
Contents
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The Treason of the Intellectuals The Treason of the Intellectuals
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Purging the Academia Purging the Academia
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Vom Recht zum Unrecht Vom Recht zum Unrecht
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Hitler’s Professors Hitler’s Professors
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Crime and No Punishment Crime and No Punishment
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Conclusion Conclusion
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References References
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9 The Collaboration of the Intellectuals: Legal Academia and the Third Reich
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Published:June 2022
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Abstract
This chapter explores the collaboration of law professors with the crimes of the Third Reich. Broadly speaking, academics supported the regime’s project of racial purification, territorial expansion, and its imperialistic goals in general. In particular, law professors conferred a veneer of legality and legitimacy on the actions of the regime by providing the necessary doctrines to support the regime’s political, national, and racial passions. None of these professors was held accountable for their complicity, most of them shielded by the ‘Heidelberg Myth’, according to which the few Nazi professors who supported the regime were an imposition from the outside. Just as in the rest of Germany, where denazification was timid at best, professors who supported the Nazi regime resumed their careers, while those who had been purged by the Nazis faced a steeper hill. One of them, Theodor Maunz (1901–93), who defended a National Socialist conception of the Rechtsstaat compatible with the existence of concentration camps, continued his academic career uninterrupted and became a member of the constitutional convention for West Germany’s new constitution.
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