"Die Belange der Volksgemeinschaft erfordern …" Rechtspraxis und Selbstverständnis von Bremer Juristen im "Dritten Reich." by Christine Schoenmakers (review)

This book is a local case study of the politicization of the legal profession during the Nazi era. Drawing on case files, reports in the local and regional press, personnel files, contemporary legal commentary, and her interviews conducted with the children and grandchildren of some of her subjects, Schoenmakers sets out to examine criminal trials and the jurists who participated in them: a group of around one hundred Bremen judges, prosecutors, and attorneys, but with a particular emphasis on a handful of individuals, especially Emil Warneken, the de facto chair of Bremen's "Special Court" (Sondergericht). The Special Court's proceedings usually had political implications, e.g., prosecutions of foreign workers or of German citizens who made indiscreet remarks about Hitler, listened to forbidden "enemy radio," and so on.

Although the book is overlong and somewhat lacking in focus, especially when it comes to summarizing her agenda (42–44), two recurring themes stand out. One is more implicit than clearly stated. Schoenmakers seeks to show that these judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys often acted unjustly, and that they did so willingly rather than under duress. Her judgment seems reasonable (though sometimes difficult to substantiate) but hardly qualifies as news. The book's most prominently stated theme is the Nazis' idealized "national community" (Volksgemeinschaft), the legal profession's role in creating or affirming it, and her jurists' attitudes toward this vaguely formulated social and political construct. The book falls into three parts, each linked—sometimes uneasily—to the theme of Volksgemeinschaft.

The first part of the book is built on the argument that the legal system, as an important institution upholding societal norms, played a crucial role in defining the Volksgemeinschaft. Because the regime gave no precisely articulated positive content to this concept of national (or "racial") community, it was easier to define it negatively. Jurists, Schoenmakers contends, marked the boundaries of the national community by punishing those people deemed to fall outside it, whether by birth (Jews, foreign workers) or by behavior, which could put a German citizen in the unenviable category of "racial pest" (Volksschädling). She advances the intriguing claim that this process of exclusion was ritualized and performed as public spectacle in trials. Unfortunately her sources do not allow her to flesh out this argument in any detail, nor to speak persuasively to the question of how legal processes might have shaped public opinion.

The book's second part focuses more directly on some of the Bremen jurists she has studied, their socioeconomic background, and prior political history. Schoenmakers summarizes standard arguments about how and why these men adapted to Nazi expectations with apparent ease and became increasingly politicized and radicalized in their actions over time. But two biographical essays—on Warneken and a younger jurist—give few clues to the men's motives and outlook (204–225). Schoenmakers tries to argue that her jurists were substantially motivated by a commitment to the Volksgemeinschaft ideal and that disagreements over its meaning fueled important conflicts between jurists or between attorneys and the government or Nazi Party (239–271). On closer inspection, these conflicts seem driven by personal concerns, professional jealousy, or abrasive temperament, and the link to the Volksgemeinschaft seems tenuous.

The book's final section examines the postwar era. A chapter on denazification and the prosecution of Nazi jurists holds few surprises: most of these men enjoyed untroubled postwar careers. The last chapter is insightful and at times quite moving. Schoenmakers probes, with nuance and empathy, the often painful process by which Nazi jurists came to terms with their own culpability (usually by denying it), how their descendants confronted this troubling past, and how this past—whether confronted or repressed—could damage intimate relationships and distort personalities. She ties these last two chapters to the "national community" by arguing, with little evidence, that its lingering appeal among the Germans hindered honest acknowledgment...