“Private property” as conceived under the liberalistic economic order was a reversal of the true concept of property.  This “private property” represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests ...  German socialism had to overcome this “private,” that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property.  All property is common property.  The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods.  His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.[90]

Pursuant to this view of the nature of ownership, property may be confiscated whenever the state decides that public management would be in the interests of the community, or if the owner is found guilty of irresponsible management, in which case no compensation is paid him.

Reference has been made to the appointment of party members to important state offices.  Gauweiler (document 8, post p. 204) points out that the party insured the infusion of the entire structure of the state with its ideology through the civil-service law (Beamtengesetz) of January 26, 1937,[91] which provides that a person appointed to a civil-service position must be “filled with National Socialist views, since only thus can he be an executor of the will of the state which is carried by the NSDAP.  It demands of him that he be ready at all times to exert himself unreservedly in behalf of the National Socialist state and that he be aware of the fact that the NSDAP, as the mouthpiece of the people’s will, is the vital force behind the concept of the German state."[92]

The infiltration of party members into the civil service has now proceeded to such a point that early in 1942 Pfundtner, the Secretary of State in the German Ministry of the Interior, could write in the periodical Akademie fuer deutsches Recht: 

The German civil servant must furthermore be a National Socialist to the marrow of his bones and must be a member of the party or of one of its formations.  The state will primarily see to it that the Young Guard of the movement is directed toward a civil-service career and also that the civil servant takes an active part in the party so that the political idea and service of the state become closely welded.[93]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES TO FIRST SECTION

[Footnote 8:  Huber, Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches (Hamburg, 1939), pp. 54-55.]

[Footnote 9:  Ibid., pp. 153-155.]

[Footnote 10:  Ibid., pp. 156-157.]

[Footnote 11:  Ibid., p. 157.]

[Footnote 12:  Ibid., p. 158.]

[Footnote 13:  Ibid., p. 163.]

[Footnote 14:  Ibid., p. 164.]