Wilhelm Frick

Wilhelm Frick
Dr. jur. Wilhelm Frick
Reichsminister of the Interior National Socialist Germany
In office 30 January 1933 – 20 August 1943
President	Paul von Hindenburg (1933–1934) Adolf Hitler (1934–1943)
Chancellor	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Franz Bracht
Succeeded by	Heinrich Himmler
Protector of Bohemia and Moravia
In office 24 August 1943 – 8 May 1945
Appointed by	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Konstantin von Neurath (de jure) Kurt Daluege (de facto)
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Reichsleiter
In office 10 October 1933 – 8 May 1945
Appointed by	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	None
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Reichsminister without Portfolio
In office 24 August 1943 – 30 April 1945
Born	12 March 1877 Alsenz, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
Died	16 October 1946 Nuremberg Prison, Nuremberg, Bavaria, Allied-occupied Germany
Political party	NSDAP
Spouse(s)	∞ 1910 Elisabetha Emilie Nagel ∞ 1934 Margarete Schultze-Naumburg
Children	5
Alma mater	University of Munich University of Göttingen University of Berlin University of Heidelberg
Occupation	Attorney

Wilhelm "Willi" Frick (12 March 1877 – 16 October 1946) was a prominent German jurist and National Socialist official who was a Reichsleiter and Member of the Reichstag (Leader of the Reichstag faction as of 10 October 1933). He served as Germany's Minister of the Interior (Reichsminister des Innern) from 1933 to 1943, and after this as the last Governor (Reichsprotektor) of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

At the Nuremberg Show Trials he was found guilty on questionable charges and sentenced to death.

Life

Inauguration of the new Reich Governor Arthur Greiser (right) with Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick (center) and Walter Petzel (left), November 1939

Frick was born in Kaiserslautern in the Palatinate municipality of Alsenz, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire, the youngest of four children of Wilhelm Frick (1838-1918), a schoolteacher and "nationalist politically and an admirer of Bismarck", and his wife who died in 1893 from pneumonia, aged 75. The eldest daughter, Emma, became an English and Latin teacher and died in 1903 from stomach cancer. Her sister was born in 1866 and died in 1938 from heart failure. She had kept house for Wilhelm jnr. in Kaiserslautern until her death. The eldest son, Hermann, was born in 1870, became a businessman, and died from consumption in the Canary Islands in 1900.

Education & career

Frick's secondary education was in Kaiserslautern (today located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate at the edge of the Palatinate Forest). The historic centre dates to the 9th century. Between 1896 and 1900, he studied, as a member of a student fraternity (Korporierter), at the University of Munich, the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin, and completed his degree in law in Munich. Frick gained a Doctor of Law (Dr. iur./Dr. jur.) from the University of Heidelberg in 1901.

He joined the Bavarian Civil Service after the assessor exam in 1903, working as a lawyer at police headquarters in Munich. In 1904, he was appointed accessist at the district government of Upper Bavaria. He was made a District Assessor in 1907 in Pirmasens and rose to the position of Government Assessor with the Munich Police Department by 1917. he was rejected as medically unfit and did not serve in World War I, although he had he volunteered, and continued in his post at the Munich Police Department..

From 1919 to 1921, he headed the Bavarian Political Police department. By 1923, he was Director of the Munich Criminal Police (Kriminalpolizei) (Kripo). Frick took part in the Munich Putsch (November 1923). He was one of those arrested and tried for treason, after five months in custody, on 1 April 1924. Found guilty, he was given a suspended sentence of 15 months imprisonment, and on probation released the same day. He was dismissed from his police employment.

The Bavarian Disciplinary Court later overturned Frick's dismissal from the civil service on the grounds that he had not acted with treasonous intent. Frick then worked as a civil servant in the Munich Higher Insurance Office from 1926 to 1930 and from 1932 to 1933 – ultimately as a first class government councillor (Regierungsrat I. Klasse).

NSDAP career

Joining the National Socialists in the same year of his trial, Frick was elected to the Reichstag in May 1924 and associated himself with the radical National Socialist leader Gregor Strasser; he climbed to posts of leadership in the NSDAP, becoming leader of the parliamentary party (Fraktionsführer) in 1928.

Wilhelm Frick was appointed Minister of the Interior and of Education in the State Government of Thuringia during 1930–31, being the first National Socialist to hold any ministerial-level post in pre-NS Germany.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, Frick was appointed Minister of the Interior of Germany. He initially had far less power than his counterparts in the rest of Europe. For example, he had no authority over the police. In Germany, law enforcement has traditionally been a State and local responsibility.

Frick's power dramatically increased as a result of the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933. He was given the responsibility for drafting many of the Conformity (Gleichschaltung) Laws that consolidated the new government. Under the 'Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich', which converted Germany into a highly centralized state, the State governors became responsible to him. By 1935, he also had sole power to appoint the Mayors of all municipalities with populations greater than 100,000 (except for Berlin and Hamburg, where the Chancellor reserved the right to these appointments).

Frick was given the responsibility for drafting the Nuremberg Race Laws (September 1935), and was said to have taken a leading part in Germany's re-armament]]: a technical violation of the Versailles Treaty, although it long pre-dated the Nazis. He was also instructed to draft laws introducing universal military conscription and extending the military service law to Austria after the Anschluss, as well as to the Sudetenland following its union with Germany. In the summer 1938 Wilhelm Frick was named the Patron (Schirmherr) of the German Gymnastics and Sports Festival in Breslau, a patriotic event attended by Hitler and the National Socialist leadership.

From the mid-to-late 1930s Frick lost favour irreversibly within the Party after a power struggle involving attempts to resolve the lack of co-ordination within the government. For example, in 1933 he tried to restrict the use of "protective custody" orders that were used to send people to concentration camps, only to be overruled by SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Frick's power was greatly reduced in 1936 when Hitler named Himmler Head of all German police forces. This effectively united the police with the SS and made it virtually independent of Frick's control, since Himmler was responsible only to Hitler. A long-running power struggle between the two culminated in Frick being replaced by Himmler as Minister of the Interior in 1943^{reference required}.

Frick was appointed 20 August 1943 to the post of Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. Prague, the capital of the protectorate, where Frick was said to have resorted to ruthless methods to counter anti-German terrorism, was one of the last Axis-held cities to fall at the end of World War II in Europe. However, during his interviews in custody at Nuremberg, Frick stated that his position was titular, that he spent only about one week a month in Prague, and that real power rested with Karl Hermann Frank, the Reichsminister for Bohemia and Moravia.

Death

Trial and execution

Dr. Frick was arrested and tried before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, where he, a highly qualified lawyer, was the only defendant besides Rudolf Hess who refused to testify on his own behalf. Frick was convicted of planning, initiating and "waging wars of aggression", and "crimes against humanity". Wilhelm Frick was sentenced to death on October 1, 1946, and was hanged just over two weeks later on 16 October 1946.

The full final statement made by his defence team on his behalf before the Nuremberg Tribunal said:

"I have a clear conscience regarding the indictment. My whole life has been service to the people and fatherland. I have dedicated my best energy to them in the most faithful fulfillment of duty. I am convinced that no patriotic American or citizen of any other nation, faced with the same situation in their country, would have acted differently in my position. Because any other course of action would have been a breach of my oath of loyalty, high treason and treason. I believe that I deserve no more punishment for fulfilling my legal and moral duty than do the tens of thousands of dutiful German civil servants and public service employees who are still being held in camps today, as they have been for years, simply for fulfilling their duty. It is a special duty of honour for me, as the Reich's former civil servant and Minister for many years, to remember them faithfully here."

His last words before execution were:

" Long live the eternal Germany!"

Stolen uniform

Today, one can see Wilhelm Frick's military dress uniform at Motts Military Museum in Groveport, Ohio, just part of the shiploads of goods looted and stolen from Germany by the Americans. The uniform was found in Frick's home shortly after he was arrested in 1945. The American soldier who found and stole the items, Richard Roberts, from Columbus, Ohio, was a member of the USA Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC).

Family

On 25 April 1910, Frick married Elisabetha Emilie Nagel (1890–1978) in Pirmasens. They had two sons and a daughter:

1. Hans, born in 1911, became a District Magistrate in Upper Bavaria and then a regional commander in Russia. He committed suicide on 3 May 1945, together with his wife and children.
2. Walter, born in 1913, became a Lieutenant in the army and was killed in action on the Eastern Front (Dnieper river) in 1941 from abdominal wounds. His father flew to visit him the day before death.
3. Anneliese, born in 1920, worked in the medical department of the Luftwaffe. She was alive and well at the end of the war and kept in regular contact with her father.

The marriage ended in a divorce in 1934. A few weeks later, on 12 March, Frick remarried in Münchberg: Margarete Schultze-Naumburg (1896–1960), the former wife of architect, artist and Reichstag Depute Paul Schultze-Naumburg (de). She was 19 years younger than Frick. They had:

1. Renate, born in 1935.
2. Dieter, born in 1937.

Awards, decorations and honours (excerpt)

• Blood Order in November 1933, award no. 35
• Golden Party Badge
• Goldenes HJ-Ehrenzeichen with Oak Leaves as Reichsminister
• NSDAP Long Service Award (Dienstauszeichnung der NSDAPin Bronze (10 Jahre) on 30 January 1940
• War Merit Cross (1939), 2nd and 1st Class
  • 1st Class on 16 October 1940 as Generalbevollmächtigter für die Reichsverwaltung und Mitglied des Reichsverteidigungsrates
• German Eagle Order, Grand Cross in Gold with Star

Honours

• Honorary citizen of Kaiserslautern
• Honorary citizen of Berlin
• Honorary citizen of Dresden
• Honorary citizen of Göttingen
• Honorary citizen of Jena
• Honorary citizen of Arnstadt
• Honorary citizen of Sondershausen
• Honorary Senator of the University of Freiburg on 12 May 1939
• Hitler endowment (gift) of 250,000 Reichsmark, 1942

Writings

• Die Nationalsozialisten im Reichstag 1924–28 (1929; Neuausgabe von C. Fischer, 1932)
• Bevölkerungs- und Rassenpolitik (1933); Redetext von der 1. Sitzung des Sachverständigenbeirats für Bevölkerungs- und Rassenpolitik am 28. Juni 1933 [1]
• Kampfziel der deutschen Schule (1933)
• Wir bauen das Dritte Reich [Reden und Aufsätze] (1934)

External links

• NOT GUILTY AT NUREMBERG: The German Defense Case – detailed descriptions and criticisms of the alleged evidence against each of the accused at the IMT