Weimar had effected the mentality of the community and individual so gravely that when the National Socialists had come to power, they had to categorize the types of people who were deemed as threats to their communities. They came up with two words: the Asocial and the foreigner to the community.
The Asozial was a person who did not fit into the healthy standards of the community. The typical Asozials included: Alcoholics, drug addicts, homosexuals, prostitutes and more. Otto Georg Thierack, the Reichsminister of Justice, stated that “the community cannot leave the asocial criminal untouched because it is within our best interest to protect the community of the people.”
While the Asozial was a professional criminal, the Gemeinschaftsfremde was a person who had fallen into the state of an Asozial by default from lack of work, of commitment, or of involvement within the community of the people. The draft law of 1941 between the Ministry of Justice and the Reich Main Security Office offered a broad definition of a Gemeinschaftsfremde: “An alien to the community is anyone, who through his personality, his lifestyle, flaws in his understanding or in his character, demonstrates his inability to meet the minimum requirements of the community of the people.”
While there was an opportunity to treat the Asocial and the Foreigner, there were some they deemed beyond saving which would be referred to as “Irrevocable Asocials” (Unverbesserliche). These were people who, even with opportunity of full employment and community support, remained criminal.
The measures taken against the criminal were mostly police measures, which had the freedom to incarcerate an individual who they believed threatened the existence and morality of the community. Paul Werner, a former prosecutor and director of the VA bureau of the RSHA, wrote that “Weimar had failed when faced with these elements which were immoral to the community. Blinded, by their liberal ideas,” he said, “Weimar never saw anything past the rights of the individual, whereas National Socialism saw the individual as nothing if the community was at stake.”