Reprint. Originally published: New York: Oxford university press, 1941.

An Unsparing Analysis of the Legal Principles and Constitutional Developments of the Third Reich This classic study is widely considered one of the finest analyses of totalitarianism. It was written in Germany in the late 1930s and completed in the United States in 1940, where Fraenkel lived after fleeing the Nazis in 1938. The title derives from Fraenkel's thesis that National Socialism divided the law into two co-existing areas. The first of these, The Normative State, protects the legal order as expressed in statutes, decisions of courts and the activities of administrative agencies. Its...