Wilhelm Frick

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Wilhelm Frick
without Portfolio
In office
24 August 1943 – 30 April 1945
Additional positions
1939–1945Member of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich
1934—1945Member of the Prussian State Council
1933—1945Reichsleiter
1933–1945Member of the Reichstag (Nazi Germany)
1924—1933Member of the Reichstag (Weimar Republic)
Personal details
Born(1877-03-12)12 March 1877
Execution by hanging
Political partyNazi Party
Spouses
  • Elisabetha Emilie Nagel
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1910; div. 1934)​
  • Margarete Schultze-Naumburg
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1934)​
Children5
War crimes
Crimes against humanity
TrialNuremberg trials
Criminal penaltyDeath

Wilhelm Frick (12 March 1877 – 16 October 1946) was a convicted war criminal and prominent German politician of the

cabinet from 1933 to 1943[3] and as the last governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
.

As the head of the

SS, Frick gradually lost favour within the party, and in 1943 he was replaced by Heinrich Himmler
as interior minister. Frick remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio until Hitler's death in 1945.

After World War II, Frick was tried and convicted of

war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed by hanging
.

Early life

Born in the Palatinate municipality of Alsenz, then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria, Germany, the last of four children of Protestant teacher Wilhelm Frick sen. (d. 1918) and his wife Henriette (née Schmidt). He attended the gymnasium in Kaiserslautern, passing his Abitur exams in 1896. He went on studying philology at the University of Munich, but soon after turned to study law at Heidelberg and Humboldt University of Berlin. He received his doctorate of law in 1901. He joined the Bavarian civil service in 1903, working as an attorney at the Munich Police Department. He was appointed a Bezirksamtassessor in Pirmasens in 1907 and became acting district executive in 1914. Rejected as unfit, Frick did not serve in World War I. He was promoted to the official rank of a Regierungsassessor and, at his own request, re-assumed his post at the Munich Police Department in 1917.[6]

On 25 April 1910, Frick married Elisabetha Emilie Nagel (1890–1978) in Pirmasens. They had two sons and a daughter. The marriage ended in an ugly divorce in 1934. A few weeks later, on 12 March, Frick remarried in Münchberg Margarete Schultze-Naumburg (1896–1960), the former wife of the Nazi Reichstag MP Paul Schultze-Naumburg. Margarete gave birth to a son and a daughter.

Nazi career

Frick (3rd from left) among the defendants in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch trial, 1924. Adolf Hitler is 4th from the right.

In Munich, Frick witnessed the end of the war and the German Revolution of 1918–1919. He sympathized with right-wing Freikorps paramilitary units. Chief of Police Ernst Pöhner introduced him to Adolf Hitler, whom he helped willingly with obtaining permission to hold political rallies and demonstrations.

Elevated to the rank of an Oberamtmann and head of the Political department of the Munich police from 1923, he and Pöhner participated in Hitler's failed

high treason by the People's Court in April 1924. After several months in custody, he was given a suspended sentence of 15 months' imprisonment and was dismissed from his police job. Later during the disciplinary proceedings, the dismissal was declared unfair and revoked, on the basis that his treasonous intention had not been proven. Frick went on to work at the Munich social insurance
office from 1926 onwards, in the rank of a Regierungsrat 1st class by 1933.

In the aftermath of the putsch, Wilhelm Frick was elected a member of the German

parliamentary group leader (Fraktionsführer) in 1928.[7]
He would continue to be elected to the Reichstag in every subsequent election in the Weimar and Nazi regimes.

In 1929, as the price for joining the coalition government of the Land (state) of Thuringia, the NSDAP received the state ministries of the Interior and Education. On 23 January 1930, Frick was appointed to these ministries, becoming the first Nazi to hold a ministerial-level post at any level in Germany (though he remained a member of the Reichstag).[8] Frick used his position to dismiss Communist and Social Democratic officials and replace them with Nazi Party members, so Thuringia's federal subsidies were temporarily suspended by Reich Minister Carl Severing. Frick also appointed the eugenicist Hans F. K. Günther as a professor of social anthropology at the University of Jena, banned several newspapers, and banned pacifist drama and anti-war films such as All Quiet on the Western Front. He was removed from office by a Social Democratic motion of no confidence in the Thuringian Landtag parliament on 1 April 1931.

Reich Minister

Press session after the first meeting of Hitler's cabinet on 30 January 1933: Frick standing 4th from left

When Reich president

Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels
on 13 March.

Frick's power dramatically increased as a result of the

city states of Berlin and Hamburg
, where Hitler reserved the right to appoint the mayors himself if he deemed it necessary). He also had considerable influence over smaller towns as well; while their mayors were appointed by the state governors, as mentioned earlier the governors were responsible to him.

Frick (2nd from left) with Konrad Henlein on visit in Sudetenland, 1938

Frick was instrumental in the

Germany's re-armament in violation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty. He drafted laws introducing universal military conscription and extending the Wehrmacht service law to Austria after the 1938 Anschluss, as well as to the "Sudetenland" territories of the First Czechoslovak Republic annexed according to the Munich Agreement
.

In the summer of 1938 Frick was named the patron (Schirmherr) of the

Nazi Reich Sports League (NSRL) standard to Reichssportführer Hans von Tschammer und Osten
, marking the further nazification of sports in Germany. On 11 November 1938, Frick promulgated the Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons.

From the mid-to-late 1930s Frick lost favour irreversibly within the Nazi Party after a power struggle involving attempts to resolve the lack of coordination within the Reich government.

Third Reich's cabinet
to serve continuously from Hitler's appointment as Chancellor until his death.

Frick's replacement as Reichsminister of the Interior did not reduce the growing administrative chaos and infighting between party and state agencies.

Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, making him Hitler's personal representative in the Czech lands. Its capital Prague, where Frick used ruthless methods to counter dissent, was one of the last Axis-held cities to fall at the end of World War II in Europe.[17]

Trial and execution

Frick in his cell, November 1945
The corpse of Frick after his execution at Nuremberg, October 1946. Injuries caused from hitting his head on the trap door.

Frick was arrested, and was arraigned at the

concentration camps, many of them being murdered there. Frick was also accused of being one of the most senior people responsible for the existence of the concentration camps.[19]

Frick was sentenced to death on 1 October 1946, and was hanged at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October. Of his execution, journalist Joseph Kingsbury-Smith wrote:

The sixth man to leave his prison cell and walk with handcuffed wrists to the death house was 69-year-old Wilhelm Frick. He entered the execution chamber at 2.05 am, six minutes after Rosenberg had been pronounced dead. He seemed the least steady of any so far and stumbled on the thirteenth step of the gallows. His only words were, "Long live eternal Germany", before he was hooded and dropped through the trap.[20][21]

His body, along with those of the other nine executed men and the corpse of Hermann Göring, was cremated at the Ostfriedhof Cemetery in Munich, and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar.[22][23][24]

See also

References

  1. ^ Office of United States Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality (1948). Nazi Conspiracy And Aggression: Supplement B. United States Government Printing Office. p. 408.
  2. ^ Lisciotto, Carmelo (2007). "SS & Other Nazi Leaders". Holocaust Research Project. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  3. ISBN 0-674-01172-4
  4. ^ a b "Nazi Germany - Government Structure". Retrieved 8 May 2023.
  5. ISBN 0-582-49200-9
    .
  6. ^ Biographie, Deutsche. "Frick, Wilhelm - Deutsche Biographie". www.deutsche-biographie.de.
  7. ^ a b "Index Fo-Fy". rulers.org.
  8. ^ "Nurnbergprocessen 1". www.bjornetjenesten.dk. Archived from the original on 14 January 2009. Retrieved 7 December 2008.
  9. ISBN 978-0141009759
    .
  10. ^ "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality ("Red Series"): Volume 5, pp. 658–659". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 8 May 2023.
  11. ^ "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality ("Red Series"): Volume 5, p. 231, Document 2481-PS". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 8 May 2023.
  12. ISBN 978-3-770-05271-4
    .
  13. ^ A legalistic follower, rather than an initiator, Frick the servant increasingly lost favour with his master, apparently because he misunderstood the basic nature of the Fuhrer's governance. Whereas the Third Reich thrived on inconsistencies, rivalries, and constant evolutionary change, Frick's juristic mind longed for order and legal stabilization. The incongruity was insuperable and it was thus logical enough that in 1943 the minister, whose share of practical power had rapidly diminished in the second half of the 1930s, ultimately even lost his official post.Udo Sautter, Canadian Journal of History
  14. ^ Longerich, Peter (2012). Heinrich Himmler: A Life, Oxford University Press, p. 204.
  15. ^ Williams, Max (2001). Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography: Volume 1, Ulric, p. 77.
  16. ^ "Hans Mommsen, The Dissolution of the Third Reich (1943–1945)". Archived from the original on 7 August 2008. Retrieved 8 May 2023.
  17. ^ Trial:Wilhelm Frick Archived 2 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ "The trial of German major war criminals : proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany". avalon.law.yale.edu.
  19. ^ "Nuremberg Trial Defendants: Wilhelm Frick". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  20. ^ Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, who witnessed the execution of Wilhelm Frick and nine other leaders of the Nazi Party on 1st October 1946 Archived 24 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  21. ^ Today, Wilhelm Frick's military dress uniform is on display at Motts Military Museum in Groveport, Ohio. The uniform was found in his home shortly after Frick was arrested in 1945. The soldier who found it and brought it to the US, Richard Roberts, was a member of the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps). He was an attorney from Columbus, Ohio who spent the war years in espionage and counter intelligence.
  22. ^ Thomas Darnstädt (2005), "Ein Glücksfall der Geschichte", Der Spiegel, 13 September, no. 14, p. 128
  23. ^ Manvell 2011, p. 393.
  24. ^ Overy 2001, p. 205.

Sources

Further reading

External links

Political offices
Preceded by German Minister of the Interior
1933–1943 		Succeeded by
Government offices
Preceded by
Protector of Bohemia and Moravia

1943–1945 		Succeeded by
Office abolished
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