7 - The SS Jurisdiction

Summary

The SS was a state within the state, the heart of terror, persecution, and murder. From a legal viewpoint it is significant that, from October 1939 (soon after the outbreak of World War II), the SS had its own military jurisdiction (for Waffen-SS members and special SS and police units). This chapter examines the normative framework of this jurisdiction, which was formally based on the military penal code though highly susceptible to SS ideology and Himmler’s perverted code of “decency and manly uprightness.” Especially challenging for the SS jurisdiction were crimes and murders committed by SS officers in the occupied parts of Poland, as well as the increasingly evident fact that orders for the mass murder of Jews came directly from the highest SS court instances, Himmler and Hitler himself. We discuss the reflections of SS Judge Norbert Pohl on the foundations of the SS jurisdiction, and how SS Judge Konrad Morgen tried to cope with his knowledge about the extermination camps and the murder of concentration camp inmates generally.