Why did elite lawyers sympathize with the Nazis?
How did you justify them?

Through Nazi lawyers who were at the forefront of destroying democracy
Looking back at the dilemma of law and morality

"How did the Weimar Republic, which established modern democracy, descend into the Nazis, which destroyed democracy? How did it escalate into a Holocaust and a series of horrific events unparalleled in human history?" Nazi Germany poses these questions.

Hitler's Lawyers seeks answers by focusing on the unsung heroes of Nazi Germany: the lawyers who sympathized with and justified Hitler and the Nazis.
The author examines in detail how Weimar Republic lawyers, who “despised democracy,” developed theories for Hitler’s despotic power and the establishment of the Nazi legal system, and justified the exercise of violent power.
Drawing on cutting-edge research in law, history, and politics, the author meticulously traces the subversion of legal norms perpetrated by Nazi lawyers, while also revealing in detail the bizarre legal ideas and theories they created in the process.
The result was “a dazzling resume of Nazi lawyers who rolled up their sleeves to overthrow democratic norms and destroy institutions” (Lee Dong-gi, Professor of Peace Studies, Kangwon National University Graduate School).


The virtue of this book is that it goes beyond a superficial study of Nazi lawyers and the judicial system. It offers a fresh legal-philosophical assessment grounded in the social and political context in which Nazi legal norms and institutions were created.
Through this work, he reveals that Nazi law was not a “system of ‘bad laws’ separated from morality,” as postwar legal scholars have generally evaluated it, but rather a system that fully integrated morality and law, and proves that when law succumbs to political ideology, state power can fail to prevent violations of general moral and legal standards” (pp. 17-18).