Roland Freisler

Roland Freisler (30 October 1893-3 February 1945) was a German judge and state secretary of the Reich ministry of justice during World War II. He was also one of those responsible for setting The Holocaust in motion.

Life
Born in Celle in 1893, Freisler enlisted as an officer cadet in the German army in 1914 when he was drafted for active service during World War I, gaining a promotion and an Iron Cross medal the following year shortly before being wounded and captured by Russian troops, eventually being repatriated in 1919.

Freisler became a doctor of law in 1922, beginning work as a solicitor in 1924. He joined the Nazi Party in 1925 and was employed to defend party members accused of acts of violence, eventually being elected to the Reichstag. In 1933, party leader Adolf Hitler seized power and Freisler was appointed state secretary of the ministry of justice, essentially making him the chief Nazi inquisitor.

His position was almost compromised by his brother Oswald, who committed suicide after being expelled from the party for opposing Hitler's plans, but this failed to directly impact Freisler, although Hitler did reject Joseph Goebbels's proposal to make Freisler the justice minister due to allegations that he was a communist sympathizer.

As a serious Nazi, Freisler used his position to advance the Nazification of German law, starting the move to ban sexual relations between Jews and Germans and introducing an amendment allowing juveniles to be executed. His racism and support for the Nazi ideology was so great that he even stated the Jim Crow segregation laws in place in the USA at the time were "primitive" as he felt they didn't do enough to oppress black people. He was also present at the 1942 Wannsee Conference which started the Holocaust in order to provide legal advice on the destruction of Jewry throughout the world.

When Hitler made Otto Georg Thierack the justice minister, Freisler replaced him as president of the people's court, a position he used to try and utterly destroy crime with almost no chance of acquittal to the point where just being charged in Freisler's court was pretty much a death sentence, particularly as Freisler acted as judge and jury, meaning the person being prosecuted would almost always be found guilty. In fact, 90% of defendants in his court were sentenced to death, including members of the White Rose Movement (a group that organised protests against the Nazi regime), who were executed by beheading, and several men who attempted to kill Hitler during The July Plot, who he personally attacked and sentenced to hang.

In 1945, Freisler's court was forced to evacuate during a trial due to an air raid. As the others escaped, Freisler stopped to gather up court files, only for a bomb to hit the justice ministry. Three accounts of his death exist. The first states that the blast knocked over a masonry column, crushing Freisler to death. The second states that a piece of shrapnel hit him and he bled to death in the street. The final account states that the bomb came through the roof as Freisler was trying to escort others in the courtroom out and obliterated him. Either way, his death was barely mourned and he was buried in an unmarked grave.