Chang Siyong (public number: sense of common sense) today
Establishment of special tribunals
After the Berlin Reichstag arson on 28 February 1933, Hitler insisted on the execution of the arsonist, the young Dutch anarchist Marins van der Rueber, but the Criminal Code of the German Empire did not provide for the death penalty for arson unless the death of another person was caused. In van der Luber's case, the fire did not burn anyone. Officials and legal advisers of the Imperial Ministry of Justice were therefore suspicious of the death penalty imposed on van der Rube. However, the Cabinet ignored these people and persuaded President Hindenburg to order on March 29, 1933, that the death penalty clause in the Reichstag Arson Act, adopted on February 28, be traced back to crimes such as arson and rebellion since January 31 ( Hitler 's first day in office ) . It is clear that the Presidential Decree violates a fundamental legal principle, the "principle of non-retroactiveness", since the offender is not aware of these subsequent disciplinary measures at the time of the commission of the offence.
Hitler and Goering not only insisted on the execution of van der Luber, but also wanted to splash dirty water on the German Communist Party, accusing the Communist Party of being behind the arson and declaring the German Communist Party illegal. So on September 21, 1933, standing before the Imperial Court in Leipzig were not only van der Luber, but also Georgi Dimitrov, the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party at the Western European Bureau of the Comintern, and his two staff members, as well as the leader of the German Communist Party in the Reichstag, Ernst Torgler. They face charges of arson and treason.
The presiding judge in this case was an old-school lawyer who followed the rules, and Dimitrov defended himself very cleverly, making Goering in the witness stand look like a complete idiot. Thus the court rendered a prudent judgment, ruling that the Communists had indeed set fire to the Capitol building for the purpose of launching a revolutionary plan, and that the Act on Arson in Congress was therefore entirely legitimate. But the court held that the evidence against Dimitrov and other Communists did not prove their guilt. Dimitrov was eventually cleared of all charges, and van der Rube alone was responsible for the crime. Van der Luber was soon pushed to the guillotine. But the three Bulgarians were soon arrested again by the Gestapo and eventually deported to the Soviet Union. Torgler survived the war and later became a SPD.
The Nazi leadership was slapped in the face. The Nazi mouthpiece, the People's Observer, denounced it as an unjust verdict that "shows that our legal system needs a radical change and that the current law is still on the outdated liberal line that is completely out of step with the people.".
A few months later, Hitler withdrew the power to convict rebellion from the German ordinary courts and transferred them to the Special Court, the People's Court, established on April 24, 1934. The purpose of the establishment of the People's Tribunal is to complete trials expeditiously with the fewest rules, which means that the rights of the accused are rarely guaranteed. From 1934 to 1939, about 3,400 Communist or SpDIs were tried in people's courts, and 77 were sentenced to death.
The People's Court, which had prepared a public trial of Communist Party leader Ernst Thérman, had also woven a series of charges for Thalmann, including terrorist attacks, detonating bombs, mass poisoning, hostage-taking, and had decided to sentence Thierman to death. But the allegations lack strong evidence, and as a former leader of Germany's main political party, the trial attracted more than 1,000 foreign journalists to apply to observe. This made the Nazi leadership, especially Goebbels, who had experienced the last Congressional arson trial, jealous, and finally decided not to hold him for a long time without a formal trial.
Wanton expansion of the scope of executions
The Nazi regime arbitrarily introduced new legal provisions and added a series of new death penalty charges. A decree was passed on 21 March 1933 stating that anyone who created panic by destroying property would be sentenced to death, a decree of 4 April 1933 declaring that anyone who committed vandalism would be sentenced to death, and a decree adopted on 13 October 1933 provided for the death penalty for the assassination of state or party officials. Perhaps the most exaggerated was a decree of 24 April 1934 in which attempts to amend the Constitution or attempt to threaten or conspire to split the Third Reich by force would be punishable by death. As a result, anyone who distributes leaflets (which is related to "conspiracy") and criticizes the dictatorship (which has to do with the "Constitution") may now be arrested and killed. Subsequently, under a decree adopted on December 20, 1934, the death penalty could also be imposed under certain circumstances for "hateful" remarks(including joke-telling) against party and state leaders
At the same time, the government invented a large number of new crimes through a series of new laws and decrees, some of which are retroactive. These laws and decrees are primarily in the service of the regime's ideology and propaganda. For example, in 1938 Hitler ordered the passage of a new law declaring that highway robbery was punishable by death, and that the law was retroactive. All criminal acts are tainted with political or ideological overtones, even petty theft is used as evidence of genetic depravity; vaguely defined behaviors such as "complaining" or "doing nothing" are the basis for indefinite detention. Punishment increasingly emphasized the interests of the so-called racial community in order to punish people who differed from Nazi racial standards. A wide variety of people are increasingly seen as natural criminals by the police, prosecutors and judges, and thousands are casually arrested and imprisoned without trial.
In the eyes of the Nazi authorities, the law was not intended to uphold the principles of fairness and justice that humanity had long held, but to eliminate the public enemies of the state and express racial feelings, and the ideology of National Socialism , especially the party program and the national socialist ideology conveyed in the speeches of the Fuehrer — was the basis for the interpretation of the law.