Die Umdeutung der NS-Diktatur in einen Rechtsstaat

摘要

The widespread thesis of an immediate and successful start of the Federal Republic of Germany into democracy directly after 1945 does not hold true if one pays regard to the way in which German law courts dealt with the political crimes of Nazi-dictatorship. Political opposition and resistance against Hitler for a long time were declared illegal; the discrimination laws against jews remained acknowledged as formal legal grounds, the war crimes of the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) were not punished. It took half of a century for the German Parlament to declare the judgements of the dictatorship-justice null and void and its laws inoperative.