazi ideology. Born in a small town in , Hitler had failed as an art student before becoming a corporal in the German army. Like many of his countrymen, he was embittered and humiliated by Germany’s defeat in and was further outraged by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, which had been signed in 1918 and which required the vanquished nation to give up vast territories and to pay heavy war debts. Hitler joined the nascent in the early 1920s, finding a political home among others who despised Germany’s democratic Weimar government—established immediately following Germany’s defeat in World War I—and who blamed Marxists and Jews for the country’s problems. Hitler used his personal charisma to rise to the top of the radical, militant party, soon becoming its leader. Amid economic crisis and social unrest throughout Germany, the ranks of the Nazis swelled to 50,000 by 1923. That same year, Hitler and the Nazi party attempted a coup, called the Beer-Hall Putsch, but failed to seize control of the government. In the trial that followed, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for treason. There, he wrote his political autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), in which he outlined his vision of a new future for Germany. In his book, Hitler stated that he first became an active antisemite during his formative years in Vienna, where he became familiar with social Darwinism. That theory sought to apply Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human society, imagining all of human history as a struggle for primacy between social groups, whether defined by race, ethnicity,

| 11 nation, or class. He also incorporated in his writing elements of Malthusian economics, a theory suggesting that the earth’s finite ability to produce food, as well as its cycles of disease and natural disaster, inherently limited population growth. Finally, Hitler combined those theories with writing about the nationalist German notion of “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden), which glorified peasant life and idealized the land. From this composite of social, economic, historical, and mystical elements, Hitler adapted and skillfully propagated an ideology that put the necessity of racial struggle at the center of human affairs. Hitler was convinced that he had found the key to comprehending an extraordinarily complex world. He believed that a person’s characteristics, attitudes, abilities, and behavior were determined by his or her so-called racial makeup. In Hitler’s view, all groups, races, or peoples (he used those terms interchangeably) carried within them traits that were im- mutably transmitted from one generation to the next. For better or for worse, no individual could overcome the innate qualities of race. Although most people accept the notion of an individual human impulse to survive, Hitler, like other social Darwinists, believed that all members of a race or ethnic group shared a collective instinct for survival. In his view, the continuation of a race primarily depended on the ability of its members to pass on its innate characteristics to succeeding generations. This notion translated to an abhorrence of intermingling between peoples, because it would lead to the pollution of the distinguishing elements of the race and, in turn, to the degeneration of its very nature. According to this thinking, this process could, over time, threaten and potentially extinguish an entire race. The second element in Hitler’s theory of survival involved the need to acquire “living space” (Lebensraum). Each race, he asserted, was driven to struggle with others for room in which to grow and for resources on which to thrive. “Every being strives for expansion,” he said in a speech in Erlangen, Germany, in November 1930, “and every nation strives for world domination.” Those who were successful in this territorial competition would con- tinue to expand their numbers, thereby overwhelming the smaller populations around them. The lesser races, weakened by a lack of living space, would eventually stagnate and die out. In the end, he judged the success or failure of each race by the size of its population and the area of territory it controlled: a great nation occupied a huge area of land; a weak one held little or none. The road map to racial survival depended not on peaceful coexis- tence with one’s neighbors but on defeating them in the quest for limited resources. In Hitler’s mind, however, the struggle for survival was not a neutral contest in which all races were different but equally entitled to supremacy. Instead, he believed in a hier- archy of racial groups in which some were inherently gifted—possessed of traits such as integrity, intelligence, and beauty—whereas others were fundamentally flawed by nature

12 | nazi ideology and the holocaust and were devious, stupid, or ugly. Because he held that all racial groups shared the same drive for collective survival (competing against one another for finite resources and space in which to grow), and because he thought that racial mixing diluted good characteristics and spread bad ones, Hitler viewed those races at the top of the hierarchy as being at risk of infiltration and destruction by those at the bottom. To survive, a superior race must not only separate itself from lesser ones but also continue to suppress and dominate those who would threaten to overtake it. Hitler imagined himself as a savior, applying his theoretical construct of racial struggle to the specific case of Germany. He condemned the democratic as weak and ineffectual. Moreover, he felt the country’s leaders had led the nation dangerously astray and had corrupted the German soul by overemphasizing the intrinsic worth of the individual. To Hitler, individuality was an egoistic and culture-corroding value because it duped people into forgetting about and thereby relinquishing their role in the collective group, which he called “race-consciousness.” Hitler was not alone in his beliefs. Nationalist political movements in Germany and Austria tended to view the state as a collective entity, describing it as a “National Commu- nity” (Volksgemeinschaft). More-extreme racist nationalists saw the state as a “community of the people” (völkische Gemeinschaft), by which they meant not just a national but a racial group imbued with a mystical sense of shared blood and common fate. In such a frame- work, which Hitler wholeheartedly adopted, a person mattered only for the role he or she played in serving the racial community. Hitler planned to use his power to reeducate the people along those lines by suppressing any political or spiritual loyalty beyond that to the race-nation. He would thus reclaim for Germany its place among the nations and would ensure its collective survival. The stakes of this racial “survival of the fittest” mentality were particularly high for Hitler and for those who adopted his views, because they believed themselves to be at the top of the hierarchy but threatened with infiltration and corruption by inferior peoples. They called themselves “Aryans,” although the term, in fact, refers to the language spoken by Indo-Germanic settlers from Persia and India who migrated over centuries into Europe. The Nazis perverted the word’s meaning to support racist ideas by viewing those of Ger- manic background as prime examples of “Aryan” stock, which they considered racially superior; the typical “Aryan” in the Nazi view was blond, blue-eyed, and tall. Additionally, for Hitler and the Nazis, a racial hierarchy existed even among so-called Aryan peoples, and they dubbed those of Nordic descent, especially “Aryan” Germans, as the ultimate “Master Race,” gifted above all others by virtue of innate superiority. As such, the Nazis believed they were destined to rule a vast empire they called Das Dritte Reich, or the Third Reich

nazi ideology | 13 (the Nazis used this term to emphasize historical continuity—First Reich: the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, 962–1806; Second Reich: Hohenzollern empire, 1871–1918; and the Third Reich, which would begin when the Nazi Party came to power). Hitler painted for his countrymen a terrifying picture of this great race of “Aryan” Germans threatened with imminent danger because of the Weimar Republic’s misguided leadership following World War I. By opening the doors of the nation to members of those races that the Nazis considered innately inferior and by granting them equal rights as German citizens, Hitler argued that the republic and its predecessors had encouraged intermarriage between “Aryan” Germans and inferior foreigners. This racial intermixing, in turn, produced offspring whose undesirable racial traits contaminated the purity of the “Aryan” bloodline and who were unlikely, because of their race, to be loyal to Germany. To make matters worse, the republic had also permitted the unlimited reproduction of people whom Hitler considered biologically flawed, degenerate, or a negative influence on the health of the race as a whole. This reckless lack of respect for the law of nature, Hitler argued, posed a dire threat to the purity of the “Aryan” German race and, consequently, to its very existence. “By mating again and again with other races,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “we may raise these races from their previous cultural level to a higher stage, but we will descend forever from our own high level.” Hitler and the Nazi party outlined in clear and unequivocal terms their racial enemies. Those races included Roma (Gypsies), Slavs, African Germans, and especially Jews. Like- wise, people with physical and mental disabilities, viewed as “hereditarily unfit” Germans, were deemed a biological threat to the health of the nation. As the Nazis framed it, the particular threat each so-called enemy posed to the collective whole was slightly different, but the essence was the same. Building on age-old prejudice and suspicion, Nazi rhetoric made a case for the segregation and exclusion of those whom they considered a danger to their racial purity. In Hitler’s mind, no group was more dangerous and more threatening than the Jews. Because he defined them as a race, he argued that they were instinctively driven to increase their numbers and dominate others. At the same time, he insisted that their methods of expansion were fundamentally suspect. Because Hitler tied racial continuation to territo- rial acquisition, he believed the Jews, who had no land of their own, should not exist at all. In fact, he theorized that when the Romans expelled the Jewish people from more than 2,000 years ago and scattered them across the empire in what has come to be called the Diaspora, the Jews should have begun a long decline, ending ultimately in extinction. So why did they continue to exist and even thrive? Hitler concluded that they must have adapted to their landless environment and cultivated traits—such as cunning,

14 | nazi ideology and the holocaust deviousness, and deceitfulness—that would ensure their survival. In so doing, their very existence in his view ran counter to nature and defied the intended course of human history. Specifically, Hitler believed that the Jews escaped extinction by migrating and attaching themselves to existing states or communities, always pushing their own interests and exploiting the native people whose territory they entered. According to Hitler, the Jewish nature was the opposite of the “Aryan” Germans’ nature. Whereas the Nazis prized racial hierarchies and purity of bloodlines, the Jews, in his view, sought race-mixing, assimila- tion, and equality; whereas the Germans valued national strength and loyalty, the Jews weakened states by cultivating international businesses and financial institutions that fostered interdependence among nations. Hitler presented Jews as parasites, who used devious means, such as financial profiteering, media control, and race-mixing, to weaken the “host” nation, dull its race-consciousness, and reduce its capacity to defend itself. He voiced his view in a speech in Nuremberg in January 1923: “The internal expurgation of the Jewish spirit is not possible in any Platonic way, for the Jewish spirit is the product of the Jewish person. Unless we expel the Jewish people soon, they will have Judaized our people within a very short time.” Hitler believed that the Soviet Union was the first country in which the Jews had tri- umphed and that the Jews were using the Communist state to enslave the Slavic population. Like other Nazi leaders and right-wing nationalist politicians, he imagined that Jews were creating conditions necessary for a Soviet revolutionary takeover in Germany: massive unemployment, hunger, and homelessness. In his view, then, rather than a legitimate political and economic structure, communism was a tool devised by Jews to disguise their dominance and control of the Slav and so-called Asiatic peoples of eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the fact that two of every three European Jews lived in eastern Europe, Hitler found further corroboration for his view that the region had been infiltrated and taken over by the Jewish people. Anti-Jewish paranoia was not original to Hitler or the Nazis. A fabricated publication called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”—first published in Russia in 1905—pur- ported to document the secret plans of Jewish leaders who were conspiring to take over the world by, among other methods, controlling the international economy and the media. That work, conclusively dismissed as “clumsy plagiarism” by the London Times in 1921, nevertheless continued to circulate throughout Europe and the United States, thus pro- viding support for worldwide antisemitic political movements. For Hitler, this distorted image of Jews as aggressors, quietly plotting to destabilize the state and secretly mani­ pulating the forces that guide the government, justified and allowed preemptive action against them. As he expressed it in Mein Kampf, the threat was dire: “If, with the help of

nazi ideology | 15 the Marxist creed, the Jew conquers the nations of the world, his crown will become the funeral wreath of humanity, and once again, this planet, empty of mankind, will move through the ether as it did thousands of years ago.”

Cover of a German antisemitic children’s book (left), Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), first published in Germany in 1935. This printing appeared in 1938. Even elementary schools became forums of political indoctrination and racial hatred. Nazi propaganda taught Germans to think in racist terms. germany, 1938. ushmm collection

This view of Jews as Communists who had used their cunning to take over vast areas of eastern Europe fit neatly within Hitler’s theories of territorial acquisition and population expansion. He contended that Germany was facing a dangerously low birth rate, largely because the lack of living space physically restricted the nation’s growth. He and many other Germans blamed those problems on the Versailles Treaty, which forced Germany to give up thousands of square miles of valuable land to its neighbors, above all to Poland in the east and to in the west. The result, as the Nazis saw it, was that Germany was losing the competition for land and population to the inferior Slavs, who occupied huge parts of the continent to the east. To survive, Hitler argued, Germany must go to war, break the encirclement of the country by its enemies, reconquer the territory lost after World War I, and create a vast empire in the east. Despite the costs of war, the increased living space would provide Ger- many with the lands needed to expand its population and with the resources necessary to elevate it to world-power status. In the threatening and urgent language so characteristic of , Hitler warned that the opportunity was almost lost. If “Aryan” Germans did

nazi ideology | 17 not act decisively, they would come under the control of the Communist Jews and, in turn, be swept away by the masses of barbaric, uncivilized Slavs to the east. For Hitler, German conquest would also destroy—once and for all time—the enemy of all peoples: the Jews. Hitler preached a simple tautology: on the one hand, the destruction of the Jews would weaken the Soviet state and facilitate the conquest of new living space for Germany; on the other hand, the realization of Germany’s natural claim to territory in the east would deal a decisive defeat to international Jewry. In the context of this ideological war against the Soviet Union, the Nazis planned and implemented the Holocaust. Hitler’s theories led to the persecution of so-called inferior races inside Germany and, following the onset of war, the subjugation of various groups throughout the new . The successful realization of his ideas, however, depended on the complete coo­p­ e­ra­tion and unity of the National Community, which was to be made up of race-conscious “Aryan” Germans who accepted, obeyed, and conformed with Nazi ideology and social norms. Hitler and the Nazis demanded the public’s unconditional obedience, tolerating no criticism or dissent. Indeed, they saw it as their duty to conduct a perpetual “self-purge” of society, rooting out those who failed to support their views and help realize their vision. For this reason, those who rejected Nazi ideology, even if they were considered racially pure “Aryan” Germans, found themselves in grave danger.

A German Jewish schoolboy (right) wears the compulsory yellow Star of David. berlin, germany,

1942. ushmm, courtesy of photo archives

For Adolf Hitler and those who adopted his theories and embraced his views, a race- conscious government naturally needed to tend to its survival imperatives: to identify

18 | nazi ideology and the holocaust German conquest, for Hitler, would also destroy those he perceived

to be the enemy of all peoples: the Jews. and segregate races, to subdue so-called inferior peoples and promote the reproduction of superior ones, and to go to war to seize territory from neighboring nations. Moral and legal considerations were irrelevant, Hitler cautioned, for the iron law of nature dictated that the strong take from the weak. By virtue of their racial superiority, Germans had the right—indeed the duty—to suppress and eliminate the racial threats in their midst and to seize territory from the Slavs and to repopulate it with “Aryan” Germans. By doing so, Hitler insisted, they were following their own natural instincts and serving the progress of humanity. In the end, Hitler’s program of war and genocide stemmed from what he saw as a hard equation of survival: “Aryan” Germans would have to expand and dominate, a process requiring the elimination of all racial threats—especially the Jews—or else they would face extinction themselves.

20 | nazi ideology and the holocaust Part II: SELECTED DOCUMENTS SHOWING KEY LEGAL MECHANISMS USED TO IMPLEMENT the NAZI AGENDA I. Antisemitic Legislation 1933–39

Antisemitism and the persecution of Jews were sharply curtailed “Jewish activity” in the medical central tenets of Nazi ideology. In their 25-point and legal professions. Subsequent decrees restricted party program published in 1920, Nazi party reimbursement of Jewish doctors from public members publicly declared their intention to (state) health insurance funds. The city of Berlin segregate Jews from “Aryan” society and to forbade Jewish lawyers and notaries to work on abrogate their political, legal, and civil rights. legal matters, the mayor of forbade Jewish doctors from treating non-Jewish patients, and Nazi leaders began to make good on their pledge the Bavarian interior ministry denied admission to persecute German Jews soon after their of Jewish students to medical school. assumption of power. During the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship, from 1933 until the outbreak At the national level, the Nazi government of war in 1939, Jews felt the effects of more than revoked the licenses of Jewish tax consultants, 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all imposed a 1.5 percent quota on the admission of aspects of their public and private lives. Many “non-Aryans” to public schools and universities, of these were national laws that had been issued fired Jewish civilian workers from the army, and by the German administration and affected all in early 1934, forbade Jewish actors to perform on Jews. But state, regional, and municipal officials, the stage or screen. Local governments also issued acting on their own initiatives, also promulgated regulations that affected other spheres of Jewish a barrage of exclusionary decrees in their own life: in , Jews could no longer slaughter communities. Thus, hundreds of individuals in animals according to ritual purity requirements, all levels of government throughout the country effectively preventing them from obeying Jewish were involved in the persecution of Jews as they dietary laws. conceived, discussed, drafted, adopted, enforced, and supported anti-Jewish legislation. No corner Government agencies at all levels aimed to exclude of Germany was left untouched. Jews from the economic sphere of Germany by preventing them from earning a living. Jews were The first major law to curtail the rights of Jewish required to register their domestic and foreign citizens was the Law for the Restoration of the property and assets, a prelude to the gradual Professional Civil Service of April 7, 1933, which expropriation of their material wealth by the excluded Jews and the “politically unreliable” state. Likewise, German authorities intended from civil service. The new law was the German to “Aryanize” all Jewish-owned businesses, a authorities’ first formulation of the so-called Aryan process involving the dismissal of Jewish workers Paragraph, a regulation used to exclude Jews (and and managers as well as the transfer of companies often, by extension, other “non-Aryans”) from and enterprises to non-Jewish Germans, who organizations, professions, and other aspects of bought them at prices officially fixed well below public life. This would become the foundation of market value. By the spring of 1939, such efforts the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, which defined had succeeded in transferring most Jewish-owned Jews not by religious belief but by ancestral businesses in Germany into “Aryan” hands. lineage and which formalized their segregation from the so-called Aryan population. The Nuremberg Race Laws formed the corner- stone of Nazi racial policy. Their introduction in In April 1933, German law restricted the number September 1935 heralded a new wave of antisemitic of Jewish students at German schools and uni- legislation that brought about immediate and versities. In the same month, further legislation concrete segregation. German court judges could

24 not cite legal commentaries or opinions written the licenses of Jewish lawyers. In August 1938, by Jewish authors, Jewish officers were expelled German authorities decreed that by January 1, 1939, from the army, and Jewish university students Jewish men and women bearing first names of were not allowed to sit for doctoral exams. “non-Jewish” origin had to add “Israel” and “Sara,” respectively, to their given names. All Jews were In 1937 and 1938, German authorities again obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their stepped up legislative persecution of German Jewish heritage, and, in the autumn of 1938, all Jews. They set out to impoverish Jews and remove Jewish passports were stamped with an identifying them from the German economy by requiring letter “J.” them to register their property and preventing them from earning a living. The Nazis forbade Following the (commonly Jewish doctors to treat non-Jews and they revoked known as “The Night of Broken Glass”) on November 9−10, 1938, Nazi legislation barred Jews from all public schools and universities, as well as from cinemas, theaters, and sports facilities. In many cities, Jews were forbidden to enter designated “Aryan” zones. The government required Jews to identify themselves in ways that would permanently separate them from the rest of the population. As the Nazi leaders quickened preparations for their European war of conquest, the antisemitic legislation they enacted in Germany and Austria paved the way for more radical persecution of Jews.

Signs like this one reading “Jews are not wanted here” were commonplace in . 1935. USHMM 25 The following list shows 29 of the more than 400 legal restrictions imposed upon Jews and other groups during the first six years of the Nazi regime.

1933 1936

March 31 January 11 Decree of the Berlin City Commissioner for Health The Executive Order on the Reich Tax Law forbids suspends Jewish doctors from the city’s social Jews to serve as tax consultants. welfare services. April 3 April 7 The Reich Veterinarians Law expels Jews from the The Law for the Restoration of the Professional profession. Civil Service removes Jews from government service. October 15 The Reich Ministry of Education bans Jewish April 7 teachers from public schools. The Law on the Admission to the Legal Profession forbids the admission of Jews to the bar.

April 25 1937 The Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities limits the number of Jewish students April 9 in public schools. The Mayor of Berlin orders public schools not to admit Jewish children until further notice. July 14 The Denaturalization Law revokes the citizenship of naturalized Jews and “undesirables.” 1938 October 4 The Law on Editors bans Jews from editorial posts. January 5 The Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names forbids Jews from changing their names.

1935 February 5 The Law on the Profession of Auctioneer excludes May 21 Jews from the profession. The Army Law expels Jewish officers from the army. March 18 September 15 The Gun Law bans Jewish gun merchants. The Nuremberg Race Laws exclude German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibit them from April 22 marrying or having sexual relations with persons The Decree against the Camouflage of of “German or German-related blood.” Jewish Firms forbids changing the names of Jewish-owned businesses.

April 26 The Order for the Disclosure of Jewish Assets requires Jews to report all property in excess of 5,000 reichsmarks. 26 July 11 1939 The Reich Ministry of the Interior bans Jews from health spas. February 21 The Decree concerning the Surrender of Precious August 17 Metals and Stones in Jewish Ownership requires The Executive Order on the Law on the Alteration Jews to turn in gold, silver, diamonds, and other of Family and Personal Names requires Jews bearing valuables to the state without compensation. first names of “non-Jewish” origin to adopt an additional name: “Israel” for men and “Sara” for August 1 women. The President of the German Lottery forbids the sale of lottery tickets to Jews. October 3 The Decree on the Confiscation of Jewish Property regulates the transfer of assets from Jews to non- Jews in Germany.

October 5 The Reich Ministry of the Interior invalidates all German passports held by Jews. Jews must surrender their old passports, which will become valid only after the letter “J” has been stamped on them.

November 12 The Decree on the Exclusion of Jews from German Economic Life closes all Jewish-owned businesses.

November 15 The Reich Ministry of Education expels all Jewish children from public schools.

November 28 The Reich Ministry of the Interior restricts the freedom of movement of Jews.

November 29 The Reich Ministry of the Interior forbids Jews to keep carrier pigeons.

December 14 The Executive Order on the Law on the Organization of National Work cancels all state contracts held with Jewish-owned firms. This sign, which reads “Jews are forbidden to use public phone booths,” was posted on a public telephone booth. Munich, December 21 Germany, 1942. USHMM The Law on Midwives bans all Jews from the profession.

27 II. Nuremberg Race Laws (Reich Citizenship Law and Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor) September 15, 1935

At their annual rally held in Nuremberg in September 1935, Nazi party leaders announced new laws that institutionalized many of the racial theories underpinning Nazi ideology. The so-called Nuremberg Race Laws were the cornerstone of the legalized persecution of Jews in Germany, excluding them from Reich citizenship and prohibiting them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or German- related blood.” Ancillary ordinances to these laws deprived German Jews of most political entitlements, including the right to vote or hold public office.

The Nuremberg Race Laws represented a major shift from traditional antisemitism, which defined Jews by religious belief, to a conception of Jews as members of a race, defined by blood and by lineage. For this reason, the Nuremberg Race Laws did not identify a “Jew” as someone with particular religious convictions but, instead, as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. Many Germans who had not practiced Judaism or who had not done so for years found themselves caught Wilhelm Stuckart, Nazi politician and State Secretary in the in the grip of Nazi terror. Even people with Jewish Ministry of the Interior, drafted the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935. USHMM grandparents who had converted to Christianity could be defined as Jews.

28 1 Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935

The Reichstag has unanimously enacted the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

Article 1 1. A subject of the state is a person who enjoys the protection of the German Reich and who in consequence has specific obligations toward it. 2. The status of subject of the state is acquired in accordance with the provisions of the Reich and the Reich Citizenship Law.

Article 2 1. A Reich citizen is a subject of the state who is of German or related blood, and proves by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the German people and Reich. 2. Reich citizenship is acquired through the granting of a Reich citizenship certificate. 3. The Reich citizen is the sole bearer of full political rights in accordance with the law.

Article 3 The Reich Minister of the Interior, in coordination with the Deputy of the Führer, will issue the legal and administrative orders required to implement and complete this law.

Nuremberg, September 15, 1935 At the Reich Party Congress of Freedom

The Führer and Reich Chancellor [signed] Adolf Hitler

The Reich Minister of the Interior [signed] Frick

Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor 2 of September 15, 1935

Moved by the understanding that purity of German blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German nation for all time, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

Article 1 1. Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law. 2. Annulment proceedings can be initiated only by the state prosecutor.

Article 2 Extramarital relations between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden.

1. Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1935, p. 1146. 2. Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1935, pp. 1146–7. 29 Article 3 Jews may not employ in their households female subjects of the state of German or related blood who are under 45 years old.

Article 4 1. Jews are forbidden to fly the Reich or national flag or display Reich colors. 2. They are, on the other hand, permitted to display the Jewish colors. The exercise of this right is protected by the state.

Article 5 1. Any person who violates the prohibition under Article 1 will be punished with a prison sentence. 2. A male who violates the prohibition under Article 2 will be punished with a jail term or a prison sentence. 3. Any person violating the provisions under Articles 3 or 4 will be punished with a jail term of up to one year and a fine, or with one or the other of these penalties.

Article 6 The Reich Minister of the Interior, in coordination with the Deputy of the Führer and the Reich Minister of Justice, will issue the legal and administrative regulations required to implement and complete this law.

Article 7 The law takes effect on the day following promulgation, except for Article 3, which goes into force on January 1, 1936.

Nuremberg, September 15, 1935 At the Reich Party Congress of Freedom

The Führer and Reich Chancellor [signed] Adolf Hitler The Reich Minster of the Interior [signed] Frick The Reich Minister of Justice [signed] Dr. Gürtner The Deputy of the Führer [signed] R. Hess

30 Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935. USHMM, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

31 III. Supreme Court Decision on the Nuremberg Race Laws December 9, 1936

For the Nazis, the principle of the inequality of On December 9, 1936, the Supreme Court was the races—and its legislative enactment in the given the opportunity to interpret the Nuremberg form of the Nuremberg Race Laws and the decrees Race Laws when the Reich prosecutor requested based upon them—applied to all areas of civil and that the court clarify precisely what was meant by criminal law. At the same time, they left it to the “sexual relations” as it appeared in the law. While courts to provide practical guidelines for their the court had previously interpreted the term to implementation. It thus became the province of mean sexual intercourse or related acts, its land- the Supreme Court to render final judgment on mark ruling broadened the meaning of “sexual the interpretation of the law, since, as the highest intercourse” to include any natural or unnatural appellate court in Germany, its decisions super- sexual act between members of the opposite sex seded those made by the lower courts. Indeed, the in which sexual urges are in any way gratified. The court eased the difficulties inherent in implementing court justified its ruling on the grounds that there anti-Jewish policies across a broad spectrum of would otherwise be almost insurmountable barriers cases from divorce to criminal race defilement. to prosecution since sexual intercourse as such The court’s acceptance and application of the race tended to take place among consenting adults laws served an important propaganda purpose as and in private. Further, the court stated that since well by explicitly conferring legitimacy on racial the law was intended to protect not only German discrimination and persecution. blood but also German honor, an expansion of the definition of “sexual relations” was required. As a In November 1936, Erwin Bumke, president of the result, the court found that any act that satisfied Supreme Court, indicated at a meeting of justice a sexual urge violated the law; that the crime was officials called to discuss the Nuremberg Race established even if the sexual act occurred outside Laws that the court could accept the broadest Germany; that intent was irrelevant in determining interpretation of those laws put forth by Ministry penalties; that a verbal proposition for sex violated of Justice State Secretary Dr. Roland Freisler. As the law; and, finally, that the crime did not require Freisler put the matter, “The law…is a regulation bodily contact. that establishes the very foundation of the German people, which we do not seek to narrow In this ruling and in many that followed, the but to broaden for the protection of our race.” Supreme Court infused its decisions with Nazi ideology and expanded already outrageous laws that extended rather than limited the reach of Nazi authority. In so doing, the court bolstered the legal framework upon which the Nazi persecution of Jews was based and played a pivotal role in allowing the Holocaust to happen.

32 In the Name of the German People 3

The Great Senate for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court in its session of December 9, 1936, in which the following participated:

The President of the Supreme Court Dr. Bumke as presiding judge The Vice President of the Supreme Court Bruner Senate President Dr. Witt Justices Schmitz, Dr. Tittel, Niethammer, Raestrup, Vogt, Dr. Hoffmann, Dr. Schultze in the appeal of the State’s Attorney under Article 137, Subsection 2, of the Court Organization Act has decided the following:

The term “sexual relations” in the context of the Blood Protection Laws does not include every kind of illicit sexual action [Unzucht], but is also not restricted to sexual intercourse alone. It includes the entire range of natural and unnatural sexual relations that, in addition to sexual intercourse, include all other sexual activities with a member of the opposite sex that according to the nature of the activities are intended to serve as a substitute for sexual intercourse in satisfying the sexual needs of a partner.

Grounds: The question of law, which is to be decided by the Great Senate under Article 137, Subsection 2, of the Court Organization Act upon the appeal of the State’s Attorney for the First Criminal Senate [of the Supreme Court] in two pending cases, is posed as follows:

Whether the term “sexual relations” in the context of Article 11 of the first Ordinance for the Implementation of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor of November 14, 1935 (Reichsgesetzblatt I, page 1334) is to be understood as referring only to intercourse, acts similar to intercourse, or all illicit sexual acts.

The requirement of Article 2 of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, which forbids extramarital relations between Jews and citizens of German or related blood, is elaborated upon in Article 11 of the first Ordinance for the Implementation of the Law to the extent that extramarital relations as defined here means only sexual relations. What is to be understood by the term “sexual relations” is left for the courts to decide.

“Sexual relations” is not to be made equivalent to all illicit sexual acts. If the legislator had intended to encompass all illicit sexual acts in the prohibition then he would have chosen to include in the wording of the law the word Unzucht [illicit sexual acts], which has long had clear and specific definition in jurisprudence. The term Unzucht encompasses much broader, and even one-sided, acts of a sexual nature that by no means could be labeled “sexual relations.”

Additionally one has to look at the law as a whole in the interpretation of Article 2. The proscription against marriage (Article 1) and the proscription against employment (Article 3) clearly show that the intent of the legislator is to secure the maintenance of the purity of German blood through general proscriptions independent of the special circumstances involved in individual cases. The proscription against marriage is true even in those cases where both parties have ruled out the possibility of children resulting from the union; the proscription against employment is true even if in individual cases the

3. Translated from Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Record Group R22, File 50. 33 Jewish member of a household, either because of age or illness, cannot be expected to make sexual advances. The comparison with these provisions leads to the conclusion that the provisions of Article 2 are valid not only in those cases involving extramarital sexual relations which result in pregnancy or which could have resulted in pregnancy.

Other difficulties argue against such a narrow definition equating “sexual relations” with “intercourse.” Such a definition would pose nearly insurmountable difficulties for the courts in obtaining evidence and force the discussion of the most delicate questions.

A wider interpretation is also required here because the provisions of the law serve not only to protect German blood but also to protect German honor. This requires that intercourse and such sexual activities —both actions and tolerations—between Jews and citizens of German or related blood that serve to satisfy the sexual urges of one party in a way other than through completion of intercourse be proscribed.

[Signed] Bumke Bruner Witt Schmitz Tittel Niethammer Raestrup Vogt Hoffmann Schultze

Map depicting central Germany and the degrees of forbidden marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans. Ca. 1935. USHMM, courtesy of Hans Pauli

34 Case Study: Prosecutors and the T-4 “Euthanasia” Program

Senior Prosecutor, Responsible for Prosecutions at the State Court in Vienna, convening as the Special Court for this District

Vienna, on September 16, 1940

Sent through the General State Prosecutor’s office in Vienna

To the Minister of Justice in Berlin

Regarding: Proceedings against Mrs. B nee W. for suspected violations under paragraph 1 of The Law against Insidious Attacks from December 20, 19341 and paragraph 7 of the General Ordinance from May 21, 1935.2

Responsible Official: Prosecutor Dr. J.

The 75-year-old mother of the accused had been living in “Am Steinhof”, an institution for the mentally ill in Vienna, since July 27, 1939. The mother has a son and three daughters. The accused and her two sisters visited her there about once a month. When they came to visit her on August 4, 1940, she was no longer there. When the accused inquired at the administrative office of the institution, she was informed that her mother had been transferred from the institution on July 29, 1940. According to the accused, she was unable to determine the current location of her mother. Persons unknown to the defendant both in the administrative office and in the hallway before the door remarked that mentally ill patients were being sent from Steinhof to Germany where they were disposed of, supposedly through lethal injection. As numerous patients from Baden near Vienna had died - or so the accused believed to have discovered - she assumed that her mother had also died in an institution in Germany or while in transit there. She explained that this uncertainty greatly demoralized her.

In early August 1940, the accused ran into Mrs. P. on the street in Baden. She told Mrs. P. that her mother had been sent from Steinhof to an unknown location, and asked if Mrs. P.’s cousin, K., who was living in the same institution, had also been sent elsewhere. Mrs. P. affirmed this, and said that her relatives also still did not know where her cousin had been taken.

1 Das Gesetz gegen heimtückische Angriffe auf Staat und Partei und zum Schutz der Parteiuniformen vom 20. Dezember 1934 (Law against Insidious Attacks on the State and Party and for the Protection of Party Uniforms of December 20, 1934). 2 Allgemeine Verordnung über Mitteilungen in Strafsachen von 21.5.1935 (General Ordnance on Reporting in Criminal Cases of May 21, 1935).

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum On August 17, 1940, the accused once again ran into Mrs. P. in a butcher’s shop in Baden. There were about 20 customers present at the time. She inquired once again about K. (Mrs. P.’s cousin) and discovered that she had been sent to [in Germany] and had died there on August 7, 1940.

The accused was very upset by this and remarked: “See, there you have it, now they’re killing the idiots!”3 and added to that:

“It’s not right that a woman who bears the Mother’s Cross4 should simply be killed in Germany; she would make sure that nothing happened to her mother; the elderly must be honored, instead, nowadays, they’re killing the old people; in Vienna, people who inquired about their institutionalized relatives heard and discussed rumors that incurable patients were being disposed of under German law.”

The accused spread the assertion that incurably, mentally ill patients were being transferred without notification of their relatives from Austria to Germany to be killed. Even if this charge were assumed to be false, it would still be sufficient to do serious harm to the well-being of the nation and the reputation of the government. This accusation would imply a planned, legally impermissible interference in the lives of ill folk comrades (Volksgenossen). Such an accusation can shake the trust of broader social circles in the existence of rule of law in the Germany, particularly those in Austria.

As the mayor of Baden reports, rumors of these kind are circulating in Baden (they are also circulating in Vienna). Accordingly, the accused would not have been aware of the possible falsehood of her assertion. Malicious intent or negligence therefore cannot be implied [from these statements]; even less so because - according to the mayor of Baden’s investigations - there have indeed been a conspicuous number of deaths of mentally ill patients transferred from facilities in Vienna to the state institution at Brandenburg. He reports the following: 1) The 30-year-old daughter of retired Colonel K. of Baden was in good health when she was transferred to Miederhört near Linz on July 22, 1940, and from there to the state institution at Brandenburg. On August 19, 1940, Colonel K. received written notice that his daughter had died of blood poisoning on August 5, 1940, and was cremated on police orders. He had not been informed at all of the transfer of his daughter to Brandenburg. 2) Mrs. K., who lives in Baden near Vienna, had a 24-year-old daughter who had been living in the institution at Steinhof for the last 10 years. She was transferred from Steinhof to

3 German: Narren. 4 The Mother’s Cross, or “Cross of Honor of the German Mother” (Ehrenkreuz der deutschen Mutter) was a state decoration conferred by the German government under the Nazis.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2 Brandenburg on July 29, 1940, and died there on August 7, 1940, from blood poisoning. Her death certificate is available. 3) Ms. H. from Baden was transferred from the institution at Maurer-Öhling to Brandenburg and died there. Her death certificate and ashes (urn) were sent to Baden. 4) Mr. E. from Baden was transferred from Steinhof to Brandenburg, where he died. The death certificate and ashes (urn) were sent to Baden. 5) 35-year-old Ms. K. from Baden was transferred from Mauer-Öhling to Brandenburg and died there on July 31, 1940, from a kidney infection (nephritis). The death certificate was sent to her guardian, Dr. H. In spite of the numerous death incidents in the state institution at Brandenburg of which we are aware from the reports of the mayor Baden alone, I would not like to assume that the criminal behavior of a third party caused the deaths of the above-named persons. I would therefore like to refrain - unless given a conflicting directive - from instituting special preliminary proceedings in this direction. The institution of such proceedings would more appropriately fall to the Senior Public Prosecutor who has jurisdiction in Brandenburg.

Because of the above-mentioned reasons, I am dismissing the proceedings against the accused for a suspected violation of Paragraph 1 of the Law against Insidious Attacks. The accused is a member of the National Socialist Women’s League. Her 19-year-old son was an illegal member of the Hitler Youth before the upheaval5 and is now a member of the SA.

As the assertion spread by the accused did not necessarily inspire unrest in wide circles of the population (this rumor is also the subject of another proceeding - see 3 SJs 38/40) and perhaps requires an explicit repudiation, I have seen fit to report the incident according to paragraph 7 of the General Ordinance from May 21, 1935-IIIa 18355/35. signed Dr. F.

Source: BA R3001/IIIg19 6593/40

5 German: Umbruch. Here the prosecutor is referring to the annexation of Austria by Germany in March 1938.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 3 Judge Lothar Kreyssig

EARLY LIFE Lothar Kreyssig was born to Lutheran parents. His father was a businessman in the wholesale grain trade. After graduating with an emergency diploma from secondary school in 1916, Kreyssig volunteered for military service in World War I. He fought in France, the Baltic States and in . After the war, he studied law in and passed the state exam in 1923. He then established a lawyers’ practice in until his appointment as state court judge in 1926. Unlike many of his colleagues, Kreyssig refused to join the Nazi party, when Hitler came to power in 1933. His activities as a leader in the , a movement within German Protestantism that opposed nazification of the church, led the Ministry of Justice to open disciplinary proceedings against him on multiple occasions. In 1937, Kreyssig requested a transfer to the state court in Brandenburg, where he remained for the rest of his legal career.

DISCOVERY OF EUTHANASIA PROGRAM In the early summer 1940, Kreyssig received reports of the transfer and sudden deaths of mentally ill patients from his district. He correctly deduced that there was a secret killing program underway in direct violation of existing law -- Paragraph 212 of the German Criminal Code forbade physicians from killing their patients. Kreyssig reported his suspicions to Reich Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner and filed a formal complaint against Reich Leader , who was charged with carrying out the killings. Kreyssig protested in a letter to Minister Gürtner, “They are taking certain mentally ill patients from asylums and killing them, without the knowledge of their relatives, their legal representatives and the family court– without the guarantee of orderly legal process and without the proper legal foundation.”

The Ministry of Justice called Kreyssig to Berlin for consultation. They showed him Hitler’s authorization for the secret killing program, printed on Hitler’s personal stationary. It said “Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. med. Brandt are charged with responsibility to extend the powers of specific doctors in such a way that, after the most careful assessment of their condition, those suffering from illnesses deemed to be incurable may be granted a mercy death“ and was signed A. Hitler.

A page of the Hadamar Institute's death register in which the causes of death were faked to conceal the euthanasia killings that took place there. AFTERMATH Kreyssig rejected Hitler’s authorization as law, insisting that a law must be public, have provisions against arbitrary action and provide for appeal. Shortly thereafter, the Ministry of Justice suspended Kreyssig with pay. Kreyssig retired from the bench in 1942. He spent the rest of the war on his farm in Brandenburg.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum