 Courts (or whatever was in place of a court) sometimes were officially granted the right to inflict the death penalty, even where not provided by law, and sometimes did so by their own discretion.Many of the crimes covered a wide and unpredictable range of actions, such as treason, "sabotage" (Kriegsverrat, which was any action pandering the enemy) and subversion of the military strength, which could be interpreted as to cover any critical remark, and even though even it clearly did not cover it was applied to execute any conscientious objector.To quote Hitler, "after ten years of hard prison, a man is lost to the people's community anyway.