certain contacts between both offices had to be maintained because of the very nature of German criminal procedure. Since the judiciary had no investigation agencies of its own, it was dependent upon the cooperation of the police in that respect. Finally, I shall also show how Himmler attempted to wrest all public prosecutor offices from the justice administration for systematic absorption by his police machine, although he did not succeed in doing so. When the unique position held by the judiciary within the entire administrative system is made clear in the presentation, one will become aware of the difficulties of the situation in which the judiciary found itself in this battle. We need but have a clear conception of the difference in denotation of the terms “dictatorship” and “justice” in order to gain an appreciation of the difficulties of that situation. The dictatorship derived both stimulus and pattern from the Party in its manifold manifestations. We will show up the predominance and influence of the Party offices, some of which were legally established, and demonstrate how both expanded in all directions and by the employment of any and all means through the person of the Fuehrer of the Party, namely the dictator. The defense will show, at the proper time, how the Party sought to push its interests ruthlessly in opposition to the judiciary. The activities of the Party constituted a perpetual obstacle to the progressive administration of justice. It will be shown how the Gauleiter, either directly or indirectly through Bormann, deliberately added fuel to Hitler’s repugnance against the judiciary and thereby shoved the Reich Ministry of Justice into a spot similar to that of an isolated animal at bay. The various aspects just outlined will also furnish us with a broad foundation for those laws to which objections were raised in the indictment, and the substance of which we shall subject to an exhaustive examination. We will show, when dealing with the problem of violation of the principle _nullum crimen sine lege_, that all those laws with which the indictment is concerned and which had been made retroactive do not furnish a basis for punishment. The punishable offense itself, to which they referred, had already been made punishable by laws in force at the time the deed was committed. The _rules_ of penal laws were not only already part and parcel of the general body of law, but had also been fixed long before by virtue of positive law at the time the appropriate supplementary laws went into effect. In every instance revisions were applied only to the evaluation of a crime in relation to the amount of punishment. Since the prescribed rules of the German Penal Code, generally speaking, did not allow a judge much leeway in awarding punishment, it was found necessary to provide for changes with regard to the fixing of penalties.