GERMANY: Joke on Justice

Extremely proud of the new Nazi “People’s Court” for trying treason cases is its twinkly-eyed President, genial Dr. Fritz Rehn. From the Court foreign correspondents are barred. “They don’t understand!” tolerantly exclaims Dr. Rehn, who last week was happy to have as his guest a prominent U. S. attorney who would surely understand. With Nazi guards clicking out salutes, President Rehn showed William Ormonde Thompson, Clarence Darrow’s onetime partner, all over the Court, now handsomely installed in Prussia’s onetime Diet Building. He explained to Mr. Thompson how much better Nazi justice is than the justice it replaced. Take evidence, for example. “The need for factual evidence,” Guest Thompson learned, “in many cases has been due to the erroneous reasoning of the jurists, and therefore should be eliminated! The guilt or innocence of a man is to be determined by whether or not he is dangerous to the existence of the State.”

Going through the People’s Court mill last week were 15 young Communists. They were accused of preparing an armed uprising by burying guns and ammunition in a cemetery. Whether there was evidence of this deed occupied the Court less than whether the young men are dangerous to the State. There seemed to be a strong impression in Court that they were. After Lawyer Thompson had said good-by to President Rehn and returned to his hotel he exploded:

“The so-called ‘People’s Court’ is a star chamber. … It seemed to me a ghastly joke that three of the five judges of those Communists should be Nazi Storm Troopers who have engaged in stamping out [Communist] opposition to their party and who have a military attitude toward their opponents. … I saw one of the defense lawyers in action—or rather I saw him in inaction. Neither he nor the State’s attorney said much. The President of the Court dominated the proceedings. . . . The prisoner goes to trial without any knowledge of the case against him other than the statement made to him at the time of his arrest, that he is charged with treason or acts against the State. The facts upon which he was charged he will hear for the first time when the witnesses testify at his trial.”

Carefully Lawyer Thompson traced Realmleader Hitler’s progressive overhauling of German justice from his suppression of the right of habeas corpus as soon as he became Chancellor to the latest decrees permitting the People’s Court to order defendants punished or executed for acts which have been made crimes since they were committed. The new Court, he remarked, was apparently founded to obtain convictions in treason cases so flimsy that no conviction could be hoped for from “the German Supreme Court composed of jurists of unimpeachable integrity.” In the case of the Reichstag fire the Supreme Court acquitted all defendants except the Dutch half-wit Marinus van der Lubbe who confessed (TIME, Jan. 1). Last week the German defendant, Herr Torgler, once a Communist Reichstag Deputy, still remained in jail, despite his acquittal eight months ago. Lawyer Thompson obtained news of Communist Torgler from psychic Realmleader Hitler’s magnetic boon companion, Dr. Ernst (“Putzy”) Hanfstaengl.

“Torgler and others will be released under the Leader’s amnesty,” said “Putzy” darkly, “but if the released men do not behave themselves they will be put up against a wall and shot!”

When persistent Lawyer Thompson started quoting the opinions of British jurists on the subject of Nazi justice, harassed Harvardman Hanfstaengl grew highly excited and finally incoherent. Roared he: “Damn those Oxford professors! I’ll send some of our swine to burn down their Oxford!”