"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (3 page)

An important part of the book is dedicated to the legal treatment of “non-Germans” in Eastern Europe, especially in occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945. These territories were the “field of experiment” for all future “racial” programs of the National Socialist government. At the same time, the Nazis’ practices against Poles and Jews were an extreme extension of measures initiated in the territory of the Reich, which created a pernicious scale of discrimination from west to east.

My conclusion is that the National Socialist state practiced a “logic” system consisting of three elements: the Führer principle (the absolute power of the Führer); the monopoly status of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [NSDAP]) and its ideological ruling of the entire state, including intellectual and social spheres; and the principle of “racial
inequality
” for “non-Germans,” which we may also call the principle of special law.

This principle of special law is the essential characteristic of the National Socialist state: no other authoritarian or totalitarian regime was so extremely focused on racial ideas. In practice, it meant the classification of German citizens and citizens of the occupied territories into “Aryans” and “non-Aryans,” or “Germans” and “non-Germans,” the separation in legal life and, as a consequence, the deprivation of all human rights and social protection for the so-called non-Germans. It amounted to reducing “non-Germans” to being deprived of paid labor without any public means—a psychic death before the physical death.

Of special interest is the role of the intellectuals, that is to say, those who emerged at the acme in the realms of science, politics, culture, business, justice, the military, and civil administration after the intellectual elite, especially those of Jewish extraction, had been dismissed or forced into exile, or both. These individuals acquired racist ideas from the Kaiserreich and in the powerful right-wing associations and parties of the Weimar Republic; they spread authoritarian or National Socialist ideas to their students and colleagues and in their own minds began to eliminate the “aliens”
before
the discriminatory measures started in practice. Their fascination with the Führer principle, their devotion and eagerness to serve the dictator without any moral or legal reservations, lay the groundwork for all of the pernicious legislation and administrative measures. This was facilitated by the fact that this racial thinking was given absolute priority by the National Socialist leadership and was encouraged in almost every official statement.

Why is the book of interest to an English-speaking audience?

In recent years countless publications and discussions concerning the Holocaust have inundated the media and dominated the discussions, promoted especially by the publication of Daniel J. Goldhagen’s
Hitler’s Willing Executioners
in 1997. The pros and cons concerning the role of anti-Semitism will certainly play an important part in future discussions.

This book puts these issues on a broader plain, one that transcends anti-Semitism and even racial thinking. It shows that at the core of National Socialist theories and legal practices was the elimination of the person as an individual—that is, the reduction of the person to a thing, from “he” or ”she” to “it,” a fact clearly shown in the National Socialist legal language. From this basis everything was possible, even physical extermination, because human rights are not applicable to “things.” In this sense, not only Jews or other so-called non-Aryans, but all persons disliked by the regime for whatever reasons, represented potential victims. Thus, this book holds one of the most important keys to understanding the Holocaust. The numerous studies on law and justice in the Third Reich published in Germany after the appearance of this book do not change these theses but rather confirm them.

This book, the preparation of which claimed twelve years, quotes or lists all materials available in West German and Polish archives at the time of the appearance of the first German edition. The annotation is abundant; I hope it is not confusing. In any case, it will give the reader an impression of the complicated and almost endless methods of “racial” and political discrimination carried out through law and police regulation. It also reflects the problems that administration and “justice” faced in establishing such a system
within
the framework of traditional law dealing with virtually every aspect of life. Thus the sinister atmosphere of those years of occupation (in Poland) shows through every source and through every report of the local or state authorities, of the police or Party offices, to the central offices of the Reich.

I am very much obliged to the University of Bern in Switzerland for accepting my book as a
Habilitation
after its prior submission in former West Berlin and also in (West) Germany. (A
Habilitation
is similar to a second Ph.D. dissertation and is a legal or de facto requirement for a university career.)

I am grateful to the Johns Hopkins University Press, especially to its executive editor, Henry Y. K. Tom, and to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, represented by Benton Arnovitz, head of its academic publications branch, for agreeing to publish the book for the English-speaking audience; I thank them for their patience with the numerous problems that often come with such a huge manuscript. Very helpful were the staff members of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who completed the vetting of the manuscript and its preparation for transmittal to the publisher, especially Aleisa Fishman and Patricia Heberer. The late senior historian of the Museum, Sybil Milton, encouraged that institution’s sponsorship of this project, for which she is owed special thanks. Special compliments to Lois Crum, the copy editor engaged by the Johns Hopkins University Press, who shaped the text, where necessary, in a most skillful was for the English-speaking audience.

I am grateful, further, to my translators, Ned Humphrey in the United States and Peter Hill and Brian Levin, both in Great Britain, whose brilliant abilities enabled them to cope with such a difficult manuscript and with the linguistic usages of a totalitarian state. That terminology does not exist in normal legal diction, so they often needed to create new expressions. Part 1 was translated by Ned Humphrey (with the exception of pages 237–316 of the German edition), part 2 by Peter Hill and Brian Levin; Brian Levin also translated pages 237–316 of part 1. The footnotes were translated by Peter Hill, as well as the index of places (consolidated with the subject index) and the index of persons; he also laid the basis for the glossary, which is new to this work. The glossary is unique because it includes a detailed survey of the most common traditional German legal terms and of the legal terms in the National Socialist phraseology. It is offered as a special service to the reader, so that he or she may understand the peculiarities of a highly bureaucratized, inhumane, and even inhuman language.

Most of all I am grateful to my cousin Albrecht Majer, senior teacher of English and Latin at the Claus-von-Stauffenberg-Schule, Rodgau, Germany, to his family, and to his team, who supported the preparation of the English edition (which took ten years) in many ways. Albrecht was manager, driving force, flying messenger between Frankfurt, Washington, and Baltimore, calming down the author who often got nervous considering the bulk of technical difficulties involved in such a huge project; he and his staff were also invaluable in meeting the problems of coordinating the texts of three translators, before the manuscript was sent to the editors in the United States.

Further, I am very much obliged to my assistants and friends Ursula Seybold-Schryro of Karlsruhe and Bijan Djawid of Dresden, who helped with technical assistance, which equally was a very considerable contribution in the preparation of the manuscript.

Diemut Majer

Karlsruhe, 2003

Foreword to the Second German Edition (1993)

Diemut Majer’s book
“Fremdvölkische” im Dritten Reich
first appeared in 1981 in the Schriften des Bundesarchivs (Annals of the Federal Archives). It was widely acclaimed and received a large number of favorable reviews. Originally written as a law dissertation for the University of Bern, Switzerland, the text came into increasing demand in the wake of the upheavals in Central and Eastern Europe. The book had been out of print since 1991, and I decided on a new edition of it with an awareness of its ongoing practical value as a work of reference and documentation for courts of law, public prosecutors, social administration offices, and other welfare agencies.

The author has thoroughly revised the text and added a list of current literature. Not least, I am gratified that this book should once again be available to aid historical research of totalitarian systems in the communist field of influence. I have great respect for Diemut Majer’s book as an important basis for comparative studies of administration and jurisdiction in the development and establishment of totalitarian systems.

I also thank my colleague Dr. Trumpp for editorial work on the new edition.

Professor Dr. Friedrich P. Kahlenberg

President of the Federal Archives

Koblenz, July 1993

Preface to the Second German Edition (1993)

The favorable reception that this book received in 1981 was due not least to its having been published under the auspices of the Federal Archives in Koblenz and its elegant presentation by the Harald Boldt Publishing House in Boppard on the Rhine, assisted by a printing subsidy from the Scientific Support Fund of VG Wort. I express my grateful thanks once again to all those who have participated in this work, especially the former president of the Federal Archives, Prof. Dr. Hans Booms, and his deputy, Dr. Heinz Boberach, director of the Archives. The positive reception by the scholarly media in Germany and abroad that the book enjoyed on its publication reflected the need for a systematic overview of the legal doctrine and practice of the Nazi state, for none had existed hitherto. The contemporary literature had concentrated primarily on the explicitly criminal aspects of the Nazi state: racial persecution, extermination policy, and so on, giving very little or no place to the legal theories and the legal and administrative practices that led up to these developments, nor to the everyday judicial events in the Nazi state. This was the first description of the constitutional and legal theory of the Nazi state based on systematic criteria, showing how they were applied in the domains of public law (state and administrative law), penal law, civil law in administrative practice, and the administration of justice. A further element that contributed to the ready acceptance of the book was its overview of the conditions in the occupied Polish territories (Annexed Eastern Territories and General Government) in each of the fields with which it dealt, illustrating how anti-Semitic legislative and administrative practice served as a model for the application of a racist policy against Eastern European populations in occupied territories.

The profound changes that have taken place in Germany since reunification in 1990 and since the collapse of the former Eastern bloc have set the stage for a new era of comparative law. Such studies should deal with totalitarian-authoritarian regimes and examine the function and procedures of state apparatus. It is the intention of the present new edition of the book, which has been out of print since 1991, to make a contribution in this direction. At the same time it will be valuable in helping to recognize in good time the dangers of authoritarian or totalitarian social systems, which the global threats represented by environmental disasters, national conflicts, and overpopulation make all too easy to forget. The historical dimension and the lessons of 1945 must be preserved for the future. The Koblenz Federal Archives and their president, Professor Dr. Friedrich P. Kahlenberg, deserve special thanks for having made this work available to the public once again.

Although a wealth of detailed documentation and general works have appeared since 1981 (see the addendum to the bibliography),
*
* these do not include a comparable presentation of the overall system of the Nazi state. The main theses here remain uncontested and are almost fully substantiated by specific studies; indeed they should be emphasized even more strongly in many respects. The bibliography is up to date as of 1992 and includes all published works on the law, administration, and judicial practice of the Nazi state. In addition to the titles of monographs and general compilations, it cites individual articles in such compilations, for although they often are not recorded in library bibliographies, it is these in particular that document the scientific advances in the individual domains.

As seen in the bibliography, the main emphasis has been placed on the fields of constitutional law, administrative (police) law, penal law, civil law, and labor law. Related subjects such as juvenile law are dealt with in order to complete the different fields of law. Special fields such as military jurisdiction, which, although related to matters of justice, constitute an independent entity in themselves, have not been included.

Professor Dr. Diemut Majer

Karlsruhe, January 1993

Foreword to the First German Edition (1981)

Since its establishment in 1952, the German Federal Archives has assisted in atoning for National Socialist injustices and, where possible, has helped to make amends. It has done this by providing archival material and other information to courts, state’s attorneys, and authorities charged with paying reparations. With the present study by a jurist, it would now like to contribute to the scholarly examination of this system of injustice, its methods, laws, and institutions.

The transformation of National Socialist racial ideology into practical politics, administration, and law has, to be sure, received abundant attention in the realms of journalism, judicial rulings, and contemporary history; yet until now there has been no work taking into account all aspects in a systematic and critical fashion and based on a broad array of sources. The discrimination against the so-called non-Germans (
Fremdvölkische
) in the Third Reich, up to and including their physical annihilation, took place, the author demonstrates, not by means of formal abrogation and substitution of the existing legal and administrative order or by arbitrary and haphazard introduction of a new set of special laws. Rather, it proceeded above all on the basis of a massive and thoroughgoing reinterpretation of traditional norms and their ensuing employment under the banner of ideological irrationality. National Socialist theory and practice was in its very approach fundamentally different from the laws concerning minorities and foreigners found in democratic systems of government. The present work documents in detail the self-contradictory and highly complex development of this system, using as its models the two groups most grievously afflicted by all forms of discriminatory treatment, Jews and Poles.