Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler (October 30, 1893 - February 3, 1945) was a prominent Nazi. He became State Secretary at the Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the Volksgerichtshof.
He was born in Celle. He saw active service during World War I: he was an officer cadet in 1914, and by 1915 he was a lieutenant and was decorated before becoming a prisoner of war in Russia in October 1915. While interned in Russia, he learned the language and developed an interest in Marxism. He returned to Germany in 1920 a convinced Communist to study law at Jena University, becoming a Doctor of Law in 1922. From 1924 he worked as a lawyer in Kassel and also as a city councilor for the Völkisch-Social bloc. He joined the Nazi Party in July 1925. 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 a Gauleiter of the Kassel branch of the Nazi Party characterized Freisler in the following manner: "Rhetorically he is equal to our best speakers, if not superior to them. Particularly on the broad masses, he has influence, but thinking people mostly reject him deep down. Party Comrade Freisler is only usable as a speaker. He is unsuitable for any leadership post, since he is unreliable and too dependent on votes."
In 1933 and 1934 he was State Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Justice, and in the Reich Ministry of Justice between 1934 and 1942; he represented the latter at the Wannsee Conference, where he stood in for Franz Schlegelberger. His absolute mastery of legal texts, mental agility and overwhelming verbal force jelled with strict adherence to the party line and the corresponding misanthropic ideology, so that he became the most feared judge and the personification of the Nazis' "blood justice." Despite his undisputed legal competence, he could not rise further. According to Uwe Wesel, this can be attributed to two factors:
- Freisler was regarded as a lone fighter and had no influential patron at his disposal who could have promited his rise.
- In the eyes of the Nazi elite, Freisler was compromised by his brother Oswald's rise to prominence. Oswald Freisler committed offense against the party line, especially because, in politically significant trials which the Nazi regime sought to debase for propaganda purposes, he appeared as defense counsel. In so doing, he wore his Nazi Party badge in a clearly visible way, which made an unambiguous interpretation of the party's position more difficult. 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.
On August 20, 1942, Roland Freisler was named by Hitler to succeed Otto Thieracks, who was promoted to Reich Justice Minister, as president of the Volksgerichtshof, or "People's Court," the court for political offenses. The broadened jurisdictional competence of the court--economic crimes, impairing the defense forces, etc.--allowed Freisler to have an extensive impact. The number of death sentence rose sharply under his stewardship. Approximately 90% of all proceedings ended with sentences of death or life imprisonment, which had often been determined before the trial anyway. Between 1942 and 1945 more than 5000 death sentences were handed out, and of these, 2600 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 sesions of the court together in the entire time the court existed, between 1934 and 1945.
Freisler acted as judge, prosecutor and jury all rolled into a single person. He was particularly known for humiliating defendants and barking loudly at them. He let some of the trials be filmed. Among other show trials, Freisler headed the proceedings against the members of the "White Rose," a resistance group, as well as those against the members of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.
A good example of Freisler's methodology is the questioning he directed at Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld:
Schwerin: Mr. President, what I have done by way of political experiences, has had some difficulties for me as a consequence, because I have truly worked very long for all things German in Poland, and from this time, I have experienced a great deal insofar as our position vis-a-vis the Poles goes. That is a---
Freisler:A great deal, that you are blaming National Socialism for?
Schwerin:I thought of the many murders. . .
Freisler: (screaming):Murders?
Schwerin: Domestically and abroad--
Freisler:You are just a shabby rogue, a common crook!
Schwerin:Mr. President!
Freisler:Yes or no? A clear answer!
Schwerin:No.
Freisler:You can't break down any further, you are just a little wretched pile, that doesn't even have any regard for itself anymore.
Count Schwerin, like the rest of the assassins, was sentenced to death. The accuseds' suspenders, belts and neckties were taken from them, in order to make them ridiculous. Because Freisler screamed so loudly during the trial, the technicians who were filming the proceeding had major problems making the defendants' words audible.
Freisler chaired the First Senate of the People's Court. Insofar as he led the proceedings, he designated himself as court reported. That way, he was also responsible for the composition of 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." Meanwhile, he introduced judgment advisories with remarks like "Off with his head," and "The beet must be uprooted," and so forth.
During an Allied air raid on Berlin on February 3, 1945, Freisler was fatally struck by a beam in the courthouse, or perhaps part of the wall. According to other sources he was wounded by a bomb fragment and bled to death--either, because he did not reach the bomb shelter in time, or because he ignored the air raid siren and wanted to look into files in the archive. His body was found crushed beneath a fallen masonry column, clutching the file on anti-Hitler conspirator Fabian von Schlabrendorff. The air raid saved Schlabrendorff's life, as Freisler's successor acquitted him due to lack of evidence.