Abstract

In The Third Reich in Power: 1933–1939, Richard Evans pursues the theme that the Nazis used law, terror, and propaganda as 'techniques of governance' that would serve to Nazify Germany. Evans also provides support for the conclusion that the Nazis' claims to give expression to the life of a people's community (Volksgemeinschaft) were bogus. For the techniques of governance on which they relied established a 'terror machine.' Michael Oakeshott's account of 'enterprise association' affords a means by which to gain analytic purchase on Nazi Germany as a social formation. An enterprise association is highly instrumental and exhibits a lack of sensitivity to the interests of individuals and particular groups. Government uses the levers of power at its disposal to pursue an agenda into which it integrates the law's addressees. Assuming that Nazi Germany was an enterprise association, the misgivings concerning the concept of community expressed by many human-rights lawyers since World War II would seem to be overstated. While the Nazis made regular appeals to empirical community (Volksgemeinschaft), they worked assiduously to undermine ethical community. Ethical community is an ideal that specifies that law should adequately accommodate the interests of all those in the group it is supposed to serve. The Nazis' attitude toward ethical community indicates a lack of commitment to law in the narrow sense (as defined by Nigel Simmonds). But, in inducing patterns of obedience in those over whom they wielded power, the Nazis had a legal system in the wide sense (defined by Simmonds).

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