I learnt that new Social Democratic President Friedrich Ebert was well aware of this dilemma and gave them all the option to retire with full pensions. Few took him up on the offer. Instead, this body of conservative judges began to serve in a system whose laws it often despised. Statistics of convictions reveal the inherent sympathy towards those who sought to undermine democracy from the right with extremists like Hitler receiving much lighter sentences than socialists and communists on the left.
Düwell concluded that the independence of the judiciary from politics (a principle Ebert respected) can be a dangerous thing. If Ebert had culled the body of judges appointed under Kaiser Wilhelm II and made commitment to parliamentary democracy a precondition for installing new people in their place, he argued, Germany could have saved itself and the world a lot of misery.