The German National Registration System as Means of Police Control of Population

Abstract

(That government authorities in Germany have employed a rigid and fearsome system of records and recording as a means of maintaining a vicious control over the populace is known. How the Nazis utilized the German national registration system as a means of police control over population is not so well known. Nor have many realized the enormous importance which these registration records can play in our post war efforts to identify war criminals and to point out their place in Germany's war guilt. In the following article Dr. Kempner describes Germany's national registration system in detail and how the records maintained can aid the alllied cause in seeing that justice is done. The author holds degrees in law and public administration, was formerly a judge in Berlin and chief legal counselor of the pre-Hitler Prussian police administration-a force comprising some 80,000 men. Back in 1930 he officially urged the dissolution of the Nazi party and the criminal prosecution of Adolf Hitler and his accomplices for high treason and perjury. In 1939 the author, now an American citizen, received appointments at the Institute of Local and State Government of the University of Pennsylvania, and later lectured at West Point, Columbia, Northwestern and other universities. He is now in Germany serving as expert consultant in German law and administration to the Departments of Justice and War.-EDIToR.)