"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (242 page)

43.
For example, see the situation report of September 30, 1943, by the chief public prosecutor of Jena, extracts of which are found in BA R 22/vorl. 20296.

44.
See the secret document from
Ministerialdirektor
Letz to
Ministerialdirektor
Vollmer, both at the Reich Ministry of Justice (quoted in Steiniger and Leszczy
ski,
Das Urteil im Juristenprozeβ
[1969], 1660 f.); see also the situation report of February 27, 1942, by the presiding judge of the Hamm Court of Appeal (Nuremberg doc. NG-395a), according to which members of the police force were regularly present at proceedings in order to inform their office of the course of trials and the court decisions.

45.
DJ
(1942): 521.

46.
Situation report by the chief public prosecutor of Celle, September 30, 1942 (BA R 22/3359).

47.
Under the administrative instructions issued by the Reich Ministry of Justice on May 21, 1935, the Party and its subdivisions obtained, ex officio, reports on the outcome of all criminal proceedings against members of the NSDAP, the SA, the SS, and the National Socialist Motor Corps. Judgments against members of auxiliary organizations such as the DAF, the NSRB, etc., however, were not communicated to the Party offices (special official issue of
DJ
[1935]: no. 8, 807 [also BA R 22/4462, Bl. 142]). Communication to the Party of disciplinary decisions against members of the NSDAP and its auxiliaries in public service was effected at the order of the ministry, insofar as a concurrent criminal court judgment existed; in the absence of a criminal court judgment, no report was made on grounds of “work overload” (the real reason was probably a reluctance to refuse the Party openly) (letter of January 20, 1937, from the Reich Ministry of Justice to the Reich Ministry of the Interior, BA R 22/4462). In the same letter, the Reich Ministry of Justice also expressly refused to inform other offices than those of the Party, including auxiliary offices, of disciplinary verdicts. Apart from these arrangements, there were numerous informal ways in which information was passed on to the Party.

48.
Administrative instructions dated January 23, 1938 (
DJ
[1938]: 130 f.). Transmission of records was “for the purposes of administrative and juridical assistance,” “at the request” of the deputy of the Führer, the Führer’s Chancellery, the Reich Treasury Minister at the NSDAP, the SA chief of staff, the RFSSuChddtPol, the
Korpsführer
of the National Socialist Motor Corps, the Reich Youth Leader, the Supreme Party Court, and the other party courts (whereas files on staff and disciplinary court files were sent only to the Supreme Party Court and the
Gau
courts on request) (Ziff. 1, 4 of the administrative instructions of January 23, 1938 [ibid.]). Access to files and information on files was also ensured for these offices and for numerous others “on justified application” (all Reichsleiter and Gauleiter of the NSDAP, subordinate offices of the Party subdivisions down to the middle level [section heads,
Gruppenführer, Abschnittsführer, Gebietsführer
]). The content of general criminal files was not to be passed on to the Party “if the outcome of the investigation is thereby jeopardized or the need for secrecy compromised” (Ziff. 4 of the administrative instructions of January 23, 1938 [ibid.]). Internal documents (such as the reference files of the public prosecutor’s office, examination records, records of pardons) were not to be made known to any Party agency.

49.
Führerinformationen
no. 48 of June 19, 1942 (BA R 22/4089).

50.
Unpublished circular decree of September 5, 1942, by the RFSSuChddtPol (Allgemeine Erlaßsammlung, 2 A III f., BA RD 19/3).

51.
Made known in the fifth series of the Reich Ministry of Justice Information Service, September 1944 (BA R 22/4003).

52.
Cf., e.g., the Reich Ministry of Justice circular instruction of July 20, 1935, regarding the struggle against “political catholicism” (Nuremberg doc. NG-630).

53.
Decree of May 6, 1933, quoted in Bracher, Sauer, and Schulz,
Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung
, 541.

54.
Circular instruction of October 29, 1935, quoted in a letter from the chief public prosecutor of Dresden to the Reich Ministry of Justice, February 22, 1937 (BA R 22/1143).

55.
Circular instructions of June 3 and October 17, 1936, quoted in the letter from the chief public prosecutor, Dresden, to the Reich Ministry of Justice, February 22, 1937 (ibid.; also in Johe,
Die gleichgeschaltete Justiz
, 139).

56.
Quoted in the letter from the chief public prosecutor, Dresden, February 22, 1937 (BA R 22/1143).

57.
The circular instruction of January 18, 1937, ibid., probably dates back to the letter of December 14, 1936, from the Secret State Police Office, Berlin, to the Reich Ministry of Justice, where agreement was expressed to a suggestion by the Reich Ministry of Justice that the justice authorities should be obliged to report only in cases of treason. [There are two types of treason in German:
Hochverrat
(high treason) and
Landesverrat
(national betrayal), both of which are referred to here—Trans.]

58.
Under the circular decree of June 26, 1936, the criminal police were centralized and put under the authority of the head of the Security Police (
MinibliV
[1936]: 946 ff.).

59.
Decree appended to the Reich Ministry of Justice circular instruction of March 9, 1937 (Erlaßsammlung des RMJ, Federal Ministry of Justice, Bonn; since 1990, Berlin).

60.
Circular instruction of March 9, 1937, from the Reich Ministry of Justice (ibid.).

61.
This circular was also in contravention of secs. 161, 163, par. 1, Code of Criminal Procedure, under which—irrespective of the type of event under investigation or which police authorities were involved—“the police and Security Service authorities and officials [were to] investigate punishable acts and to take all measures necessary to avoid delay with a view to preventing collusion” (quoted in Schwarz,
Strafprozeβordnung
[1943]).

62.
This was the import of an instruction dated June 23, 1938, from the Gestapo headquarters in Karlsruhe to all subordinate departments (BA R 22/1463).

63.
Reich Ministry of Justice, July 2, 1937, quoted in Johe,
Die gleichgeschaltete Justiz
, 139 (also mentioned in a letter dated February 22, 1937, from the chief public prosecutor, Dresden, to the Reich Ministry of Justice, BA R 22/1143).

64.
BA R 22/1143; also quoted in the minutes of the meeting of chief public prosecutors at the Reich Ministry of Justice on January 23–26, 1939 (Nuremberg doc. NG-366; Johe,
Die gleichgeschaltete Justiz
, 139).

65.
Reich Ministry of Justice decree dated December 14, 1937, quoted in Maunz,
Gestalt und Recht der Polizei
, 43 ff.

66.
See note 56 above.

67.
Reports of the chief public prosecutors of Berlin, Jena, Munich, Stettin (Szczecin), and others at a meeting on January 23, 1939, quoted in an Reich Ministry of Justice memorandum dated January 24, 1939 (Nuremberg doc. NG-366).

68.
See note 63 above.

69.
Circular instruction of March 8, 1938 (BA R 22/1143); see also the instruction from the head of the Security Police and Security Service dated June 12, 1937 (Nuremberg doc. NG-366).

70.
Reports of the chief public prosecutors of Berlin, Jena, etc. at the meeting on January 23, 1939 (see note 67 above).

71.
This must have been so, since such information was a condition for imposition of protective custody or preventive detention; see details in Broszat, “Zur Perversion der Strafjustiz,” 390, 395. Further evidence for this viewpoint is provided by the fact that following the “standardization” of the judiciary, the prisoners’ personal files (approximately thirty forms) were made uniform. One of the forms had to be sent to the Gestapo ninety days before release (affidavit by former
Hauptwachmeister
Josef Prey, December 26, 1946, Nuremberg doc. NG-506).

72.
Broszat, in Buchheim et al.,
Anatomie des SS-Staates
, 2:90 ff.; between 1934 and 1937, preventive detention was pronounced on 6,852 persons (Freisler, “Fragen zur Sicherheitsverwahrung” [1938]); more details in Johe,
Die gleichgeschaltete Justiz
, 144.

73.
This emerges from the Reich Ministry of Justice circular instruction of May 4, 1940 (quoted in Johe,
Die gleichgeschaltete Justiz
, 150).

74.
Ibid.

75.
Reich Ministry of Justice administrative instructions of November 20, 1941, regarding “amendment of the administrative instructions on enforcement matters” (
DJ
[1941]: 1091), which refers to the administrative instructions of March 25, 1941 (
DJ
[1941]: 399 ff.).

76.
Reich Ministry of Justice administrative instructions of March 25, 1941 (
DJ
[1941]: 199 ff.), transmitted to the police stations by way of the RSHA circular decree of April 18, 1942 (Allgemeine Erlaßsammlung des RSHA, 2 F VIII f.) (BA R 19/3).

77.
Circular decree of April 18, 1942, RSHA (see note 76).

78.
BA R 22/1262.

79.
According to BVerfGE 6, 132 ff., 186, the decisive discussion of chief public prosecutors took place on February 1, 1939, in Berlin; Johe (
Die gleichgeschaltete Justiz
, 129) gives the date as January 24. In point of fact, however, appropriate instructions had already been made known in November 1938; see the Reich Ministry of Justice decree of November 19, 1938, to the chief public prosecutor of Hamburg (Document Center, Berlin, Rothenberger files), which required only the following to be prosecuted: “murder out of selfish motives,
insofar as
the Gestapo did not order it, and looting.” All other offenses were not to be prosecuted [i.e., not murder for reasons of racial hatred—Author]. The original instruction of the Reich Ministry of Justice to which the decree refers is not known.

80.
Excerpt from the affidavit of July 14, 1947, by former SS-
Sturmbahnführer
R. Breder on his activity with the inspector of the Security Police and Security Service in 1941–42 in Hamburg (Nuremberg doc. NO-5134, point 5).

81.
The Berlin meeting of chief public prosecutors on November 12–13, 1936, on questions of treason may be mentioned, at which the head of the Security Police and Security Service, Heydrich, read a paper titled “The Communist in Police Investigation Proceedings” and an SS-
Sturmbannführer
, Müller, spoke on “The Comintern and the Communist Movement in Germany” (quoted from the agenda of the meeting, in Nuremberg doc. NG-266).

82.
Reich Ministry of Justice memorandum of July 5 1944 (anon.) (BA R 22, vorl. 20675).

83.
Similarly, see also Johe,
Die gleichgeschaltete Justiz
.

84.
Cf. the Führer decree of June 17, 1936, on placing a head of the German police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior (
RGBl
. I 487).

85.
Himmler’s speech at the constitutive meeting of the committee on police law at the Academy of German Law on October 11. 1936, reproduced in
Ausgewählte Dokumente zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus
, ed. Jacobson and Jochman (1961).

86.
See the article by the Reich Ministry of Justice press secretary, K. Doerner, “Gegen unsachliche Angriffe auf die deutsche Rechtspflege,”
DJ
(1935): 895, which protests energetically against the inflammatory campaign for convictions in the
Stürmer
“and other newspapers,” with a detailed correction of the convictions under fire. The column
Amtliche Erlasse und Verordnungen
(Official decrees and directives) in
DJ
(1939): 175 ff., carried a refutation of criticism by the SS journal,
Das Schwarze Korps
. These arbitrary measures also affected the internal domain of the judiciary. Thus, for example, all the penal records of the Court of Appeal of Vienna were confiscated by the Gestapo in March 1938. The event was reported directly to the ministry, not by the competent presiding judge of the court of appeal, but by a director of a district court (communication of May 20, 1938, from the director of the Vienna District Court, Kuhn, to the Reich Ministry of Justice, BA R 22/1462, B. 143 b).

87.
Reich Ministry of Justice memorandum dated January 24, 1939, on a meeting of the chief public prosecutors in Berlin on January 23, 1939 (Nuremberg doc. NG-366), which gives an overview of the situation in the various districts.

88.
Ibid.: statements by Gürtner on the treatment of the clergy by the Gestapo and other matters.

89.
Ibid.