First, there was no legal appeal against a decision of the Special Court." Punishment was immediate in those cases in which the offender was caught "in the very act or if his guilt is otherwise obvious. In all other cases, punishment was to be imposed within twenty-four hours.
Reorganized All The Way up to The Supreme Court
The next step in the reorganization of the judicial system was the establishment of the People's Court (VGH). This extraordinary tribunal was given jurisdiction over treason, which previously had been the preserve of the Supreme Court.
In 1930, Hitler had vowed before a German tribunal that:
"[w]hen our movement is victorious, then a new Supreme Court will be assembled, and before this court . . . you may be sure heads will roll in the sand."
Between 1937 and 1944, the Court adjudicated 14,319 cases. The Tribunal sentenced 5,191 of these defendants to death. In July 1942, Reich Minister Hermann Goebbels addressed the judges who sat on the People's Court and attacked their lenient treatment of defendants. He lectured the judges that they should:
" proceed less from the law than from the basic idea that the offender was to be eliminated from the community.. . . [Ilt was not so much a matter of whether a judgment was just or unjust but only whether the decision was expedient. The State must ward off its internal foes in the most efficient way and wipe them out entirely. The idea that the judge must be convinced of the defendant's guilt must be discarded completely. . . . The criminal must know beforehand that he will lose his head, should he assault the foundations of the State.
And with that, my fellow Americans, I leave you to ponder the course ahead, unless we stop this neo-fascist administration in its tracks. Because failing to learn from this is the best way to repeat it. And we are seeing the seeds sprouting for just that as you read this.
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