One
of Adolf Hitler’s most notorious Hanging Judge, Roland Freisler, whom some
people nicknamed him, ‘Hitler’s Blood Judge’, was killed in an air raid on this
date, 3 February 1945. I will post information about him from Wikipedia.
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Dr. Roland Freisler
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Judge
President of the People's Court
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In
office
20 August 1942 – 3 February 1945 |
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Nominated by
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Adolf Hitler
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Appointed by
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Adolf Hitler
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Preceded by
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Otto Thierack
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Succeeded by
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Harry Haffner
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Personal
details
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Born
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30 October 1893
Celle, Lower Saxony, German Empire |
Died
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3 February 1945 (aged 51)
Berlin, Nazi Germany |
Resting place
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Waldfriedhof Dahlem, Berlin, Germany
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Nationality
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German
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Political party
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National Socialist Workers' Party
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Other political
affiliations |
Völkisch-Sozialer Block
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Spouse(s)
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Marion Freisler (née Russegger)
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Children
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2
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Alma mater
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University of Jena
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Occupation
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Judge
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Profession
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Lawyer
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Military
service
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Allegiance
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German Empire
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Service/branch
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German Army
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Years of service
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1914-1915
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Battles/wars
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World War I
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Awards
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Iron Cross 1st Class
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Roland Freisler
(30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945) was a prominent and notorious Nazi lawyer
and judge. He was State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice and
President of the People's Court
(Volksgerichtshof), which was set up outside constitutional authority.
This court handled political actions against Hitler's dictatorial regime by
conducting a series of show trials.
Early
life
In
contrast to most of the Nazi leadership, not much beyond basic detail is known
about Freisler. He was born in Celle, the son of an engineer, and saw active
service during World War I. He was an officer cadet in 1914, and by 1915 he was
a Lieutenant. He won the Iron Cross of both classes. In October 1915, after
fighting and being wounded at the western front, he was captured by Russian
troops.
While
a prisoner of war in Russia, Freisler learned Russian. He is said to have
developed an interest in Marxism after the Russian Revolution; the Bolsheviks
made use of him as a commissar for the camp's food supplies. It is also said
that after the prisoner camps were dissolved in 1918, Freisler became a
convinced Communist, though this is not supported by any contemporaneous
documents. However, historian H. W. Koch states that after the Bolshevik
Revolution, the POW camps in Russia were handed over to German administration,
and the title of commissar was merely functional, not political, and that
"Freisler was never a Communist, though in the early days of his NS career
[...] he belonged to the NSDAP's left wing."
Freisler
himself rejected all accusations that he had even tentatively approached the
hated enemy, but he could never fully escape the stigma of being a bolshie.
He
returned to Germany in 1920 to study law at the University of Jena, becoming a
Doctor of Law in 1922. From 1924, he worked as a lawyer in Kassel. He was also
elected a city councillor, as a member of the Völkisch-Sozialer Block
(German, roughly "People's Social Block"), an extreme nationalist
splinter party.
In
1928, he married Marion Russegger. Together, they had two sons, Harald and
Roland.
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A meeting of the four Nazis who imposed Nazi
ideology on the legal system of Germany. From left to right: Roland Freisler, Franz Schlegelberger, Otto Georg Thierack, and Curt
Rothenberger.
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Involvement
with the Nazi Party
Freisler
joined the Nazi
Party in July 1925. He registered with the NSDAP as member number 9679.
During this period, he served as defense counsel for members of the nascent
Party who got into trouble with the law. He was also a delegate to the Prussian
Landtag, or state legislature, and later he became a member of the Reichstag.
In
1927, the Gauleiter of Kurhessen, Karl Weinrich, characterized Freisler
in the following manner:
Rhetorically Freisler is equal to our best speakers, if not superior. Particularly on the broad masses, he has influence, but thinking people mostly reject him. Party Comrade Freisler is only usable as a speaker. He is unsuitable for any leadership post, since he is an unreliable and moody person.
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Dr. Roland Freisler
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Career
under Hitler
In
February 1933, Freisler was appointed department head in the Prussian Ministry
of Justice. He was Secretary of State in the Prussian Ministry of Justice in
1933–1934, and in the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1934–1942. He represented
the latter at the Wannsee Conference
(20 January 1942), where he stood in for Minister Franz
Schlegelberger, as regarding the detailed plans of the Final Solution, the murder of all European
Jews.
Freisler's
mastery of legal texts, mental agility and overwhelming verbal force combined
well with strict adherence to the party line and the corresponding ideology, so
that he became the most feared judge and the personification of the Nazis'
"blood justice". Despite his undisputed
legal competence, he was never appointed to cabinet. According to Uwe
Wesel (de), this can be
attributed to two factors. Firstly, Roland Freisler was regarded as a lone
fighter and had no influential patron.
Secondly,
he was compromised by his brother Oswald's actions. Oswald Freisler (de), though also a Nazi, appeared as the
defense counsel in politically significant trials which the Nazis sought to use
for propaganda purposes. Oswald even wore his Nazi Party badge in court, which
confused the Party's role in these trials. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels accordingly reproved Roland
Freisler and reported the incident to Hitler, who, for his part, decreed the
immediate exclusion of Oswald Freisler from the party.
According
to Guido Knopp, however, Goebbels was the only
Nazi leader well disposed towards Freisler. In 1941, at a round-table
discussion in the Führer's headquarters, Goebbels proposed Freisler to
replace Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner, who had died. Allegedly,
Hitler's dismissive retort was: "That old Bolshevik? No!" Uwe Wesel
reports a similar remark by Hitler.
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| Dr. Roland Freisler |
Contribution
to the Nazification of the law
Freisler
published an article on "Die rassebiologische Aufgabe bei der
Neugestaltung des Jugendstrafrechts ("The racial-biological task
involved in the reform of Juvenile Criminal Law"). Freisler argued that
"racially foreign, racially degenerate, racially incurable or seriously
defective juveniles" should be sent to juvenile centres or correctional
education centres and be segregated from those who are "German and
racially valuable."
He
strongly supported rigid laws against Rassenschande ("race
defilement", the Nazi term for sexual relations between "Aryans"
and "inferior races") as racial treason. In 1933, Freisler published
a pamphlet that called for banning "mixed-blood" intercourse,
regardless of the kind or proportion of "foreign blood" involved,
which faced strong public criticism and, at the time, no support from Hitler.
This led to conflict with his superior, Franz Gürtner.
In
October 1939, Freisler introduced the concept of 'precocious juvenile criminal'
in the "Juvenile Felons Decree". This decree "provided the legal
basis for imposing the death penalty and penitentiary terms on juveniles for
the first time in German legal history". In the period 1933 through 1945,
the courts sentenced at least 72 German juveniles to death, among them
16-year-old Helmuth Hübener, found guilty of high treason for distributing
anti-war leaflets in 1942.
The
"Decree against National Parasites" (September 1939) introduced the
term perpetrator type, which was used in combination with another Nazi
term, parasite, The adoption of racial biological terminology portrayed
juvenile criminality as parasitic, implying the need for harsher sentences.
Freisler justified the new measures in the following manner: "In times of
war, breach of loyalty and baseness cannot find any leniency and must be met
with the full force of the law."
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Carl Friedrich
Goerdeler in the People’s Court.
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Presidency
of the People's Court
On
20 August 1942, Hitler promoted Otto Georg Thierack
to Reich Justice Minister, replacing the retiring Schlegelberger, and named
Freisler to succeed Thierack as president of the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof).
This court, set up outside the frame of law, had jurisdiction over a rather
broad array of "political offences", including black marketeering, work slowdowns, and
defeatism. These actions were viewed by Freisler's court as Wehrkraftzersetzung
(undermining defensive capability) and were accordingly punished severely, the
death penalty being meted out in numerous cases. The People's Court almost
always sided with the prosecution, to the point that being brought before it
was tantamount to a death sentence. Not surprisingly, it was viewed as a kangaroo court.
Freisler
chaired the First Senate of the People's Court, and acted as judge, jury and
prosecution embodied into one man. He also acted as court recorder; that way,
he was responsible for the composition of the written grounds for the sentences
that he wrote up in his own unique fashion, namely in accordance with his own
notions of a "National Socialist criminal court".
The
number of death sentences rose sharply under Freisler's stewardship.
Approximately 90% of all proceedings ended with sentences of death or life
imprisonment, the sentences frequently having been determined before the trial.
Between 1942 and 1945, more than 5,000 death sentences were handed out, and of
these, 2,600 through the court's First Senate, which Freisler headed. Thus,
Freisler alone was responsible, in his three years on the court, for as many
death sentences as all other senate sessions of the court put together in the
entire time the court existed, between 1934 and 1945.
Freisler
was known for humiliating defendants and shouting at them. He was known to be
an admirer of Andrei Vyshinsky,
the chief prosecutor of the Soviet purge trials,
and reportedly copied his demeanor. A number of the trials for defendants in
the 20 July Plot before the People's Court were
filmed and recorded. In the 1944 trial against Ulrich
Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld, for example, Freisler
shouted so loudly that the technicians who were filming the proceeding had
major problems making the defendant's words audible. Schwerin von Schwanenfeld,
like many other defendants in the plot, was sentenced to death by hanging.
Among this and other show trials, Freisler headed the 1943 proceedings against
the members of the White Rose
resistance group, and ordered many of its members to be executed by Fallbeil, a shorter German version of the
French guillotine.
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Heinrich Lautz shakes
hands with Roland Freisler
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Roland Freisler shakes hands with Otto Georg Thierack
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Death
On
3 February 1945, Freisler was conducting a Saturday session of the People's
Court, when American bombers attacked
Berlin. Government and Nazi Party buildings were hit, including the
Reich Chancellery, the Gestapo headquarters, the Party Chancellery, and the
People's Court.
According
to one report, Freisler hastily adjourned court and had ordered that day's
prisoners to be taken to a shelter, but paused to gather that day's files.
Freisler was killed when an almost direct hit on the building caused him to be
struck down by a beam in his own courtroom. His body was reportedly found
crushed beneath a fallen masonry column, clutching the files that he had tried
to retrieve. Among those files was that of Fabian von
Schlabrendorff, a 20 July Plot
member who was on trial that day and was facing execution.
According
to a different report, Freisler "was killed by a bomb fragment while
trying to escape from his law court to the air-raid shelter", and he
"bled to death on the pavement outside the People's Court at
Bellevuestrasse 15 in Berlin." Fabian von Schlabrendorff was
"standing near his judge when the latter met his end."
Freisler's
death saved von Schlabrendorff, who after the war became a judge of the Constitutional
Court of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht).
Yet
another version of Freisler's death states that he was killed by a British bomb
that came through the ceiling of his courtroom as he was trying two women, who
survived the explosion.
A
foreign correspondent reported, "Apparently nobody regretted his death."
Luise Jodl, then the wife of General Alfred Jodl, recounted more than 25 years
later that she had been working at the Lützow Hospital when Freisler's body was
brought in, and that a worker commented, "It is God's verdict."
According to Mrs. Jodl, "Not one person said a word in reply."
Freisler
is interred in the plot of his wife's family at the Waldfriedhof Dahlem
cemetery in Berlin. His name is not shown on the gravestone.
Fictional
portrayals
Freisler
appears in fictionalised form in the 1947 Hans Fallada novel Every Man Dies
Alone (Jeder stirbt für sich allein). In 1943 he tried and handed
down death penalties to Otto and Elise Hampel, whose true story inspired
Fallada's novel.
Freisler
has been portrayed by screen actors at least five times: by Rainer
Steffen in the 1984 German television movie Wannseekonferenz,
by Roland
Schäfer in the 1989 British-French-German film Reunion,
by Brian Cox
in the British 1996 television movie Witness Against Hitler, by Owen Teale in the 2001 BBC/HBO
film Conspiracy,
by André Hennicke
in the 2005 film Sophie
Scholl – The Final Days, and by Helmut Stauss in the 2008 film Valkyrie.
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