All language subtitles for A.Justice.of.Terror.2of2.1080p.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org

(tense music)

As soon as he seized power
in January 1933,

Hitler used the law as a weapon
to impose Nazi ideology.

Backed by several faithful lawyers
who had supported him

from the very start,

he set about bringing
the legal system to heal.

Police powers intensified while
those of the judges declined.

It was a reversal of the rules
of traditional law,

which recalled Fritz Lang's
premonitions in his 1931 film, M.

At the heart
of Hitler's tribunals,

lawyers and magistrates
were the protagonists

in a relentless war
to impose a new legal system

that conformed
to the Nazis world-view.

Remarkable accounts
bring this story to light,

such as that of Lilo Kuznitzky,

a Democrat lawyer,

who saw her dreams
of freedom go up in smoke.

Werner Best,

a lawyer who had risen
through the ranks of the SS

at lightning speed.

Johann Reichhart,

the Munich executioner
who would make his fortune

from the assent of the Nazis

or Hans Litten, a barrister
and sworn enemy of Hitler.

The trial of the alleged
Reichstag arsonist

began on September 21st, 1933.

This show trial
became a fiasco for the Nazis.

The Supreme Court
acquitted four of the accused.

You could ask if this constituted
a victory for the rule of law,

but it didn't.

Certainly, the Supreme Court
was no longer involved

in political or media affairs,

but immediately afterwards,

a new court was created,

the Volksgerichtshof,

or People's Court.

There were
two professional magistrates

and three non-magistrates.

Three Volksgenossen,
as they are known,

three Comrade of the people,
three Citizens.

In fact, they were
members of the party,

members of the police,
members of the Wehrmacht.

The idea behind that was
that anyone could be a judge.

Why?

Because law is instinctive,
something spontaneous in you,

a movement that leads you to do

what is best for you,
your family, and your race,

spontaneously.

You didn't need to be
a professional magistrate

to be a judge.

The Reichstag fire case was
a revelation for the Nazis.

The old law, as written
in the statute books, endured.

Three years previously,
Fritz Lang's film, M,

had already predicted what
the Nazis would try to do

once they were in power.

Circumventing an abstract law
and replacing it with courts

where the people's
common sense prevailed.

With the creation
of the People's Court,

Hitler freed himself from the
shackles of traditional justice.

But this was not enough.

He wanted absolute power.

The occasion presented
itself in the spring of 1934.

The ageing Marshal von Hindenburg,
the President of the Reich,

was dying.

Hitler wanted
to get rid of Erwin Bumke,

the high magistrate

who was due to be interim leader,

and merge his powers as Chancellor
with those of the President.

But in order to do this,

Hitler first had to reassure
the elite and the army

who were concerned about the
growing power of Ernst Röhm's SA

and its revolutionary ambitions.

So Hitler made his decision.

On the night of June 29, 1934,

Werner Best was ready.

He was in charge of the purge
in Southern Germany.

He had made good progress
since joining the SS

two and a half years before.

He was now a commander

and worked alongside
Reinhard Heydrich,

Hitler's second in command.

Under his orders, he ran
the SS intelligence service,

the SD.

He was put in charge of drawing up
the list of those to be arrested.

There was a cross
next to 28 of the names.

This meant they were
to be summarily put to death.

One of them was Edgar Jung,

one of his friends and a former
political companion in arms.

Werner Best would later write,

Sometimes it is necessary
to sacrifice men and laws

in favour of higher ideals.

Around a thousand people
were arrested in three days.

A further hundred were murdered.

On the morning of June 30th,

SA chief Ernst Röhm
was arrested by Hitler himself.

He was transferred
to Stadelheim Prison

and was shot in his cell
on July the first.

Hitler would justify
what had happened

to demonstrate
that he was no mere thug,

but a true statesman.

He spoke in the Reichstag
on the 13th of July, 1934,

describing the situation,

saying there was a plot,

the SA were plotting,
and went on to say,

In hours of great danger,

I was the German people's
Supreme Judge.

In other words,
all of the acts of murder

carried out over those three days
were legal acts.

He said this to the Reichstag
on the 13th of July, 1934.

He had written it in a decree
on the third of July, 1934.

It was a singular article

which set out that all acts

committed within the framework
of state safeguarding operations

and the rule of law were legal.

The word employed was 'rechtens',
meaning approved in law.

Reassured
by the radical purge of the SA,

the elite made no objection
to this self-amnesty.

Better still,

members of the government
who were not in the Nazi Party

also signed the July 3rd decree.

As for the judiciary,

frozen by the climate of terror

induced
by the Night of the Long Knives,

they abstained
from making any comment

about the Nazis' legislation
of their own crimes.

And, barely three weeks later,

they pledged allegiance
to the Führer

on the solemn monumental staircase
of the Moabit Palace in Berlin,

the very place
where three years earlier,

the barrister Hans Litten

had tried to charge
Hitler with perjury.

And as if to nip any debate
in the bud,

Carl Schmitt,
the great thinker of German law,

immediately intervened
to absolve Hitler in an article,

The Führer Upholds the Law.

The Führer protects
what is good for the people,

so the Führer protects the law.

These are classic shortcuts to
identity-based concrete thinking.

In early August 1934,

Hindenburg had
just conveniently died,

and without anyone objecting,

Hitler combined
the powers of Chancellor

and President of the Reich.

Now, he incarnated
not only the law,

he was the people's Führer,

and incarnated absolute power.

In just 20 months,

he had managed
to shut down all opposition

and eliminate his opponents.

He had muzzled the press and held
the legal system on a leash.

Even the army
had pledged allegiance to him.

It was a complete success,

a triumph of the will.

This was even
the title that the film-maker,

Leni Riefenstahl,
gave to her film,

dedicated to the glory of Hitler,

which she shot at the
Nuremberg Conference in 1934.

There, in front
of academy members,

Hans Frank celebrated
the legal advances taking place.

Hitler's lawyers
had done a good job,

none more so than Werner Best.

Not only had he worked
in the legal field,

but he had demonstrated
his efficiency

with the purge of the SA.

One need only look
at his dazzling SS career

to get a measure of the esteem in
which he was held by his chiefs.

In April 1933,
he was a mere corporal.

One year later,
he was a commander.

And the day after
the Night of the Long Knives,

he was made a lieutenant colonel.

There was no doubt he would
continue to rise in the hierarchy.

The executioner
Johann Reichhart's life

also carried the smell of success.

He now operated in three regions
and drove an Opel Blitz.

An Opel Blitz.

Two years before,

he would not have imagined
being able to afford

a new van of such class.

And it was useful for work.

These vans could carry
up to three tonnes,

so a Mannhardt guillotine
was child's play.

The Opel allowed Reichhart
to be punctual,

and he took great care
in his work.

Since the People's Court
had been formed,

meetings took place
at the Ministry

to harmonise
the methods of execution.

Johann Reichhart was keen
to demonstrate the efficacy

of his chosen work tool.

There was
a bureaucratic evaluation

of the advantages
and disadvantages of the acts

compared to those
of the guillotine.

Very precise statistics

seemed to show
that execution with an axe

saved a few seconds
compared to the guillotine.

It was also the argument
that the axe was more Germanic,

that it was more
authentic and patriotic,

and more German than executing
someone with a mechanical device.

Note concerning
the implementation

of the death penalty,

speed of execution by axe.

This allows a gain of 20 seconds

between the moment the condemned
is handed to the executioner

and the moment
when the head falls.

The lawyer, Roland Freisler,
took part in this meeting,

and Freisler was a proponent
of the virility of the axe.

The Nazis detested the values
of the French Revolution

and the guillotine.

Nonetheless,

Hitler decided to make it
the official method of execution,

putting an end to the debate.

The Führer was won over
by the mechanical efficiency

of the machine.

An engineering company
was immediately contracted

to mass-produce guillotines.

The Nazi administration,
no strangers to cruelty,

assigned the final stage
of assembly

to the inmates
of Berlin's Tegel Prison.

The expert
Johann Reichhart's future,

was looking promising.

For other Germans, however,
dark clouds were gathering.

What had become of Hans Litten?

For all Lilo Kuznitzky's efforts

to find any trace of her former
university colleague,

his name was not
mentioned anywhere.

Since his arrest,

he had repeatedly been transferred

from one concentration camp
to another.

Beaten and tortured,

he had become
half deaf and had lost an eye.

His leg was paralysed,

and he needed sticks to walk.

In two years,

Lilo had watched the world
she had dreamed of

since she was 20 disappear.

That world had been replaced
by that of the Nazis,

a world where a woman had been
put back in her rightful place,

taking care of cooking
and domestic chores.

900,000 women had already
been fired from public office.

Lilo no longer harboured
any illusions

about her chances
of continuing a career in law.

She was 31 years old

and was already sensing
the imminent nightmare.

She knew the worst
was still to come.

She had just found out
that the 700 magistrates

who represented
the cream of the legal system

had been summoned
to a solemn ceremony

in the presence of Hitler,

behind the walls
of the Berlin Opera.

On April second, 1935,

the Justice Minister,
Franz Gaertner,

gleefully made a summary

of the synchronisation
of the legal apparatus.

When he spoke
of the renewal of German law,

the minister was referring
to a new raft of legislation

announced at the latest
Nuremberg conference.

Laws designed to regiment
the lives of Germans

based on their racial origin.

And by their very presence,

the 700 magistrates had already
acquiesced to these laws.

The main one

was called the law for
the protection of German blood.

It enshrined not only
the biologisation of politics,

but also the biologisation
of the law.

It was a law that forbade
the mixing of flesh

and the mixing of blood.

So it was a modification
of the Civil Code

because it affected marriage

and the Penal Code because
it sanctioned sexual relations.

The idea was

that different races are
all separate zoological species,

and any intermingling
produces a monster.

The Mischling,
or literally mixture,

produces a monster.

A monster wherein
the bad blood destroys the good.

If you were to breed a Jew
with a non-Jewish German,

the Jewish wickedness
and deviousness

would overcome
German intelligence.

But then there had to be a way

to distinguish
who was Jewish and who wasn't.

And there were doctors
and scientists

who worked to try to identify
the criteria of Jewishness.

There was no biological way
to identify them,

but they tried everything.

Anthropometry of the ears,
the skulls, the feet,

the muscle formation,
the blood groups,

with no success.

So as lawyers,

they were then obliged
to backtrack,

which is what led
to this somewhat sheepish law

that looked
towards cultural criteria.

What made a person Jewish?

Having Jewish grandparents

who belonged
to a Jewish community

that attended the synagogue.
Period.

Two years previously,

Lilo had been spared
by the first purges,

but this new law banned her
from the community of the people.

She had tainted Jewish blood
from her father,

which made her a Mischling,
a monster.

In October 1935,

a month after the law
was published,

she was excluded
from the legal profession.

In December,

her father, Martin Kuznitzky,

was banned
from practising medicine.

Alongside these racial laws

came new texts,
decrees, and articles

compiled by German lawyers
in new legal tracks.

Germany's Jews,
who were particularly targeted,

found their lives
had become a hell.

State hospitals would not
admit patients who were Jewish.

If they were officers in the army,
they were expelled.

As students,
they could no longer get a degree,

and before long, they were asked
to declare their belongings.

It begs the question,

who were these rules aimed at?

They were written.
They looked like laws or decrees.

They looked like regulations.

But who were they aimed at?

It was the total suppression
of the subject of the law

for Jews.

And as for those
in the wider community,

they only had rights within
the framework of that community.

That meant that
in everything they did,

even the most private,

trivial, and even intimate acts

of their sexual life,

their life,

they became a servant
of the community.

It was now official.

Love was no longer enough.

Henceforth, blood would decide,

and the choice of a soulmate

would be first subjected
to a medical examination.

There was an imperative of purity
that even Arians had to respect.

Some, rather than risk being
excluded from their community,

chose to divorce their spouse
if they were Jewish.

The seismic effect
of these racial laws

led to a new wave of emigration.

This is exactly
what the Nazis had intended,

to encourage Jews
to leave the countries

and to rid the German nation
of their presence.

During the 1936 conference,

Werner Best defended the idea
that the German police

were now the doctor
of the German body politic.

The Nazis were
so obsessed with biology

that they saw the German nation
as a biological organism,

and the police officer or lawyer
could act as its doctor.

If a body part was gangrenous,
it had to be amputated.

A shame,
the body part would suffer,

but it was better
for the body as a whole.

So you can see the potential
for legitimisation.

You were no longer considered
violent or a criminal

if you hit someone
or killed someone.

You were like a doctor,

removing a rotten tooth
or amputating a gangrenous limb.

It was completely different

because you were saving
the entire body,

the social body, the racial body.

It was thanks to Himmler's SS

that the police
became the guarantors

of the social body's good health.

Himmler said it publicly,

Yes, we break the law,

and we break it vigorously,

but we do it
to uphold the true law.

That's why Werner Best,
now in charge of recruitment,

had no trouble convincing
Himmler and Heydrich

of the necessity
of favouring lawyers.

Himmler and Heydrich were
two fine organisational minds.

Imperatives drove them,
on the one hand,

to accept to put at the head
of these organisations a lawyer

who was convinced
of the excellence of lawyers

in organisational positions,

i.e. Best,

and on the other hand,

a number of theorists

who stood out for
both their academic excellence

and for their radical ideology.

People like Reinhard Höhn
like William Spengler,

people like Franz Six,

the tentacles of the SS Octopus
were everywhere.

For example,
more and more often,

there was a Minister in
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

the Ministry that was supposed
to represent Germany,

wearing an SS uniform.

In that same year, 1936,
the SS entered the Law Academy.

It was represented
by Werner Best,

who was presiding
over the Police Law Commission.

He was close to power

but remained discrete
as he was in the secret police.

This is the only
contemporary footage of him

in the Ministry of the Interior,
next to Reinhard Heydrich,

second in command to Himmler.

Himmler, a man on the rise.

These images bear witness
of the growing power

that the SS had accrued since
the Night of the Long Knives.

And in the ensuing years,

the men in the uniforms
bearing the Death's Head

would have an influence
on changes in the law.

On February 10th, 1936,

came the enactment
of a law written by Best

that increased the powers
of the Prussian Gestapo

and reinforced the Schutzhaft.

On June 17th, 1936,

Himmler was appointed
chief of all police,

and set about centralising them.

On July first, 1937,

Reinhard Heydrich signed a decree
prepared by Werner Best

that legalised the use of torture
during interrogations.

In August 1938,

Jews who did not have
a Jewish first name

were forced to add Israel

or Sara to their
identification documents.

From 1938 onwards,

the Nazis decided

that they wanted the Jews
to leave Germany.

But they could
no longer do so voluntarily,

and so would have
to be forced to leave.

It was enforced through violence,

such as on the 9th
of November 1938,

which was badly
dubbed Kristallnacht,

but also by setting up,

as they did in Vienna
from March 1938,

what we might call centres

for the promotion
of Jewish emigration

that was put in place
by Eichmann.

During the two terrible days
of Kristallnacht,

no one had knocked on Lilo's door,

and she was again
spared the worst.

For good reason,

the name Kuznitzky
no longer appeared on the door.

Lilo was saved
by marriage certificate.

Three months earlier,

on July 27th, 1938,

she had married Erich Gloeden,
a Berlin architect.

It was her husband's
good German name

that saved Lilo
during the Kristallnacht arrest.

Although Gloeden was
not her husband's real name,

he was really called Loevy,

a Mischling,

a mixture in the eyes
of the Nazis, like Lilo.

But very early on,
at his father's behest,

Erich had been adopted
by an Arian friend,

Bernhard Gloeden.

This cover-up was designed to make
it easier for him to assimilate

and protect his career.

This is very important

because it's a 1918
adoption certificate.

The people concerned would
henceforth bear the name Gloeden,

with no mention
of their original surname.

Yes, it was important
to not use both names.

This is a wedding photo
from 1938.

And this is a wonderful
picture of him.

He was the second son
of Siegfried Loevy,

who ran a large factory.

Actually, it was the biggest
Bronze foundry in Berlin.

In 1916, during World War I,

they were given the job
of affixing a motto

in a font created
by Peter Behrens

on the Reichsteig building.

Dem deutschen Volke
to the German people.

Up until 1938,

the Loevy business's reputation

protected it
from the Nazis control while

while in the mid-1930s,

almost two-thirds
of Jewish-owned businesses

had been confiscated.

The day after Kristallnacht,
November 12, 1938,

a decree regarding the eradication
of Jews from German economic life

made this plunder official
and precipitated their ruin.

If they chose
to leave the country,

the racket continued.

Anyone wanting
to definitively cross the border

had to pay a departure tax.

Other Germans

who deserve to belong
to the community of the people

could enjoy the Nazi's largesse,

such as at Christmas 1938.

To wander through Berlin

is to walk in the wake of history

and to meet ghosts.

Hans Litten's traces led to one
of the worst German camps,

Dachau,

which is where he ended up
in 1938.

His ill-treatment continued

because as well as being
pursued by Hitler's hatred,

he was born to a Jewish family.

A few days after he arrived,

he managed to get a clandestine
message out to his family.

Because of the diffusion
of awful news

about the Dachau concentration
camp by Jews living abroad,

we have been isolated here

and have been forbidden
to write until further notice.

His mother, Irmgard Litten,

would later describe
her son's ordeal from England,

where she took refuge
to carry on her son's struggle.

May I ask you to tell Movietone
of your own experience?

I am the mother of Hans Litten,
a young lawyer in Berlin

who devoted
all his time and strength

to defending working people
and anti-fascists.

He personally cross-examined
Hitler in a murder trial,

and Hitler committed perjury.

He never forgave my son.

After five years

in one concentration camp
after the other,

five years
of most brutal torture,

my son died.

How is it, Frau Litten?

Hans Litten's cause of death

was officially recorded
as suicide by hanging.

As Fritz Lang had symbolically
predicted in his film, M,

the darkness and its menacing
shadows seemed to be winning.

(whistling)

And Nazi law was
also triumphant in the courts

over the law of those they had
sworn to rid themselves of.

The shadow of the guillotined
loomed over the courthouses,

as did that of the executioner,

Johann Reichhart.

Successive legal reforms

had radicalised
the penal justice system.

An infraction of racial law,

a stolen car,

anything that constituted
a betrayal

of communal interest of the people

could mean death.

Conscientious, perfectionist,

Johann Reichhart kept his diaries
up to date meticulously,

and his letters to the Ministry

relentlessly suggested ways
to fine-tune methods of execution.

In 1938, five years
after he returned to Germany,

executions had increased tenfold.

In 1939, the number of death
sentences has doubled again.

The Nazis recruited
new executioners,

and new execution centres
appeared on the map.

Reichhart's field
of operations expanded.

His workload increased,

but he had no idea
what awaited him.

At the end of the summer of '39,

the course of history
suddenly accelerated.

On September first,

Nazi Germany
declared war on Poland.

This was the first act
in a conflict

that for six years would ravage
Europe and become global.

(explosion)

(air raid siren)

Under cover of this cataclysm,

the Nazis would deal three further
death blows to law and justice.

Three dates definitively marked
the descent into Hell

of the Courts
and German Magistrature.

On September first,
the very day he invaded Poland,

Hitler launched Operation T4..

Hitler had always dreamed

of exterminating
mentally ill people

because they tainted the purity
of the German race.

And he used the cover of war

to begin a process
known as Aktion T4.

That was euthanasia
of the mentally ill.

What he was doing

with the approval of his
Chancellor, Philipp Bouhler,

and his personal Dr. Karl Brandt,

was authorising the killing
of some of the inmates

in asylums, mental hospitals,
and other care homes.

And he had calculated that one
in 10,000 people had to die.

Hitler refused to enact a law,

and he signed a document

that used a completely
disingenuous argument,

which was a Gnadentod
or "mercy killing".

It was the only document
Hitler signed

which granted them
the mercy of death.

So they went to fetch the infirm,
a job entrusted to the SS.

They took post office vehicles

with closed blinds
and took them away.

Where to?

The T4 centres.

There were six in Germany,

which housed
the first gas chambers,

and the families
would be sent an urn.

The T4 operation,

which obviously
was supposed to be secret,

could simply not be.

Seventy-thousand victims
in two years was too significant.

These were members of German
families being murdered.

So there was outrage
in the media, politically,

but also legally,
with complaints made.

And the Secretary of State
at the Justice Ministry,

Schlegelberger,

met the chief prosecutors

to decide how to proceed

and asked the various
German prosecutors

to not carry on with it.

Secretary of State,
Franz Schlegelberger,

presided over a meeting

of the 80 most senior magistrates
in Germany.

Note-taking was forbidden.

However, one of those present
did make notes in his journal.

Thanks to this historic evidence,

we know today
that they were all fully informed

of the conditions
of this mass extermination.

This time,

by turning a blind eye to the
murders of 70,000 disabled people,

the German judiciary
became complicit.

The country was at war, and to
argue was tantamount to treason.

The Nazis knew they could now
do away with due process.

In December 1939,

Hitler officially abandoned
the new law codification project

that Hans Frank
was supposed to direct.

Nazi law would now be applied
with no recourse to any text.

On June 22nd, 1941,

after having defeated France
and conquered part of Europe,

Nazi Germany attacked Russia.

In the summer of that year,

the Einsatzgruppen,

whose creation Werner Best
had been part of,

began eliminating Jews
behind the lines by bullets.

In September 1941,

it became mandatory for Jews
to wear the yellow star.

On January 20th, 1942,

during the Wannsee conference
presided over by Heydrich,

the SS informed the ministries

of the implementation
of the final solution.

December 12th, 1942,

the Führer issued a decree

that merged the Nazi Party
with the German state.

January 1943,

the British
and American Air Forces

began bombing raids
on German cities.

February second, 1943,

after the bloody battle
of Stalingrad and the USSR,

German troops were forced
to surrender for the first time.

From 1943 onwards,

the regime's attitude

towards the power it had
over the German population

became radicalised.

This was due to two factors.

The Nazis war had become
the Germans war

because the fatherland
was under threat.

And it was also due
to the appearance

of very courageous
forms of resistance.

The White Rose movement,
for instance.

The fate that waited
those people was dreadful.

The resistance
fighter Sophie Scholl's

last words to her cellmate were,

What does my death matter

if by our acts
thousands are warned or alerted?

The 21-year-old emblematic figure
of the White Rose Movement

was led to the guillotine
with her brother

and one of their friends.

On February 22nd, 1943,

the last thing they saw
in their short lives

was the face of the executioner,
Johann Reichhart.

The following day, Reichhart
was already in Vienna, Austria.

20 people were to be
beheaded that day.

This was now routine.

His bonuses meant he was earning
more money than he ever had.

But the pace had become frenetic.

Johann Reichhart's future was
now linked to Roland Freisler's.

The radical lawyer
who had been nominated

as head of the Volksgerichtshof

launched a merciless war
against the enemy within.

A single word out of place could
mean a ticket to the scaffold.

Helmuth Hubener, 17 years old,

executed for listening
to a foreign radio station.

Erna Wazinski

was executed for going to find
food in a ruined building.

Leo Katzenberger, a Jew,

was executed by Reichhart
for supposed racial defilement.

Thousands and thousands
of people died

on the Nazi
executioner's guillotine.

And we don't really know
if these figures are reliable,

because they also executed people

who were handed over
to them by the Gestapo,

and those people's names
were not recorded.

By the end of 1943,
there were 22 execution centres.

Between the 7th
and 12th of September,

250 people were executed
at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin,

an unprecedented number.

On the last night,

allied bombs caused a power cut,

so the executioners completed
their work by candlelight.

How can you explain this
remarkable rise in intensity?

It was articulating the context
and experience of the war

on one hand,

and a radical ideology
on the other.

The war the Nazis
were experiencing

made them more radical,

and the war carried out
by the Nazis

made the war more radical,

meaning that each fed
off the other.

Lilo Gloeden

knew that the turmoil would soon
catch up with her and her husband.

Eric's family had lost everything
and had been persecuted.

On February 22nd,

Erich's cousin, Ernst Loevy,
was sent to Auschwitz

and sent to the gas chamber
as soon as he got off the train.

So Lilo and her husband
decided to join the resistance.

For several months,

they had been using fake documents

to hide Jews hunted
by the Gestapo.

They were living dangerously,
and Lilo knew it.

Several people died,

but Hitler miraculously survived.

The fate of the authors
of the plot

would be commensurate
with his wrath.

Himmler decided
to aid the police enquiries

and clamp down on any plots

by introducing
what he called Sippenhaftung,

the Sippe's
or family's responsibility,

which meant the whole family
would be incarcerated.

Such people were traitors
to their very core.

These people had tainted blood.

That was the expression he used.

And this tainted blood had to be
eradicated to the last drop.

In other words,

it wasn't just the person
who had taken part in the plot,

who would be arrested
and put to death.

The whole family had to die.

This Nazi fit of legal rage

fulfilled the prophecy
of Fritz Lang's film, M,

and they obliterated what little
remained of law and justice.

The trial began in August 1944,
and lasted seven months.

One hundred civilians and
military men involved in the plot

appeared before
the Volksgerichtshof,

led by Roland Freisler,

who flayed them with insults.

On November 27th,

a rather frail Lilo Gloeden,
clad in a grey suit,

stood before Roland Freisler.

Alongside in her dock were her
mother and her husband, Erich.

Lilo knew they were doomed.

One of the conspirators,
General Lindemann,

was hiding in their home.

According to witnesses,

Lilo challenged Freisler
with legal arguments.

One last time, for honour's sake.

♪ ♪

Three days later, at 5:30 PM,
on November 30th, 1944,

Lilo's mother was guillotined
at Plötzensee Prison.

At 5:32, Lilo died
beneath the blade,

two minutes before her husband.

She was 40 years old.

On February 3, 1945,

the trial was drawing to a close,

but an air raid siren
interrupted proceedings.

Roland Freisler was reluctant
to suspend the trial.

Obsessively, he gathered
his files before fleeing.

15,000 feet above him
at the controls of a B-17,

was Robert Rosenthal,

a young lawyer from New York
who had enlisted as a pilot.

Things were not
going well for him.

One of his wings was on fire.

But Robert was determined,
and he was Jewish.

Two good reasons
to hold his course

and to drop his bombs
on the Nazi capital.

At exactly 11:37,
he activated the bomb bay.

Not much was found
of Roland Freisler,

one of the most sinister figures
in Nazi justice,

in the ruins
of the Volksgerichtshof.

Three months later,

Berlin was nothing more
than a wasteland

in the hands of the Red Army.

On May eighth, 1945,
the third Reich capitulated.

Hitler and Goebbels
had committed suicide.

Himmler would soon do the same.

And all that the Russians found
in the Plötzensee Prison

was an empty room
where the guillotine still stood.

In Munich,

which had just been entered
by American tanks,

there was no trace
of Johann Reichhart.

On November 20th, 1945,

a series of trials
began in Nuremberg.

Dozens of Nazi officials appeared

before an international
military tribunal.

This was also the epilogue
of a fight to the death

between two visions of the law.

For the first time in history,

politicians were on trial
for crimes against humanity.

This could be seen
as a turning point in history

because Hans Frank, for one,

was prosecuted and sentenced
to death for war crimes

and crimes against humanity.

And this charge of crimes
against humanity

was used for the first time
at Nuremberg.

So Nuremberg was the birthplace

of international
criminal justice,

a justice
with a universal vocation.

The complete opposite
of what the Nazis advocated,

international criminal justice,

which was the forbearer

of the current international
criminal court.

So in that sense, there is
a symbolic victory for the law.

The privilege

of opening
the first trial in history

for crimes against
the peace of the world

imposes a grave responsibility.

Dozens of Nazis appeared
in the dock over eight months.

Heading the bill of the accused

were the architects
of the perversion of law.

Hans Frank, sentenced to death.

Wilhelm Frick, sentenced to death.

Göring, sentenced to death,

committed suicide
before he could be executed.

Werner Best was tried in Denmark,

where he had been sent
as the Reich's representative.

Condemned to death
by Danish court,

he spent only six years in prison.

Later judged medically unfit
to stand another trial,

he would eventually die
in his bed at the age of 86.

In the wake
of the Nuremberg trials,

the Allies executed
a long list of Nazis,

but they did not have
enough manpower

to carry out the hangings.

In an incredibly
ironic twist of fate,

a familiar silhouette appeared
behind those condemned.

Johann Reichhart.

He had finally been caught
by the Allies in 1946

and narrowly evaded punishment,

thanks to his expertise
as an executioner.

By executing his former
Paymasters one by one,

he made history as the most
prolific executioner of all time,

with a macabre record
of 3,165 legal victims.

Following the trials came
the denazification of Germany.

But the shadows of Nazism
would loom for many more years.

Using the pretext that they had
acted in good faith

in applying the laws
in force at the time,

the magistrates who operated
during the Nazi era

were exonerated by the new
German Federal Republic

10 years after the war.

This decree,

issued by the new
Constitutional Court,

remains in the memory under
the name of judicial privilege.