★ How did the loopholes in the Weimar Constitution pave the way for the Third Reich?
★ How was the myth that the Nazis "legally established a dictatorship" created?
★ Look beyond the lens of "common sense" and restore the truth of history.
[About the Authors]
Yasuo Hasebe is a professor at Waseda University's Faculty of Law. After serving as a professor at the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Law, he took up his current position in 2014. He is president of the Japan Public Law Association and representative of the National Constitutional Research Association. His major works include What Is a Constitution? (Iwanami Shinsho) and The Logic of the Constitution (Yuhikaku).
Yuji Ishida is professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo. His main area of research is modern and contemporary Germany. He holds a doctorate from the University of Marburg. He has served as a visiting researcher at the Technical University of Berlin and a visiting professor at the University of Halle. His major works include Hitler and Nazi Germany (Kodansha Gendai Shinsho) and Overcoming the Past: Germany After Hitler (Hakusuisha).
[About the Book]
For a long time, the public has held a vague but mistaken impression that, in prewar Germany, the Nazis came to power with overwhelming popular support and Hitler became the nation's leader through legal procedures. This perception has even become "historical common sense" for some people. But the truth is otherwise. In fact, the Nazi Party, which won only a third of the vote, distorted the process of forming a government through violence and fraud. It then used the "state of emergency" clause in the Weimar Constitution to strip citizens of their basic freedoms, thereby seizing absolute power beyond the bounds of the constitution.
Once emergency powers are established, those in power are inevitably tempted to abuse them. Drawing on the lessons of history, countries around the world imposed strict limits on "state of emergency" clauses after the war to prevent their abuse. In recent years, however, the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party government has shown signs of trying to add an emergency clause through constitutional revision, prompting grave concern among Japanese intellectuals. In this book, leading Japanese constitutional scholar Yasuo Hasebe and Yuji Ishida, a top scholar of Nazi Germany, analyze this "historical common sense" in conversation, each from the perspective of their own expertise. They clarify the true course of historical events, explain from a comparative legal perspective how postwar Germany and other European and American countries have restricted "state of emergency" clauses, and explore in depth the dangers behind such provisions. The story of the Weimar Constitution's demise teaches us that only by remaining constantly wary of power can we keep our everyday lives from suddenly disappearing one day.
