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Hitler and the law, 1920-1945: Clive Pearson explains the process by which Hitler's will became the law in Nazi Germany.

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Adolph Hitler's contempt for traditional German law had been manifest from his earliest days as leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). The NSDAP's Twenty-Five point programme of 1920 proposed that existing law 'be replaced by a German common law'. By implication the NSDAP believed that the primary purpose of law should be to serve a racially defined Aryan national community, enshrined in a 'strong central state power' that would replace the democratic Constitution of 1919. Hitler shared the Party's rejection of the principle of equality for all before the law. However, by 1921 he had confused the exclusivist principles of the Party by imposing one of his own, namely that the 'Leader Principle' (Fuhrerprinzip) should be the law of the Party. It was the 'will' of the Party's Fuhrer, and therefore the 'law' of the NSDAP, that the single-minded, ruthless acquisition of political power should take priority over other considerations.

In his pursuit of power, any deference by Hitler to democratic constitutional practice or to the law and judicial procedures of Germany was as a means to an end. If the Nazi purpose was not served by the constitution or the law, then these could be evaded or broken. Once in power, as we shall see, Hitler continued to undermine a legal system that he distrusted. Crucially, he was prepared to break the law himself in order to promote and sustain his leadership of the NSDAP in German politics.

Criminal Record

From the outset, Hitler readily resorted to illegal means. His first recorded breach of the German criminal code came in September 1921 when he was arrested and later sentenced to three months' imprisonment for violently disrupting a Bavarian League meeting in Munich. Released early for good behaviour, Hitler in October 1922 defied a police ban by joining nationalist demonstrations in Coburg, thus contravening the conditions of his parole. Acting on rumours that Hitler was plotting a putsch, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior summoned the NSDAP leader in November and warned him personally about his provocations. Hitler gave the minister a solemn promise that 'Never as long as I live will I make a putsch'.

From the beginning of 1923, Hitler was implicated in a number of public order offences. Yet political expediency prevented him from being arraigned. The national crisis and the growth of popular support for the Nazis and other right-wing groups in 1923 encouraged the Bavarian government to make deals repeatedly with politicians like Hitler. But for his protection by the Bavarian Minister of Justice, Franz Gurtner, Hitler would probably have been sent back to prison for parole violation.

Beyond the pale, however, was Hitler's treasonous and bloody attempt at an armed putsch in Munich on 8-9 November 1923. Though he fled the scene of the failed putsch, he was arrested two days later. Even now, he got off lightly. Dr Gurtner, who was turning out to be Hitler's legal fairy godfather, appointed a nationalist sympathiser who had sat on the NSDAP leader's trial 18 month previously, to preside over Hitler's arraignment for treason. A minimum five-year sentence was handed down. When the possibility of Hitler's release from Landsberg prison on parole came up after six months,...