Nazism and the Perversions of Natural Law

Natural law is the bridge between law and morality and the search for justice by mankind. Natural law has no history but a history of theories, opinions and sets of opinions spanning several periods. One of the problems of Natural law theory is the multiple conscience problem which is used to justify case system dictatorship, genocide, absolutism, fascism, apartheid, divine right of kings and Nazism. In Germany, the Nazis pressed into service to justify holocaust and the annihilation of the European Jewry, the Jehovah witnesses, Romas, homosexuals, the weak and the disabled. The Nazis saw themselves as the pure and master race and other races as inferior. They also pressed natural law into service to eliminate criminals, deviants, homeless people, etc. However, after the overthrow of the Nazis by the Allied Powers in 1945, leaders of Nazism were arrested and prosecuted. The Allied Powers set up the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and Natural law was pressed into service to justify the conviction of the Nazi war criminals. The methodology used in this paper is doctrinal and comparative.  By rejecting universal moral truths and manipulating the idea of nature to serve ideology, Nazism provides a stark warning: when law divorces itself from morality and justice, it becomes a weapon of oppression.  The post war revival of natural law principles affirmed the endurance of aligning law with ethical truth and human dignity.