“I shall reinstruct the presidents of the courts of appeal and the chief public prosecutors of this conception of the Fuehrer as soon as possible.”
As a final illustration of a general practice, we refer to the case of the Jew Luftgas, who had been sentenced to 2½ years imprisonment for hoarding eggs. On 25 October 1941, Lammers notified Schlegelberger: “The Fuehrer wishes that Luftgas be sentenced to death.” On 29 October 1941, Schlegelberger wrote Lammers: “* * * I have handed over to the Gestapo for the purpose of execution the Jew Markus Luftgas who had been sentenced to 2½ years of imprisonment * * *”.
Although Hitler’s personal intervention in criminal cases was a matter of common occurrence, his chief control over the judiciary was exercised by the delegation of his power to the Reich Minister of Justice, who on 20 August 1942 was expressly authorized “to deviate from any existing law.”
Among those of the Ministry of Justice who joined in the constant pressure upon the judges in favor of more severe or more discriminatory administration of justice, we find Thierack, Schlegelberger, Klemm, Rothenberger, and Joel. Neither the threat of removal nor the sporadic control of criminal justice in individual cases was sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the Ministry of Justice. As stated by the defendant Rothaug, “only during 1942, after Thierack took over the Ministry, the ‘guidance’ of justice was begun. * * * There was an attempt to guide the administration of justice uniformly from above.”
In September 1942 Thierack commenced the systematic distribution to the German judges of Richterbriefe. The first letter to the judges under date of 1 October 1942 called their attention to the fact that Hitler was the supreme judge and that “leadership and judgeship have related characters.” We quote (NG-298, Pros. Ex. 81):
“A corps of judges like this will not slavishly use the crutches of law. It will not anxiously search for support by the law, but, with a satisfaction in its responsibility, it will find within the limits of the law the decision which is the most satisfactory for the life of the community.”
In the Judges’ Letters Thierack discussed particular decisions which had been made in the various courts and which failed to conform to National Socialist ideology. As an illustration of the type of guidance which was furnished by the Ministry of Justice to the German judiciary, we cite a few instances from the Richterbriefe.
A letter to the judges of 1 October 1942 discusses a case decided in a district court on 24 November 1941. A special coffee ration had been distributed to the population of a certain town. A number of Jews applied for the coffee ration, but did not receive it, being “excluded from the distribution per se”. The food authorities imposed fines upon the Jews for making the unsuccessful application. In 500 cases the Jews appealed to the court and the judge informed the food authorities that the imposition of a fine could not be upheld for legal reasons, one of which was the statute of limitations. In deciding favorably to the Jews, the court wrote a lengthy opinion stating that the interpretation on the part of the food authorities was absolutely incompatible with the established facts. We quote, without comment, the discussion of the Reich Minister of Justice concerning the manner in which the case was decided (NG-298, Pros. Ex. 81):
“The ruling of the district court, in form and content matter, borders on embarrassing a German administrative authority to the advantage of Jewry. The judge should have asked himself the question: What is the reaction of the Jew to this 20-page long ruling, which certifies that he and the 500 other Jews are right and that he won over a German authority, and does not devote one word to the reaction of our own people to this insolent and arrogant conduct of the Jews. Even if the judge was convinced that the food office had arrived at a wrong judgment of the legal position, and if he could not make up his mind to wait with his decision until the question, if necessary, was clarified by the higher authorities, he should have chosen a form for his ruling which under any circumstances avoided harming the prestige of the food office and thus putting the Jew expressly in the right toward it.”
One of the Richterbriefe also discusses the case of a Jew who, after the “Aryanization of his firm,” attempted to get funds transferred to Holland without a permit. He also attempted to conceal some of his assets. Concerning this case the judges of Germany received the following “guidance” (NG-298, Pros. Ex. 81):