Nazi Germany as a model of non-classical empire. Interpretation of legal concepts in the system of law of the Third Reich

The article does not pretend to become a detailed research of such complicated and ambiguous concepts as empire, imperial consciousness, and mentality. All of them are applied to Germany of 1933–1945 only to answer the next three questions:

• if the Third Reich is considered to be an empire, what type of empire is it?
• is it possible to define the national consciousness of the German nation in the Third Reich as imperial?
• in what way has the imperial national consciousness been reflected in the classification of mentality types develop by the lawyers of the Third Reich? And how do the German lawyers interpret such a classification from the present day perspective?

To answer the first question, the author subjects a number of definitions of empire to a comparative analysis, distinguishing such “imperial” features that could be applied to Germany of 1933–1945 and characterize it as a nonclassical type of empire.

The answer to the second question requires from the author a sufficiently detailed description of the national German consciousness in the Third Reich and its definition as mass, totalitarian, and archetypical. All listed features reflect to certain extent the essence of imperial consciousness. However, such fact cannot be considered a reason for defining the national German consciousness as imperial, because the Third Reich chose as the main criteria for its state construction a race theory while the concept of empire presupposes a multinational and not a racially homogeneous society.

Answering the third question the author makes an attempt to characterize the national German consciousness through the prism of legal concepts used in the classification of mentality developed by the German la wyer K. Schmitt in the 30-s of the 20^th century, perfected later by his apprentice O. Bruner and finally critically reassessed by a modern Israeli historian G. Al’gazi.

1. Al’gazi, G. (2012), “Otto Brunner – “concrete order and language of time”, Odissei I, Nauka, Moscow, pp. 244-279.

2. Anisimov, E.V. (1996), Istoricheskie korni imperskogo myshleniya v Rossii [The historical roots of imperial mentality in Russia], In-t rossiiskoi istorii, Moscow, Russia, avai lable at: http// www.4italka.ru/prochee/neotsortirovannoe/341765.htm (Accessed 8 August 2022).

3. Benois, A. (2009), Ideya imperii [The idea of empire], Karpc, V. (transl), available at: s3eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/alaindebenoist/pdf/idea_imperii.pdf (Accessed 7 August 2022).

4. Bruner, O. (1992), Zemlya i gospodstvo: struktury upravleniya v srednevekovoi Avstrii [Land and domination. Structures of management in the Middle Age Austria], (Land und Herrschaft: Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Südostdeutschlands im Mittelalter), Izd-vo Pensil’vanskogo un-ta, Philadelphia, USA.

5. Filippov, A.F. (1995), Smysl imperii: k sotsiologii politicheskogo prostranstva, Khrestomatiya novogo rossiiskogo samosoznaniya [The idea of empire. On the sociology of political space], available at: http://old.russ.ru/antolog/inoe/filipp.htm/filipp.htm (Accessed 7 August 2022).

6. Filitov, A.M. (2005), “German nation and German national consciousness in the historical retrospective”, Politiya. Analiz. Khronika. Prognoz, no. 2 (37), pp. 22-38.

7. Kavtaradze, S.D. (2013), “Manipulation of the archetypical consciousness. Nazi Germany”, Istoricheskaya psikhologiya i sotsiologiya istorii [Historical psychology and the sociology of history], In-t vostokovedeniya RAN, no. 1, pp. 53-61.

8. Schmitt, K. (2016), Ponyatie politicheskogo [The concept of the political], Nauka, Moscow, Russia.

9. Tauberger, A.G. (2013), Systematically functional analysis of totalitarianism, Ph.D. Thesis, Nizhegorodskii gos. arkhitekturno-stroitel’nyi un-t, available at: http://www.rusneb.ru/catalog/000199_000009_003237987/ (Accessed 11 August 2022).

10. Tishkov, S.L. (2004), Specifics of mass political consciousness under the conditions of totalitarianism (Nazi Germany as an example), Ph.D. Thesis, Moskovskii gumanitarnyi un-t, available at: http://www.dissercat.com/.../ (Accessed 11 August 2022).

11. Rüthers, B., Fischer, C. and Birk, A. (2018), Rechtstheorie mit Juristischer Methodenlehre, Lehrbuch/Studienliteratur, München, Germany.