He qualified as a lawyer, with a doctorate in 1924, and his legal expertise, however limited, was to prove extremely useful to the Party. Up to 1933 he represented it in over 2,400 cases brought against its members, usually for acts of violence of one kind or another. Soon after he defended some Nazi thugs in court for the first time, a senior lawyer who had been one of his teachers said: ‘I beg you to leave these people alone! No good will come of it! Political movements that begin in the criminal courts will end in the criminal courts!’41
