All language subtitles for A.Justice.of.Terror.1of2.1080p.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org

(SINISTER MUSIC PLAYS)
(CHILDREN HEARD PLAYING FAINTLY)

These German children are in their
garden reenacting a war

that they were far too young
to have taken part in.

They were born in 1900 and
the First World War had planted

in their hearts the bitter
seed of grief and defeat.

Some of them would later become
the driving force

of the Nazi party.

And to impose their vision
of a renewed Germany,

they would attack the law
and pervert its rules.

(ENGLISH SPOKEN OVER GERMAN)

"The law is a weapon that the
Nazis turned to in order to take

Germany and its
society by storm."

"A weapon for the self
defense of the race.

That was the law for the Nazis."

"The individual disappeared as
a subject of the law and was

replaced by the community
of the people."

(ERUPTION OF CHEERS)

There are thousands of sounds,
images and documents.

All the pieces of this puzzle must
be assembled to see how law

and justice became
the weapons of a crime.

At the heart of Hitler's courts,
lawyers and magistrates would play

their part in a pitiless war to
bring to heel the judicial system.

Some remarkable destinies
shed light on this story.

Lilo Kuznitzky,
a committed young lawyer

and pioneer in a profession which
was until then reserved for men.

But also Werner Best,
lawyer and Nazi.

Johann Reichardt, last in a famous
line of Munich executioners.

And Hans Litten,
Barrister, Democrat.

In 1931, one affair revealed
to everyone that the law was

a vital issue for the Nazis.

(CLICKING OF FILM REEL)

From the Beginning of the 1920s,
Adolf Hitler's Nazi party was

defying the courts
and the institutions.

In the streets, their militia,
the Stormtroopers or the SA

were beating up and
murdering opponents

and communists in particular.

(STEADY MARCH DRUMMING)

They openly defied
the young Weimar Republic.

Many of them were accused of
acts of political violence

and sent for trial.

And over eight years the Nazi
party were the object in almost

2,000 court cases.

But the trial that opened on 8 May
1931 stunned the whole of Germany.

For this time Hitler
himself was summoned.

(CHEERS AND SHOUTING)

The leader of the extreme
right in court.

Excitement gripped the streets of
Berlin in the warm spring of 1931.

The instigator of this earthquake
was a young barrister,

Hans Litten.

He was 27 and familiar
with cases against the Nazis.

For this new trial he had decided
to prove that Hitler was

a threat to the system.

Stormtroopers had fired at some
communists in a Berlin dance hall.

A run of the mill case.

But this time Hans Litten
was determined to make

life difficult for Hitler.

Eight months previously,
Hitler had taken an oath before

the Tribunal of the Reich
in Leipzig and he had sworn

to respect the law and never
have recourse to violence.

For Litten,
it was a simple calculation,

prove that Hitler,
as head of the Party,

was responsible for the atrocities
committed by the SA.

To everyone's astonishment,
the young barrister issued

a summons against Hitler
and called him as a Witness.

(INTRIGUING OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYS)

In room 664.

Hans Litten was ready.

He held a document signed
by Joseph Goebbels,

head of propaganda
and loyal to Hitler.

(ENGLISH IS SPOKEN OVER JOACHIM)

In this brochure, Nazi sozy
Joseph Goebbels laid down

guidelines for militants
on how they should behave.

It was written,
"All we wish to do

is free Germany, nothing more.

If the people do not want
to be freed, we do not care.

We will do it without
their consent."

Further on, it says,
"The will to be in power creates

the means needed for that power."

During the hearing,
Hans Litten confronted

Hitler with his statements.

Hitler knew that he was
cornered and it showed.

He finally had to distance
himself from Goebbels, declaring,

that text has not been
authorized by the Party.

In the end, he was yelling
and screaming in the chamber.

What right did Litten have
to dare ask him these questions?

He shouted that the party
respected the law

and would always do so.

(BANGING GAVEL)

At 18.09, Hitler's
court appearance ended.

Would the question
of perjury be raised?

The verdict would come in 10 days.

But Hitler's rage had caused
a scandal and he had

to be called to order.

In Germany, law courts are also
temples, and Hitler

had just blasphemed.

Germany held its breath
as it awaited the verdict.

And even more so did
Lilo Kuznicki,

the young democratic lawyer.

She had followed
the details of the trial

with her journalist brother.

Hans Litten was her friend
at university and he was defending

the democracy that
she believed in.

To learn more about Lilo,
you have to go to the

Jewish Museum in Berlin.

(ECHOE OF CLANGING)

That's where her file is kept,
in the silence of the Archives,

Row 2, Box 229.

Lilo's real name was Elizabeth.

She was the eldest daughter
of Martin Kuznicki,

a doctor of Polish origin who was
Jewish on his mother's side,

and Elisabeth Lilienkron,
a Protestant from Denmark.

(ENGLISH SPOKEN OVER NATHALIE)

The family was certainly
quite well known in Cologne.

Lilo had grown up in an educated
and cultivated family.

After attending a Protestant
school for girls,

she took her baccalaureate,
which was fairly unusual.

She then decided to go
on to university.

(SWING MUSIC PLAYS)

Like Hans Litten,
Lilo belonged to the stratum

of young people that Weimar had
fostered by encouraging many

of them to go to university
so as to rebuild the elite

decimated by the Great War.

For Lilo, Weimar also
meant women's right to vote

and like many other young women,
she was emancipated.

Smoking sometimes wearing men's
clothes, going out alone

and making love as she wanted.

Lilo was happy in this
free and tolerant world.

She wanted it, she defended it.

That's why she wanted
to be a lawyer.

She didn't merely study,
she also got a doctorate.

And in 1927, she also obtained
a first job at the regional

tribunal in Cologne,
convinced that at the heart

of the democracy of
the Weimar Republic she would

be able to fight for justice.

(SWING MUSIC CONTINUES)

It was this democracy she
loved so much that the Nazis

were threatening.

And she understood the risks
that Hans Litten was running.

From the start of the trial,
he was pursued by the hatred

of militant Nazis and was no
longer safe in the street.

(MUSIC STOPS)

Hitler himself,
while waiting to know what

the political consequences of
this affair would be,

had to face ridicule.

During his court appearance,
a young photographer called

Leo Rosenthal took this photo.

Hastily taken,
it is a little blurred,

but it captures Hitler's
panic as he faced Litten.

He is stunned,
dazed by the confrontation.

The photo immortalizes
his collapse.

Hitler would never forget
Hans Litten.

Especially as the day after the
trial, the democratic press was

not slow to rub
salt into the wound.

The press recounted
Hitler's agony,

how for more than three hours,

Litten inflicted on him
a pitiless interrogation,

how he put his finger on Hitler's
contradictions one by one.

How Hitler got himself in
a tangle, was furious,

lost his temper.

And yet the verdict finally
delivered by the tribunal

was very lenient.

The front pages of the newspapers
announced only very mild

punishments for
the thugs of the SA.

And for Hitler,
no further action.

The editorials considered it
a political verdict that showed

the benevolence of
the conservative judges

regarding the head
of the Nazi party.

(SOMBRE MUSIC PLAYS)

Barely a few days after this
resounding trial,

quite a different
event gripped the public.

At the Ufa Palast
cinema in Berlin,

the filmmaker
Fritz Lang's new film

M the Cursed, often known simply
as M, had its opening night.

In this film, an elusive
killer is terrorizing a town.

As they discovered the plot,
Berliner's got a strange feeling.

(ENGLISH SPOKEN OVER GERMAN)

Fritz Lang's M is basically a
film that shows the Nazi counter

society, the underworld,
the mob, crooks.

The criminals portrayed
in the film

are clearly a metaphor
for the Nazi organization,

which appears in the film
as a criminal organization.

It shows the incompetence,
mismanagement or inefficiency

of traditional institutions.

And it's also clearly a film

about the Nazi
conception of the law,

which is debated at the end.

In the script.

The underworld and the common
people capture the killer

and organize a secret trial.

This kangaroo court
challenged the system.

It rejected official justice
and imposed its own idea of law,

exactly the way the Nazis
did in real life.

The film was an instant success
and without doubt,

Fritz Lang savored it,
remembering that the original

title was Killers in Our Midst.

Even though M the Cursed is
a piece of cinema,

Fritz Lang's imagination
was born of grim reality.

In the autumn of 1931,
a new affair burst onto the scene

and once again the leader of
the Nazi party was center stage.

A few months earlier,
when Hitler was battling

with Hans Litten,
a young overzealous Nazi militant

was drawing up plans for a coup
d' etat in the event

of a communist threat.

His name was Werner Best
and he was a very young

looking and brilliant lawyer.

And after his law thesis,
he joined the NSDAP,

the Nazi party,
with the number 341338.

An anti Semite and ideologically
close to the extreme right,

he belonged to the radical
and nationalist youth that was

gradually taking over
in the universities.

Once his studies were completed,
this young militant became

an associate judge in his
native region of Hesse.

After his day's work,
in the solitude of his office,

he had drawn up a plan
for a coup d' Etat.

In autumn 1931,

this document was leaked
to the press under the title

the 'Boxheim Papers'.

It immediately caused a scandal.

A few days later,
on the way to Munich

for the meeting, Werner Best
was shaking in his boots.

He could think of nothing worse
for for this first meeting

with Hitler, he knew he had to
put his party in a very

delicate position,
just before the elections.

Best was conducted
into Hitler's office.

And when he was finally face
to face with the Fuhrer,

nothing happened
as he had imagined.

(ENGLISH TRANSLATION SPOKEN OVER)

For Hitler,

even if a tactical error
had been committed,

Best conformed to most
of the normative criteria

that befitted a state activist.

And that was exactly the kind
of attitude that Hitler

hoped and prayed for.

And so, in fact,
Hitler had to reprimand the young

National Socialist
at the beginning, telling him,

listen, old boy, you could have
saved us having that image.

But when it comes down to it,
that's how you have to carry on.

Better still, while
Best was struggling and some

members of the party demanded
that he be thrown out,

Hitler came publicly
to his rescue.

Surprising benevolence indeed,
especially as everyone knew

Hitler's contempt for lawyers,
as this phrase related

by his followers shows.

"It used to be actors they
buried in the communal grave.

Nowadays they should
bury lawyers there."

Hitler clearly had a social
and intellectual complex

with regard to anyone who had an
education and especially lawyers.

Basically, to loathe lawyers
in Germany was rather equivalent

to rejecting or criticizing
technocrats in France.

It's roughly the same.

Indeed, in his great moments
of demagogy in his speeches

to workers, Hitler said
"I am one of you".

(ERUPTION OF CHEERS)

Historically, lawyers and the law
have always held an important

place in the German system.

There is a special place for the
training of lawyers in Germany.

A unique training that also gives
the opportunity to exceed

to the highest levels in
politics, to the highest ranks

in the civil service. The law
is one of the royal roots.

Lawyers therefore are among
those elite people who are

never far from power.

So despite the contempt
he felt for them,

Hitler understood very early
on that he had to count

on that body of people.

The rising generation
in the universities,

like Werner Best, were radical.

And despite the aversion they felt
at first for the populism

of the Nazis, these
young people gradually joined

and became the majority
in the student bodies.

This nationalistic
and anti Semitic

youth was an ideal hunting ground
for the party of the Swastika.

At the end of the 1920s.

Those people were at the end
of their studies

and faced a future of
unemployment

with the crisis of 1929.

And that is when schemes
for canvassing young doctors

appeared, notably young doctors
of law to encourage them to join

the party.

Not only so that they would have

a status, a mission, a job,
but better still

to open the possibility of
an absolutely marvelous career.

When he joined the NSDAP,
Werner Best was hoping to play

a role in politics.

And that was where the Boxheim
affair ruined everything.

It even cost him
his post as a judge.

But at the same time, Best had
just had a crucial encounter.

The SS.

This was Hitler's bodyguard.

Hand picked Nazis,
radical and committed to embody

the elite of the future
Thousand Year Reich.

Their leader was Heinrich Himmler
and he had spotted Werner Best.

So it was with a new number,
23377,

that Best put on his SS uniform.

The SS recruited
three types of people.

The first type were lawyers,

second type managers
and engineers,

and the third type specialists
in social sciences.

Together they could combine
political radicalism,

academic excellence
and bureaucratic efficiency.

And at the same time

they recruited people
who mostly made up

a functioning elite which enabled
the SS to penetrate the state

institutions, either local or
federal, of German society.

In the summer of 1932, the
economic situation was not good.

One German in three
was out of work.

Among them was Johann Reichardt.

He was the last in a line
of executioners who had

formerly been wealthy.

Like many of his countrymen,
he had now fallen on hard times.

There were relatively few
executions under

the Weimar Republic,

so he had to find other
ways to feed his family.

Thus he was for a
time an innkeeper.

Then he sold religious
pamphlets around the villages.

Then finally he went
and settled in the Netherlands

to sell vegetables.

(ENGLISH SPOKEN OVER GERMAN)

When an execution was planned,

they sent him
a telegram from Bavaria.

He then had to go to Munich
to carry out his work

as an executioner.

He always arrived on time.

July 10th, 1932.

In the train that took him back
to Munich, Johan Reichardt

was doing some thinking.

Since he had been living
in the Netherlands,

it was only the second time he had
been called on to officiate

as executioner.

This time it was a woman,
a first for him.

After the execution,
Reichardt went into town for a few

beers with his associates.

They confirmed that the atmosphere
had changed since he left.

And as the elections drew near,
it became more like

a climate of civil war.

So he was fairly relaxed about
taking the train back to Holland.

There, his wife and three children
were waiting for him in their

small Amsterdam flat.

Two weeks later, he learned
the results of the elections.

With 37.3% of the votes,
far ahead of the Social Democrats,

the Nazi party became the
country's first party.

In Germany, the news was
like a bombshell.

However,
long months of negotiations were

needed before at last,
on January 30, 1933,

Marshall Hindenburg agreed
to appoint Hitler as Chancellor.

On this day, January 30, 1933,
Lilo's father, Martin Kuznitzky,

read the news in the
morning paper.

The appointment of Hitler
to the post of Chancellor

foreshadowed dark days to come.

Nevertheless, the Kuznitzkys
decided to go off on holiday

to the mountains.

After all, the democratic press
recognized the legality

of the process that had
brought Hitler to power.

And then,
although he had to appoint Hitler,

old Marshal Hindenburg was
still president of the country.

He was a hero of the Great War
and his presence was comforting.

There were only three Nazis
in the right wing coalition.

Yet the lawyer Wilhelm Frick
became Home Secretary

and Goering was made Prime
Minister of Prussia,

the biggest of the German regions.

These were key posts
for controlling the police.

To contain the Nazis,
Hindenburg named his ally,

the conservative Franz von
Papen, as Vice Chancellor.

He was a political veteran
and was supposed to keep

the situation under control.

But would he be up to it?

Some, like Lilo,
were worried about

the trivialization of
the Nazis discourse,

and Hitler traveled
up and down the country

using his newfound legitimacy
as a formidable megaphone.

(SHOUTING IN AGREEMENT)

(SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC)

After the fire in the Reichstag,
Germany was in a state of shock.

The convenient arrest
of a communist suspect allowed the

Nazis to wave the
threat of a plot.

Immediately Hitler got
Hindenburg to put a signature

to an exceptional measure.

In the morning of the fire
in the Reichstag,

on 28th February 1933, an
order was signed by Hindenburg.

An order for the protection
of the people and the state,

conferring almost unlimited
powers on the executive,

on the government, and,
that's to say, on the police.

Straight away, the Nazis
began a wave of arrests.

Hans Litten, the lawyer who had
ridiculed Hitler a year and a half

earlier, was sound asleep when
someone violently

hammered on his door.

Hitler had not forgotten him.

His name was among
the first on the list.

He was taken immediately
to Spandau Prison.

The arrest went
on for several days.

Dozens of other notables soon
joined Hans Litten behind bars.

Members of parliament,
journalists,

intellectuals or writers,

most of them opposed to the Nazis.

Totally dumbfounded,
Hans Litten watched the rules of

the legal system being sabotaged.

In other words,
as from 28th of February 1933,

people in Germany were no longer
in a state governed by the law.

There was no legal control.

You could be arrested,
placed in custody

in a concentration camp
without motive,

for an indeterminate time,

undefended and beyond
the control of the judiciary.

Soon Hans Litten was transferred
to a camp at Sonnenberg.

The guards at the camp
were members of the SA

and wore the armbands
of auxiliary police.

This proved that between the usual
members of the judiciary

and the arbitrary Nazi policemen,
any distinction was

suddenly blurred.

Werner Best, now legal consultant
in the ss, was now one of those

given the task of establishing the
legal framework for these arrests.

And thanks to him,
as with the arrest of Hans Litten,

the police always turned up
with an authoritative document,

the Schutzhaft.

(ENGLISH SPOKEN OVER GERMAN)

The Schutzhaft was a tool

invented before
the Nazis came to power.

But Werner Best belonged
to that amalgam of policeman/

lawyer/ SS militant
that brought it up to date,

rewrote it
and brought it into the legal

and administrative arsenal
of the Third Reich.

We can see it in the letterhead
Gerheimer Staatspolizei,

the state secret police.

It was a police decision,
but the paper was mauve

because the color mauve was
the color for legal decisions,

judicial decisions.

In other words,
the issue was deliberately

obfuscated and a legitimized form
was given to a purely police

decision by making it seem
to be a judicial decision.

So there was no control
by a judge.

There was no longer any
respect for basic freedoms.

The Nazis were to cross
another decisive line.

Only three weeks after having put
an end to fundamental rights

and individual liberties.

There reigned a climate
of intimidation, backed

by the massive presence of the SA.

When, on March 23,
the first meeting of the new

parliament was held.

Supported by the new
exceptional measures,

Hitler commanded the
MPs to accord him full powers.

The next morning, on March 24, the
law was passed by 444 votes to 94.

From then on,
Hitler governed alone,

without having touched
the constitution.

He had set up a dictatorship.

But what community was
Frick referring to?

And who among the German people
could still claim to belong to it?

You could only be
in the community

if you were of the German race,
of German blood.

The essential corollary
of community in the Nazi sense.

There are other types of
community, race, obviously.

And it was also being in what the
Nazis came to call

the Furher's gefolgschaft.

The gefolgschaft was that group
that followed the Fuhrer,

the chief,
with unconditional obedience,

with an absolute loyalty.

(CHEERS AND SHOUTS)

(SHOUTING IN GERMAN)

(CROWD CHANTING IN GERMAN)

(SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC)

It's hard to imagine today, this
invisible, dangerous frontier.

Colleagues and neighbors who were
familiar to them,

the friends they
openly confided in.

Never again would the Germans
be able to look at them

in the same way.

In the Berlin Jewish Museum

you can find
evidence of the day when

Lilo Kuznetsky discovered that
she was on the wrong side

of that invisible line.

On the morning of April 3rd, the
police came to the family home.

As it happened, she was not there.

And it was Martin Kuznitzky,

Lilo's father,
who opened the door.

(ENGLISH TRANSLATION SPOKEN)

The policeman said,
I want your daughter's passport.

Martin Kuznitzky was busy

and paid little attention
to the policeman.

The policeman made this a pretext
for lodging a complaint

for defamation.

He was being
somewhat overzealous.

1M13033 was
the number of the file

that Inspector Young immediately
opened against Martin Kuznitzky

for some obscure motive.

The only thing that could
possibly explain that

was that Elizabeth
or Lilo Kuznitzky

was probably
politically committed

and consequently was in
the sights of the authorities

and therefore the police.

As from 30th of January 1933,
there was a policy that the Nazis

called the Gleichschaltung
that could be translated

by bringing to heel,
but which means indexing,

synchronizing, putting to one
side, in short, centralization,

rationalization, purgation.

And as it happened, the
legal world was rapidly purged

by the law of 7th of April 1933.

This was a law that affected
the civil service

and which stipulated that all
friends of the National Union

government, thus people on the
left were excluded from

the civil service.

Moreover,
the Jews had an exemption,

starting with war veterans,
but that was soon done away with.

The associations of solicitors
and of lawyers followed very

swiftly with,
without being consulted.

Or with the friendly suggestion
that they should take

notice of this law.

In other words, that what applied
to the civil service would also

apply to lawyers,
solicitors, etc.

And therefore
there would be a host

of professional bans laid down,
sometimes violently,

since at the Judiciary Tribunal
of Berlin, SA troops had burst in

and violently
thrown out the judges

and the lawyers they considered

to be on the left or Jewish,
or worse still, both.

Altogether, there were thousands
of lawyers, solicitors

and magistrates who were
sacked or forbidden to practice.

In Prussia, Goering alone,
since he was now prime minister,

dismissed 28% of top
civil servants.

Other victims of the purge were
university professors of law.

Carl Schmitt, then considered
to be the greatest legal mind,

approved.

And on May 1st he
joined the Nazi party.

As for Lilo, a lawyer from a half
Jewish family and political

activist, she became a target.

But she wasn't yet
caught up in the purge.

And unlike the 38,000 people
who were already leaving Germany,

she stayed in the country.

Fritz Lang chose to leave
with the first wave of emigrants.

And though he chose exile,

he saw the
dark institutions of his

film, M the Cursed,
become reality.

(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYS)

In just a few months,
an avalanche of laws and decrees

descended on Germany.

The Nazi plan was taking shape
and Hitler did not act alone.

After Goering, who was
extending his powers

after Frick
at the Interior Ministry,

other loyal followers saw
their powers increase.

Goebbels at the
Propaganda Ministry,

Rohm at the head of the SA,
Himmler in charge of the SS

and the Bavarian police.

To comfort public opinion
and the political class.

The conservative Franz Gürtner
was left in his post as

Minister of Justice.

But in Hitler's wake came a number
of Nazis who had been loyal

from the very beginning.

In particular, Hans Frank,
Hitler's former lawyer,

and Roland Freisler,
Secretary of State in Prussia and

one of the most radical
ideologues.

For them, above all, Freisler,
the law and justice were weapons

to be used in the internal war
against the enemies of the German

nation and the German race.

If the law is a weapon,
you need soldiers.

Roland Freisler called them
the armored divisions of the law,

a warlike term that mainly applied

to the young
generation of lawyers.

Hundreds of law students about
to get their degrees,

took the trains to Jüterbog,
90 kilometers south of Berlin.

There, in a camp where they
would spend eight weeks,

these future lawyers and public
prosecutors underwent a physical

and ideological retraining,
all under the supervision

of Roland Freisler.

Community, camaraderie,
indoctrination begins

with the repetition
of these ideas.

In a book that he would
soon write in Exile,

the young lawyer Sebastian Haffner
recounts the effects

of this brainwashing.

"If several weeks in Jüterbog
turned us into a brainless sludge,

it was the work of camaraderie.

Camaraderie annihilates the

feeling of
personal responsibility.

That's what ideological
education really was."

"By agreeing to take part
in the game they were playing

with us, we were turning ourselves
automatically into, if not Nazis,

at least into a material
the Nazis could use."

(SINISTER MUSIC PLAYS)

The armored divisions of the law.

Unlike Sebastian Haffner,
most of these young people quite

frivolously agree
to become the spearhead.

For most of them belong
to a radical generation coming

out of the universities.

(SINGING JOYFULLY)

So swastikas and patriotic songs
replaced the togas in books

of legal proceedings.

In this archive film,

they have just symbolically
condemned

and hanged a representation
of a paragraph symbol,

a sacrilege that was both a
bit of fun and heavy with meaning.

(ENGLISH TRANSLATION
SPOKEN OVER INTERVIEWEES)

In Germany, the laws are more
often subdivided into paragraphs

and less into articles,
as they do in France.

So when you target the paragraph,
you are targeting the way

in which the laws are subdivided
and therefore the formal

conception of the law.

Before 1933, in Germany,
we had a system of liberal law,

as in the whole
of Europe and the West.

That is where everything
stems from the individual.

Everything starts with the
dignity of the individual,

his freedoms and the protecting
of his dignity and freedoms.

With the Nazis, this
concept was reversed and it

was decided that henceforward,
the basis of law was no longer

the individual, but
the community of the people.

Symbolically,
to produce a paragraph wasn't

enough to radically
and durably reverse practices.

It was necessary to discipline
and control the legal professions

created by the Nazis
and presided over by Hans Frank.

The Academy of Law
would take care of it.

In 1933, Hans Frank was
brought into the government

as Commissioner of the Reich

for bringing into line
both the legal establishment

and judicial associations.

That was the first thing.

Another factor, perhaps,
was the presidency of the

Academy for German Law.

Hans Frank would preside over
this academy from 1933 to 1942.

To all appearances,
it was a standard law academy.

Its brief was to train lawyers,
support judicial publications,

prepare legal bills.

But all these functions of a
law academy, and in this case

the Academy for German Law,
took on a special meaning,

since it required specifically
bringing into line and breathing

life into a new ideology.

Within the academy there were
eminent law professors like

Carl Schmitt,
philosophers such as

Martin Heidegger,
future magistrates and lawyers,

and of course, Roland Freisler.

There were also people with no
judicial qualifications,

appointed just out
of political expediency.

Industrialists or
well known personalities.

Hans Frank, as president,
decided to set the example.

On the ground, Magistrates saw
a part of their prerogatives

brought into question.

Some of them openly complained.

In the personal file of prosecutor
Reuters,

there are dozens of notes that
this conservative civil servant

had addressed to the government
minister denouncing

the interference of the
state secret police,

the Gestapo, in many cases.

Procedures,
illegal interrogations,

repeated irregularities for
offenses of a political nature,

non transmission of information
to the public prosecutor's office,

and even sometimes
the disappearance of proof.

In concrete terms,
a defendant can be transferred

before a repressive penal
tribunal and find him or herself

at the end of the proceedings,
acquitted and walk

out of the court.

And the Gestapo might grab him,
saying,

"Yes, all right, but we've
got other things against you."

In any case, you're
outside the community.

In this pitiless war against
the enemies of the community,

the independence of judges
was under threat everywhere.

In the Cologne tribunal where she
worked, Lilo Kuznitzky

saw it every day.

To reach the ideal of justice
for the community of the people

that they dreamed of,
the Nazis had set out

to defeat the judicial system.

Whether it was birthright,
citizenship, health,

heredity or politics.

Special tribunals were created
to sanction new offenses

defined by Nazi dogma.

Every time there was a problem,
they created a law

and then a tribunal.

So there are tribunals
in every field.

And especially there was
an interesting tribunal

which concerned the handing down
of hereditary farms,

because there are two German key,
blood and land.

Blut und Boden.

The German peasant was,
in Nazi minds, the essence

of National Socialism.

So what was important was
that great properties

should be passed down.

If someone were Jewish,
he had no right to own land.

If someone were enough
of a congenital idiot,

he had no right to own land.
And so on.

Every possible exclusion was
invented to preserve the purity

of the race, so to speak.

It was land tenure that brought
honor to German soil.

Special tribunals,
Gestapo and the police became

the instruments of this bringing
into line that the Nazis called

synchronization and nothing must
stop it, even if it meant getting

around traditional justice.

It was a vast movement that also
transformed the life

of executioner Johann Reichardt.

In June 1933,
after two years in Holland,

he came back and settled
in Munich with his family.

He had just been offered
a long term contract.

It was beyond his wildest dreams.

The Reichards could once again
enjoy the Munich summer

and swimming in the canal.

A carefree happiness they
had almost forgotten.

An income of 3,000 marks
a month, a small fortune.

All things were possible again
thanks to this contract.

Saxony, which had no executioner,
also sought his services.

Reichardt lived again.

And around him the nation
too seemed to be reborn.

The Nazis announced a plan
to boost the economy.

Like many Germans in the summer
of 1933, Johann Reichardt went

along with the incredible
succession of changes

happening in every field.

The press had already announced
several months earlier,

the creation by Goering
of the Gestapo.

Order was the priority everywhere.

stormtroopers
paraded in every town.

In two years, the SA expanded
from 100,000 to 450,000 men.

Those among them appointed as
police auxiliaries were now armed.

They were an instrument which
made their chief, Ernst Rohm,

Hitler's former brother in arms,
an inescapably powerful man.

On July 14th, the NSDAP,
the Nazi party,

became the only party allowed.

During the summer of 1933,
Adolf Hitler and Ernst Rohm

could enjoy their victory.

After 10 years of political
struggle, the seeds they had

planted had at last germinated.

Germany was ready to follow.

And in eight months most Germans

had accepted without
batting an eyelid,

dozens of laws and decrees
that had already fundamentally

changed the country.

For the Nazis, there remained one
last symbolic step to complete

the redisciplining of the country.

On September 21st, 1933,
nine months after the Reichstag

fire, began the trial of those
suspected of starting the blaze.

Goebbels propaganda minister
saw an interesting opportunity

to turn it into a media platform.

The great political trial
that would stand in judgment over

the plotters, communists,
against the state system.

It was a show trial.

The trial was broadcast
live on radio.

So it had to be a great moment,
a great shop window

of Nazi propaganda.

Except that the trial was held
according to the rules

and the defense
could exercise its rights.

As it happened, Dimitrov,
one of the accused,

using his right of defense,

called two ministers
to the bar as witnesses,

Goebbels and Goering.

During his eight months
in custody,

Dimitrov had prepared his defense

and had scrupulously studied
the German penal code.

Goering found himself in such
difficulty that Dimitrov managed

to make him lose his temper.

(ANGRY SHOUTING)

Feeling himself ridiculed,

Goering had the radio broadcast
of the trial stopped.

But from their enforced exile,
anti Nazi German journalists

loved every minute of it.

(GOERING SHOUTING)

This collage by the famous press
artist John Hartfield

summed up the fiasco.

Only Van der Lubbe
was found guilty,

while Dimitrov and
the others were acquitted.

For the Nazis,
not only was the Reichstag fire

trial a crushing defeat,
it showed that the bringing

to heal had not gone to plan.

The old law system still stood up
against their vision of the world.

But Hitler and his lawyers
had not said their last word.

And as a reaction to the defeat
they had just suffered,

they would soon put in place
a formidable strategy and new laws

that were even more implacable.