In other words, the Weimar Constitution remained fully in effect as the highest law of the land throughout the entirety of the Nazi reign, only being abrogated in 1945 with Hitler’s total defeat.
-
In other words, the Weimar Constitution remained fully in effect as the highest law of the land throughout the entirety of the Nazi reign, only being abrogated in 1945 with Hitler’s total defeat.
Nazi Germany was completely legal under the constitution of a liberal democracy. The Holocaust was completely legal.
It’s important to keep this in mind when evaluating concepts like “rule of law.”
-
In 1919, Germany adopted the Weimar Constitution. After its loss in the First World War and the abdication of the Kaiser, Germany formally became a liberal democracy and a parliamentary democracy.
Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution allowed for what Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls “a state of exception.” In an emergency, the article allowed the German president to unilaterally direct the military to do whatever he felt necessary to restore order, including the indefinite suspension of fundamental rights articulated elsewhere in the constitution.
In 1933, Hitler—having been appointed as chancellor despite not having won an election—persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to issue a decree, per Article 48 of the constitution, suspending most constitutional rights.
This was the first of *many perfectly legal steps* that Hitler undertook to transform Germany into a totalitarian state.
-
In the US, slavery was perfectly legal and escaping from enslavement or liberating enslaved people were criminal. The mass internment of Japanese Americans was legal. The genocide of indigenous Americans was and is perfectly legal. Murder and theft by the police are routine and, again, completely legal, thanks to the doctrine of qualified immunity.
In the US, the president is immune from prosecution for any acts committed in an official capacity and thus cannot act illegally as president. Should secure a second term as president, Donald Trump would be free to do literally anything without legal consequence.
