A degeneração do Estado de Direito: Qual é a lição de Weimar?

What lesson does Weimar offer?

Abstract

The article aims to identify the main causes and conditions that fostered the rise of the Nazi Regime in the Weimar Republic, as well as to describe how the transformation from a Democratic State into a Totalitarian State occurred in the period between 1933 and 1945. After being defeated in World War I, Germany experienced a series of crises that imposed great suffering on the masses and led to a high level of distrust in the efficiency of the state and the parliamentary democratic model. This situation allowed for the ascent of the National Socialist Party, which questioned the order (not to change it) but to maintain it under the aegis of new actors. The article seeks to demonstrate how the legal system was gradually modified from within, through normative measures decreed by the Executive Branch, which established a Dual State, a combination of a Prerogative State (arbitrary and violent) and a Normative State (indispensable to the capitalist system). The new regime suppressed fundamental rights of all those who did not align with the Party or capitalist monopolies, without encountering effective resistance from other branches of power. Revisiting the topic is important in the early 21st century, as the military defeat of Nazism or fascism at the end of World War II (1945) does not seem to have represented the extinction of their ambitions or methods. Calls for "strong" governments or exceptional measures reemerge in electoral debates, on social media, or within democratic institutions. Legal practitioners must know how to identify the new authoritarian waves in their realities and be able to resist regressions.