c. Selections from the Argumentation of the Defense

EXTRACT FROM THE FINAL PLEA FOR DEFENDANT BRACK*

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The treatment of the question of responsibility for euthanasia in this room encounters great difficulties insofar as there is not only considerable ignorance of certain peculiarities of the German position in constitutional matters, but above all a great difference between the thinking of continental European and of transatlantic jurists on matters of constitutional statutory law. Law and morals have for centuries been sharply differentiated on the European continent in juristic and above all in legislative thinking in contrast to the states across the ocean. This historical fact must be taken into consideration, for only then can the realization be reached that in a question of German constitutional law only that development can be decisive which legal training has bad in Germany in deviations from the constitutional law of the Weimar Republic, since the Enabling Act of 24 March 1933 and the Head of the State Law of 1 August 1931.

With these laws Hitler was given all authority as head of the state and chief of the government, in full recognition of the Fuehrer principle which had been in operation for over a year, with approval by the plebiscite of 19 August 1934.

From this time on Hitler incorporated the will of the people, and the resulting functions. He had thus become the Supreme Legislator of the Reich. A concluding resolution of the Reichstag was only the confirmation of his primary declaration of his will.

Among the independent promulgations of laws, which were represented as direct emanations of his authority, the declarations of Hitler's will which were at first called "decrees" and later uniformly "Fuehrer decrees" assumed the most important role. In them the distinction, still customary under the Weimar constitution, between legislative and executive is overcome, as Hitler proclaimed in his Reichstag speech of 30 January 1937 in the words: "There is only one legislative power and one executive."

Therefore the decrees united material law with organizational measures and administrative directives, especially insofar as they were addressed only to a group of persons gathered together in a certain community. Proclamation in the Reich Law Gazette [Reichsgesetzblatt], countersigned by the competent departmental minister, and later the competent chancellery chief, no longer played a decisive role in 1937. The Fuehrer principle was already in full operation at this time. It no longer tolerated the dependence of the authority

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*Final plea is recorded in mimeographed transcript, 18 July 1947, pp. 11220-11244.