The Judicial System of the Nazi Party

The Origin of Party Courts. When Hitler reëstablished the NSDAP organization in the spring of 1925, he built it up rather systematically, with several divisions to which separate tasks were assigned. The SA were the “troops,” intended for protection and order (as the Nazis saw it). The office of the Reichsschatzmeister was the finance division of the party, and the Organization Department had the job implied in its name. The Investigation and Adjustment Committees (Untersuchungs- und Schlichtungsausschüsse), briefly called USCHLA, finally, were the beginning of a now elaborate judicial system within the party, consisting of a hierarchy of local and district courts and a supreme court. As the party membership increased rapidly and the problem of its internal consolidation became pressing, the work of the USCHLA piled up. At first, the USCHLA was a rather loose organization, its members working as trusted representatives, so to speak, of the local and district party leaders each of whom had three on his staff. Their judicial competence and procedure was established for the first time in a set of Directions (Richtlinien) decreed by Hitler in August, 1929. After 1933, the Führer ordered the present Chief Party Justice, Walter Buch, to change the USCHLA into a regular party judicial system. New and amplified Directions were consequently decreed on February 2, 1934, defining the respective competences of the state and party courts, and assigning to the latter all matters affecting the party organization.