Majer - Non-Germans under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939-1945

The number of studies, conferences, and articles and the amount of research conducted in the United States and in other countries about the Holocaust is seemingly boundless. But this book is not a book about the Holocaust; it points the way to the Holocaust. It explains the history, legal status, and treatment of non-Germans ( Fremdvlkische, or aliens), in the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945; it describes the judicial theories and the administrative systems and court decisions concerning the treatment of non-Germans in the spheres of civil law, penal law, police law, fiscal law, the social and cultural sectors, and the like. This treatment was based on the principle of special law ( Sonderrecht ), or on racial or ethnic inequality. This meant nothing other than the misuseeven the dissolutionof the general law by extralegal or contralegal means or by retreating into secret directives of the administration or into single police actions.

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 Fhrer principle (the absolute power of the Fhrer); 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 meansa 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 Fhrer 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. Goldhagens Hitlers 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 individualthat 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 institutions 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 237316 of the German edition), part 2 by Peter Hill and Brian Levin; Brian Levin also translated pages 237316 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.