Under Nazi doctrine, legality derives from the leadership’s will rather than from codified statutes.

Evidence

Best (op. cit.) puts it this way: “So long as the police execute this will of the leadership, they are acting within the law; if the will of the leadership is transgressed, then not the police, but a member of the police, has committed a violation.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2732

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Nazi inversion of the rule of law: police action is legal insofar as it executes the leader’s will, and illegality attaches only to deviation from that will.
• XREF: Key building block for the field’s understanding of how ‘state of exception’ legal philosophy justifies mass violence.