The previous chapter described the shifts that took place at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the twentieth century. This account will now be continued and the developments of the twentieth century depicted. However, the "twentieth century" is not to be understood strictly according to the calendar; rather, we will first start by going back once more and giving an account of the developments occurring since the end of the nineteenth century. Given that this single chapter covers events from then nearly up to the present, implying a unified time period, we can anticipate one objection to proceeding in this manner which will need to be addressed at this stage. This objection is that the 12 years of National Socialist rule, with their perversion of the law and mass crimes supported and carried out by the state, represent a break in the unified line of development of criminal law and should thus not be included in an overall account of it. This objection, which also has implications for this book's understanding of time periods, concerns the question of the continuity or discontinuity of the history of criminal law in the twentieth century. Conveying this history in one single comprehensive chapter shows that this account takes the concept of continuity (which by now represents the predominant understanding of these events) as its basis. However, we will not debate this question theoretically in advance, but instead will make it plausible in the course of this account—the previous chapter already touched upon the subject—and will then summarise and discuss it in conclusion.