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This paper explores the lessons drawn by German constitutional scholars from the breakdown of the Weimar Republic, and how this traumatic experience became a starting point at the end of the 1930s for a new conception of democracy both liberal and robust (or “defensive”). Emigré constitutional scholars devised three distinctive versions of this “democratic robustness”: an “anti-extremist” (which originated in Weimar legal antipositivism); a “militant democracy” (first exposed by Karl Loewenstein); and a “constitutional dictatorship” (Carl J. Friedrich, Frederick W. Watkins). At the heart of each one lies a decisive debate with Carl Schmitt, even if implicit or diffracted. By reconstructing these debates one can appreciate to what extent postwar constitutional democracies have incorporated Schmitt's ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]