The Führer Prinzip Today: Trump’s Word is Above the Law

It has barely been three weeks since Donald Trump began his second term as President, but this time with the stated intention of governing as a dictator. Trump has indeed done that. He decapitated the leadership of the FBI, fired large numbers of FBI agents, career Justice Department prosecutors and the Inspectors General of most Federal agencies. Likewise, Trump has given Elon Musk and a band of rogue computer code writers with no security clearances, government experience or authorization other than his to take over the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department, dismantle the USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Other departments are going to be attacked the coming days and weeks.

All of these actions are being made not under the law but in the suppression of law by executive action, or as the Nazis called it the Führerprinzept or leader principle. In Nazi Germany it meant that the words and dictates of Adolf Hitler, as Reinhard Heydrich reportedly said at the Wannsee Conference, to end bureaucratic hurdles to the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, “I am not trying to rewrite your law, but I am invoking Führers Prinzip. His word is above all written law.” That is what is happening in our country today.

I won’t go into the more than 200 Executive Orders issued by Trump. However, I will mention his firings of the Boards of Visitors of the Military, Naval and Air Force Academies. Those boards have a say in what can and can’t be taught in them. This is important when those members who were Republicans and Democrats are replaced my MAGA and Christian Nationalist sycophants of Trump. Soon the academies will be bastions of ideological purity much like the schools that trained officers of the Nazi SS. Likewise, I cannot believe the absolute compliance of the military in obeying his orders without any protest, even when they negatively impact military personnel and their families and are of questionable legality. I am very concerned that their compliance and the rule of Trump and his Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, who both abhor international law and military legal conventions. In 2018 Hegseth, then a Fox News weekend host urged Trump to pardon war criminals convicted by military courts martial, by juries of their peers and the sworn testimony of their own subordinates. I hate to say, though I served for nearly forty years in the military and officer that my faith in the institution has been diminished to a large degree.

Of course the Republicans in the House and the Senate have proven to be people with no honor or decency who simply exist to serve Trump and rubber stamp his completely unqualified, incompetent and in the case of Tulsi Gabbard people who have been in the agents of Vladimir Putin and other enemies of the United States. I would not be surprised if given the chance these men and women would give Trump dictatorial powers for an extended period of time just like the Nazi Reichstag gave Hitler on 23 March 1933 with the Enabling Act. That act ended the democracy of the Weimar Republic. Such legislation would be the end of our republic, democracy and the rule of law.

In time the Trump regime will fall and be consigned to the dust bin of history, but in the coming years the crimes which they commit against Americans and others around the world. What the will do will be against the United States Constitution and laws of the United States, as well as International law, much of which was enacted by American jurists after the Second World War.

I watched the film Judgement at Nuremberg this evening. It is not the first time, nor the last time that I will watch it. It is one of the most troubling films to watch for me as I am a child and military veteran of the Cold War. The film is a theatrical version of the Judge’s Trial in the American sector in 1948. Starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Maximilian Schell, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark, Judy Garland and directed by Stanley Kubrick is a masterpiece of courtroom drama with an enduring message that we as Americans need to remember as Trump takes U.S. down his dictatorial and criminal path, as each of us is responsible for what we do.

Burt Lancaster who played Justice Emil Janning, one of the defendants objects to his defense counsel played by Maximilian Schell’s depiction of him being unaware of the death camps, persecution of the Jews, forced sterilization policies, and other crimes. His monologue in the film is powerfully done and should shake anyone who thinks that going along with Trump’s past, current and future crimes can be avoided.

I wish to testify about the Feldenstein case because it was the most significant trial of the period. It is important not only for the tribunal to understand it, but for the whole German people. But in order to understand it, one must understand the period in which it happened.

There was a fever over the land, a fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all there was fear, fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us, because he said to us:

"Lift your heads. Be proud to be German. There are devils among us, communists, liberals, Jews, gypsies. Once these devils will be destroyed your misery will be destroyed."

It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb.

What about those of us who knew better, we who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country. What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded -- sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows! We will go forward. FORWARD is the great password.

And history tells how well we succeeded, Your Honor. We succeeded beyond out wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world. We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said, "Go ahead. Take it. Take it! Take Sudetenland! Take the Rhineland! Re-militarize it! Take all of Austria! Take it!"

And then, one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual begun in this courtroom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a "passing phase" had become the way of life.

Your Honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name, until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again. You have seen him do it. He has done it, here, in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the 16 year old girl after all. Once more, it is being done -- for love of country.

It is not easy to tell the truth. But if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it -- whatever the pain and humiliation.

I had reached my verdict on the Feldenstein case before I ever came into the courtroom. I would have found him guilty, whatever the evidence. It was not a trial at all. It was a sacrificial ritual in which Feldenstein, the Jew, was the helpless victim.

Hans Rolfe: Your Honor, I must interrupt. The defendant is not aware of what he's saying. He's not aware of the implications!

Janning: I am aware. I am aware! My counsel would have you believe we were not aware of the concentration camps. Not aware. Where were we? Where were we when Hitler began shrieking his hate in Reichstag? Where were we when our neighbors were being dragged out in the middle of the night to Dachau?! Where were we when every village in Germany has a railroad terminal where cattle cars were filled with children being carried off to their extermination?! Where were we when they cried out in the night to us. Were we deaf? Dumb?! Blind?!!

Hans Rolfe: Your Honor, I must protest!

Janning: My counsel says we were not aware of the extermination of the millions. He would give you the excuse: We were only aware of the extermination of the hundreds. Does that make us any the less guilty? Maybe we didn't know the details. But if we didn't know, it was because we didn't want to know.

Emil Hahn: Traitor! Traitor!

Judge Haywood: Order! Order! Order! Put that man [Hahn] back in his seat and keep him there.

Janning: I am going to tell them the truth. I am going to tell them the truth if the whole world conspires against it. I am going to tell them the truth about their Ministry of Justice. Werner Lammpe, an old man who cries into his Bible now, an old man who profited by the property expropriation of every man he sent to a concentration camp. Friedrich Hofstetter, the "good German" who knew how to take orders, who sent men before him to be sterilized like so many digits. Emil Hahn, the decayed, corrupt bigot, obsessed by the evil within himself. And Ernst Janning, worse than any of them because he knew what they were, and he went along with them.

Ernst Janning: Who made his life excrement, because he walked with them.

Likewise, Spencer Tracy who played Judge Dan Haywood epitomizes how many American prosecutors and judges viewed how justice should be administered in the cases of men whose defense was doing their duty or following orders. His monologue should be watched, studied, and perhaps memorized by anyone in the justice system

“The trial conducted before this Tribunal began over eight months ago. The record of evidence is more than ten thousand pages long, and final arguments of counsel have been concluded.

Simple murders and atrocities do not constitute the gravamen of the charges in this indictment. Rather, the charge is that of conscious participation in a nationwide, government organized system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The Tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.

Herr Rolfe, in his very skillful defense, has asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened here in Germany. There is truth in this. The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But the Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their actions, men who sat in black robes in judgment on other men, men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees, the purpose of which was the extermination of humans beings, men who in executive positions actively participated in the enforcement of these laws — illegal even under German law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.

Herr Rolfe further asserts that the defendant, Janning, was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought was the best interest of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary — even able and extraordinary — men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat at through trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” — of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient — to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

The crimes of the Nazi regime many not be equaled by those that Trump and his regime will certainly commit at home and abroad, the similarities will be great and the excuses of the perpetrators will be similar as members of the administration, the Justice Department, the military and others defend or excuse what they will have done before the Trump-MAGA-Nazi regime crumbles.

Hopefully, no one reading this article will ever say that they did evil because they loved their country or were just following orders.

Please be safe and watch your six.