National Socialism and Constitutional Law: Carl Schmitt, Otto Koellreutter, and the Debate Over the Nature of the Nazi State, 1993-1937

On January 30, 1933, President von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler chancellor of the German Republic. One year later, the conservative (and by then National Socialist) constitutional lawyer, Carl Schmitt noted that Hitler's chancellorship was an event that had "already led beyond the Weimar Constitution." But where had the seizure of power led? What was the nature of the new constitution of the German Empire? As historian David Schoenbaum has noted, 1933 was a kind of "constitutional no man's land"; it was unclear how the principles enumerated in the Nazi Party Program of 1920 would translate into the reality of the new state.

All that was clear was that Hitler aimed at a new state, as he had openly and explicitly stated for a decade.