How Hitler Became Germany’s “Supreme Judge”

Sentence in 1942 assault case led Hitler to unilateral power over judges

Hitler during his April 26, 1942, Reichstag speech (Source: Bundesarchiv)

German shipyard worker Ewald Schlitt probably didn’t know an article about his March 1942 assault conviction appeared in a newspaper in Berlin, some 275 miles away. His misfortune was that Adolf Hitler read the article.

In the summer of 1940, Schlitt’s wife of three years confessed to a sexual relationship with another man. He beat her during their violent argument and she ended up in a nursing home. She contracted intestinal flu there and died in October 1940. Unable to establish that Schlitt caused her death, a court in Oldenberg found him guilty of assault and gave him the maximum five-year sentence on March 14, 1942.

On March 22, Hitler read about the case in a Berlin newspaper. Believing the punishment too lenient, a furious Hitler almost immediately set about to become Germany’s “Supreme Law Lord.” He wanted to eliminate whatever remnant of judicial independence existed in the country.

When the Nazis came to power, they quickly moved to gain control over the legal system. Immediately following the Reichstag Fire on February 27, 1933, a decree suspended civil liberties. On March 24, the Reichstag adopted the so-called “Enabling Act.” It allowed Hitler’s government to enact laws without the Reichstag’s approval and said those laws could “deviate from the constitution.”

The Nazis also moved to control the legal system. By May 1933, all traditional bar associations, including the German Federation of Judges, were dissolved and replaced by the Nazi Party’s National Socialist German Jurists’ League. Beginning in August 1934, a judge’s oath started, “I will be loyal and obedient to the Fuehrer.” A February 1936 law required attorneys to swear to “remain loyal to the Fuehrer.”

Hitler abhorred lawyers and judges and, to his anger, these actions didn’t exterminate judicial independence. After reading the Schlitt article, he called Franz Schlegelberger, the acting Minister of Justice, and demanded Schlitt received a harsher punishment. Two days later, Schlegelberger told Hitler he’d agreed and filed an “extraordinary objection” with the Reich Supreme Court. The Supreme Court quashed Schlitt’s sentence and…