Hitler's Judges: Ideological Commitment and the Death Penalty in Nazi Germany

To what extent do judges in courts in authoritarian regimes merely implement the will of the state? What determines judges’ behaviour in such contexts? We address these questions by examining the role of judicial policy preferences in influencing whether judges in Nazi Germany sentenced defendants charged with serious political offences - treason and high treason - to death. Our findings lend support to the attitudinal model of judicial decision-making. Specifically, we find that judicial policy preferences, measured by the depth of the ideological commitment of the judge to the Nazi Party worldview, were an important determinant of whether judges imposed the death sentence. We also find that judges who were more ideologically committed to the Nazi Party were more likely to impose the death sentence on those who belonged to the most organised political opposition groups to the Nazi state, those whose acts of treason or high treason involved violent resistance against the state, and those with characteristics to which Nazism was intolerant.