The point @Wanderfound made still is accurate. The majority of their crimes were under the cover of national legality. Law is relative to the society it’s practiced in. That doesn’t make it any less of a crime against humanity. But all they did was legal under German law, no matter how the rest of the world (who, by the way, didn’t all feel it was bad or unlawful, even today) felt about it.
To bring the example back to the US, Jim Crow was fully legal, because it was the law. The law is not a system of morality, but a system of social control, for good or ill.
I am sorry to contradict MLK, especially this week, but not everything that they did was legal. They committed illegal acts, and they perverted the rule of law into rule by law, that is something very different.
And that happens all the time. Law is just as often used as a means of oppressing people as it is a means of ensuring justice. Law is a tool. There is no inherent justice and morality in law - it’s all in how it’s being applied.
King was spot on here. There is nothing in his statement that assumes literally everything Hitler ever did was legal. He’s referring to the construction of a white supremacist society through legal means - not an uncommon act at all. King’s statement is meant to convey the idea that we fetishize the law at the expense of justice at our peril, history shows us.
After the failed beer hall putsch, Hitler was charged with high treason. The judges were quite sympathetic, to put it mildly. Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison - and actually did 9 months. Which he used to write Mein Kampf.
If the court would have actually followed the law as it was at the time, there would have been very little leeway towards not sentencing Hitler to death.
Several jurists have written books (or a thesis) about the trial; IMO Gritschneder’s book is a good summing up.
Otto Gritschneder: “Bewährungsfrist für den Terroristen Adolf H. Der Hitlerputsch und die bayerische Justiz”. Verlag C. H. Beck, München, 1990
