Gopal Balakrishnan's 'The Enemy: An Essay on Carl Schmitt' (left) and the biography of Hans Litten, 'Hans Litten – Anwalt gegen Hitler' by Knut Bergbauer et al.

The signs of a nation collapsing do not come from the outrageous rampages of villains. The truly chilling signal of catastrophe begins when the brakes that should control those rampages—namely, the 'cowardly silence and complicity of the educated'—take hold.

Sodom and Gomorrah were reduced to ashes not because of an abundance of evil people, but because there were not even 10 righteous individuals to sustain the city. To those despairing at the current elites who remain tight-lipped even as tribal logic tramples the judicial system, it is necessary to revisit the chilling causality and outcome of how Germany transformed into a monstrous entity a century ago.

Hans Litten, Who Cornered a Future Dictator

In a Berlin courtroom in 1931, Hans Litten, a twenty-eight-year-old fledgling lawyer, summoned Adolf Hitler to the witness stand to investigate the violent acts of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA).

For three hours, Litten relentlessly pressed the future dictator with sharp legal arguments. Hitler, his logic shattered, turned red, broke out in a cold sweat, and shouted. Litten was the very embodiment of the impartial sword held by the goddess of justice.

However, as soon as Hitler seized power two years later, this young lawyer was dragged to a concentration camp. After five years of brutal torture, he took his own life in the Dachau concentration camp. The price for upholding his principles was tragic.

Meanwhile, what were the true elites of the German legal profession doing while Litten bled to death on the cold floor of the concentration camp? Consider Carl Schmitt, then hailed as the foremost constitutional scholar and intellectual.

When Hitler massacred his political opponents without due process, Schmitt gave his blessing to the dictatorship with the miraculous sophistry that "the Führer is the supreme judge, and the Führer's actions are the law." Schmitt, along with countless prosecutors, judges, and lawyers, willingly became Nazi lapdogs to protect their meager positions and livelihoods.

The foolishly righteous Litten was utterly defeated, while the intelligent elite Schmitt, who parasitically clung to power, triumphed and enjoyed supreme authority. The outcome of the old and cunning 'Carl Schmitts' ultimately defeating the justice-driven 'Hans Littens' was Germany becoming a war criminal nation and ultimately its downfall.

When the elites tasked with upholding the law provided logic for the power's illegality and joined in through silence, the colossal machinery of the state was left with no brakes whatsoever. The result was the Holocaust, which massacred millions, and the destruction of World War II.

"I Merely Drank the Poison of My Time"... The Cowardly Carl Schmitt

What price did Carl Schmitt pay for giving his legal stamp of approval to the dictatorship and living a life of luxury? Many expected him to be hanged at the Nuremberg trials, but reality was not a movie. He was brought before the war crimes tribunal and escaped legal consequences with a baffling argument.

"I merely wrote books and created theories; I never ordered anyone to kill. Academic thought cannot be a crime."

True to his skill as a master of wordplay, he artfully evaded the gallows and prison. While one might be outraged that an intellectual with the mind of a devil escaped punishment, the retribution of history was not entirely absent.

After the war, German society imposed the most humiliating punishment upon him instead of executing him: permanent academic expulsion and social ostracism. He was stripped of his professorship and became an invisible man, unable to hold any public office or lecture at any German university until his death. The idol of the legal world, whom all the powerful in Berlin once looked up to, was overnight reduced to a figure of mockery, confined to a small room in his hometown of Fleetenberg for the rest of his life.

He did not even reflect in his confinement. He died at the ripe old age of 96, delusionally claiming, "I merely drank the poison of my time." However, history has thoroughly immortalized him as the 'Voldemort of legal scholarship.'

While leftist and rightist scholars secretly reference his political theories due to their genius, anyone who dares to openly express admiration for Schmitt is ostracized from academia. His very name has become an eternal taboo, symbolizing 'the prostitution of knowledge.'

In contrast, what became of the twenty-eight-year-old fledgling lawyer, Hans Litten, who was trampled by power and thought to have disappeared without a trace? The official name of the Berlin Bar Association building is now the 'Hans-Litten-Haus.'

The plaque on the 'Hans-Litten-Haus' of the Berlin Bar Association.

Every morning, the German legal profession enters the building bearing his name, profoundly reflecting on the meaning of the rule of law. The fool who did not yield to power has been resurrected as an eternal symbol of justice and is revered.

Looking at the elites currently lingering around the Korean judiciary and Yeouido, we see a multitude of legal technicians who spew sophistry for the benefit of their faction and the protection of those in power, skillfully exploiting loopholes in the law to manipulate the judicial system. They will believe they have won because they have escaped legal punishment, leaning on the immediate power they hold.

Carl Schmitt's persistent and miserable later years are a chilling spoiler from history directed at them. Even if they evade prison now, they will ultimately be branded as 'intellectuals who licked the devil's feet with their educated minds' and will be isolated in contempt from the world for the rest of their lives.

More terrifying and dreadful than the bars of a real prison is being forever confined to a page in history books as a 'despicable opportunist.' History has never forgiven the prostitutes of knowledge.

◆ Park Ju-hyun, Author

Composer, music director, columnist, and essayist. She actively expresses her opinions on political, current affairs, and social issues on Facebook, garnering widespread agreement. She has published the essay collection 'Crossing the Stormy Sea.'