Dear Reich Minister Dr. Lammers:
In connection with our telephone conversation of today, I am sending you a copy of my letter addressed to the Fuehrer.[239] I consider it of great importance that the Fuehrer receive this letter as soon as possible. It has come to my knowledge that just recently a number of sentences passed have roused the strong disapproval of the Fuehrer. I do not know exactly which sentences are concerned, but I have ascertained for myself that now and then sentences are pronounced which are quite untenable. In such cases I shall act with the utmost energy and decision. It is, however, of vital importance for the administration of justice and its standing in the Reich, that the head of the Ministry of Justice should know to which sentences the Fuehrer objects; for nothing is more dangerous than the creation of a so-called atmosphere, of the causes of which the Minister of Justice is unaware. That is the reason for my request to the Fuehrer in the last paragraph of my letter. I repeat, this attempt to establish a direct contact between the Fuehrer and the Minister of Justice must be made at once if irreparable damage is to be avoided.
In explanation of the first paragraph of my letter, I enclose the mentioned draft of the decree, which is to be provisionally discussed here on the 17th of this month with the Reich Chancellery. Basic approval has already been received from the Reich Finance Minister, the Reich Minister of the Interior and the Reich Minister of Economics. Participation by the prosecuting authorities in civil cases was already known in Roman law. Nowadays, in the recently published Italian code of civil procedure, this participation has been extended, following the general line of my draft, because, as is indicated in the report to the king, a purely platonic participation is no longer sufficient.
The deceased Reich Minister Dr. Guertner, during the last days he was still in office, advised me to examine the question of whether an extraordinary objection should be created for civil as in criminal cases. I have adopted the right of the Chief Reich Prosecutor to ask for the reopening of a case but deliberately with such limitations, that by human standards no offense can be created thereby; this special reopening will only be put into practice in so-called secular cases.
With best regards and Heil Hitler!
Yours very truly
[Signed] Dr. Schlegelberger
Enclosure to the Letter of 10 March 1941 from Defendant Schlegelberger to Lammers
Draft of a Decree Concerning Participation by the Public Prosecutor in Legal Proceedings of matters of Civil Law