One of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials was Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer, Reichsleiter, who was in charge of the Legal Department of the Reich, and later became Governor General in occupied Poland. It was he who was responsible for the death of many thousands of Jews sent by his order to the so-called death camps.
short biography
Hans Michael Frank was born on May 23, 1900 in the German city of Karlsruhe. A lawyer by training, he was a well-known political and statesman of Nazi Germany, the Reichsleiter, and also the Governor General of Poland from 1939 to 1945. His father was a lawyer, so it is not surprising that his son decided to follow in his footsteps. After graduating from high school in Munich in 1918, he was drafted into the army. Since Frank was then very young, he did not take part in the First World War, and even then as a soldier.
In early 1919, he joined the Volunteer Corps, and already in April took part in the hostilities against the communists who proclaimed the Bavarian Socialist Republic in Munich. In the same year he became a member of the German Workers' Party, and then in its transformed version - the NSDAP. Until 1923 he successfully studied law in Kiel, Munich and Vienna. In the middle of the same year he joined the ranks of the SA and was a member of the so-called Beer putsch. After a failed conspiracy, Frank was forced to leave Germany and flee to Italy. After his return in 1924 at Kiel University, he defended his dissertation with great success.
As you know, before the Nazis came to power, the financial support of their party was provided by the secret Thule Society, headed by Rudolf von Zebottendorf. The doctrine of this organization was based mainly on German-Scandinavian mythology, where ancient runes, pagan symbols, swastikas, etc. were used for rituals. Most members of the NSDAP were included in it, since they were extremely interested in this occult teaching. Hans Frank was also admitted to the Thule Society. Like his other participants, he studied legends about the once civilizations that had disappeared, such as Atlantis, Lemuria, Arctida, etc.
Nazi career
In 1926, already a certified lawyer, Hans Frank began his lawyer's activities in Munich by defending in court his party members arrested for involvement in an armed conflict with the Communists. I must say that in the period from 1925 to 1933, more than 40 thousand similar processes took place. Adolf Hitler was invited to one of them. There he acted as a witness.
After that, the future Fuhrer suggested Frank to become his personal lawyer and appointed the head of the legal division of the NSDAP. Thus, the young man began to represent Hitler in court, where he acted as an advocate in 150 trials. Since 1930, the lawyer also sat in the German Reichstag. Infinitely trusting Hans Frank, Hitler gave him a secret mission, the purpose of which was to prove his complete absence of Jewish blood.
After the Nazis came to power, the future governor of Poland held several fairly significant posts, such as the Minister and Reich Minister of Justice, and when he was just over thirty, he was appointed Reichsleiter of the NSDAP. In addition, he held a number of posts relating to German law.
Governor General
In mid-October 1939, after the Polish territory was seized, Hitler decided to appoint Hans Frank as the head of the newly organized department, which dealt with the affairs of the population of these occupied lands. A little later he was promoted, and he took the place of Governor-General of Poland.
The policy pursued by Frank in this country came down to the fact that he intended to treat it as a colony. According to him, the Poles should have become, no less, no more, the slaves of great Germany. In order to realize this crazy idea, he consistently destroyed national education. In addition, he mercilessly exploited both material and human resources of Poland, using them in the interests of the Nazi state. Thus, he did everything to turn the country into a raw materials appendage of Nazi Germany.
Criminal activity
The first thing the newly-appointed governor-general did was to make German official, and also warned all Poles and Jews that for every even insignificant disobedience to the occupying forces or any damage caused to the social device introduced by him, they would be sentenced to death .
Hans Frank took various artistic values from numerous Polish museums and decorated them with his own house in Schliersee (Southern Germany). By his order, the confiscation of personal property of citizens was carried out everywhere. He allowed his subordinates to export huge quantities of food from Germany-controlled territory to Germany. He allowed himself to arrange exquisite and rich feasts in the governor's palace of Krakow when a significant part of Europe suffered from hunger.
His cruelty and indifference to human life is also evidenced by the fact that by the end of 1942 more than 85% of Jews living in Poland were sent, according to his order, to the "death camps", where they died from cold, hunger and torture.
Fair sentence
After the defeat of the Third Reich, several dozen high-ranking Nazi officials appeared before the International Military Tribunal, held in Nuremberg in 1945-1946. Among them was a former Polish tyrant - Hans Frank. He, like others, was accused on three main points: crimes committed against humanity, violation of military law, as well as a conspiracy against the whole world. Two of them sentenced him to death.
I must say that he was the only Nazi who fully admitted his guilt and bitterly repented of the crimes he committed. This German officer never believed in God, but shortly before the execution he nevertheless converted to Catholicism. According to eyewitnesses, the last words of Hans Frank were addressed specifically to the Almighty. The criminal was executed on the night of October 16, 1946, along with ten other members of the same party. At the Nuremberg trials, Frank was accused at number seven.
Nazi memoirs
Until the end of June 1945, almost all the main accused, who once constituted the ruling elite of the Third Reich, except Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels, who committed suicide in fear of retaliation, were arrested. Among them was the former Reichsleiter Frank.
Since war criminals were not executed immediately, they had time to think about how they lived their lives. Many of them began to record their memories. Hans Frank also wrote such texts. “Face to the scaffold” - that was the name of the book published by the efforts of his wife after the completion of justice. As you know, in post-war Germany, it was very popular, as evidenced by its circulation - more than 50 thousand copies. It was with that money that the proceeds from the sale of the book that the Frank family lived for several years - a wife and five children.