jats:pThis article situates Carl Schmitt's jats:italicThe Tyranny of Values</jats:italic> (1960/1967/1979) within the context of Schmitt's 1940s and 1950s op-ed campaign for full amnesty for Nazi war criminals as well as the context of the Veit Harlan trials and the 1958 jats:italicLüth</jats:italic> judgment of the German Constitutional Court. The article further examines the revisions to Schmitt's 1967 version of the text in the light of Karl Löwith's criticisms of Schmitt in an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 1964. The article argues that jats:italicThe Tyranny of Values</jats:italic> is a work of post-Second World War Nazi apologetics, in which Nazi racial theory can be seen being put to polemical ends in the 1960s and 1970s. The article concludes with broader reflections on the relation of Schmitt's jats:italicThe Tyranny of Values</jats:italic> to Nazi discourse in the aftermath of the Second World War and the history of Nazism post-1945.</jats:p>