Hitler's Henchmen (11/12) : Freisler - The Hanging Judge
For educational purposes
There was no justice to be found in Freisler's courtroom. The 'Blood Judge' would rave and scream at the accused, lecturing them and robbing them of all dignity before handing down the inevitable sentence death.
His name is synonymous with a parody of justice. His victims never received a real trial, but rather were humiliated in public. He handed down judgments that suited him.
For the most part, the verdict was one and the same: death. As President of the People's Court, he was the main representative of the legal reign of terror in the Third Reich.
Those who stood accused before the furious and roaring Bloody Judge had no hope of being able to maintain their dignity.
There was no justice to be found in Freisler's courtroom. The 'Blood Judge' would rave and scream at the accused, lecturing them and robbing them of all dignity before handing down the inevitable sentence death.
His name is synonymous with a parody of justice. His victims never received a real trial, but rather were humiliated in public. He handed down judgments that suited him.
For the most part, the verdict was one and the same: death. As President of the People's Court, he was the main representative of the legal reign of terror in the Third Reich.
Those who stood accused before the furious and roaring Bloody Judge had no hope of being able to maintain their dignity.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Summer, 1944. The Eastern Front was collapsing.
00:2910,000 dead every day. In Berlin, the conspiracy. The plan? A military putsch. An attempt on
00:44Hitler's life. Murder of the tyrant. The outcome? Four dead, 12 critically injured. He, however,
00:58survived the bomb. And swore merciless revenge. September, 1944. The Wolf's Lair. A film
01:25was being shown about the work of the Nazi senior hanging judge. Freisler will deal with
01:33it, declared Hitler.
02:03He had total control over the scene. And the effect was
02:33that he didn't care, because he had all the power. The embodiment of evil. In a rather
02:49pure form. Because he could get away with it. Others maybe weren't allowed to pay the price.
03:01He was a careerist, and he would probably have become something under another political flag,
03:11because he had then completely devoted himself to power. He could settle down. He was not a man
03:18with his own clear principles. This man laid down the principles. The dictator wanted to be loved.
03:40Whoever rejected him was persecuted.
04:10War. Also against his own people, with 40,000 dead. These bloodthirsty lawyers were the merciless
04:40soldiers. He was the pitiless general.
05:10Sometimes, crying is a shame. What do you want to say with those tears in your eyes?
05:21I'm very touched, Mr. Professor.
05:24But you mean something. Do you mean that you would do something like that again, if life would lead you like that again?
05:33No.
05:35But there are cases where there is no longer an effective role.
05:44And then you have the impression of a possessed, possessed by power, a lustful person, you have to say.
05:52It must have meant a high sense of lust to see people trembling in fear and to condemn them to death.
06:05A dictatorial rule, violated by the willing executioners.
06:19August 1914. The fatherland was calling. Enthusiastically, people left for war. Among them, the 20-year-old law student, Freisler.
06:30On his matriculation certificate, it said, conduct and diligence, good.
06:35In Russian captivity, he got top marks for it. The Bolshevists made him camp commissar.
06:41On his return from Russian captivity, Freisler became a lawyer.
06:52A new Germany. Freisler didn't like it. In his eyes, democracy was decadent.
07:00He wanted a national revolution. And the crisis came.
07:09The Weimar Republic lost its republicans.
07:13Freisler had long been a member of the National Socialist Party, which valued conduct and diligence.
07:21And, now and then, legal counsel.
07:28Now it came to the trials.
07:31And it was our Roland Freisler. We called him the rumbling Roland.
07:36He was now regularly the judge of the court.
07:45Freisler was a man of his word.
07:50He was a man of his word, and he was the judge of the court.
07:54Freisler, we also called him the raging Roland,
07:58who regularly took over the defense of his S.A. Rabauken in court.
08:20He was not a bad lawyer.
08:23But when he betrayed his fellow citizens,
08:29that was something of a success.
08:35That was sustainable.
08:38He was a great man.
08:54He wanted to be Hitler's henchman, and not only in Kassel.
09:041933, the seizure of power.
09:10In the capital and in the provinces.
09:23They broke into the town hall and threw the flag of Hagenkreuz on it.
09:29He even wanted to occupy the building of the Supreme Court.
09:37He was a lawyer, and he wanted to show that there was another wind in the justice system.
09:53It would contradict the purpose of the national uprising
09:57if the government took its measures from case to case.
10:02The approval of the Reichstag for trade and development.
10:08The Reichstag reduced its own powers.
10:11Germany was getting into uniform.
10:14Her lawyers, too.
10:23The assassins are fighting here.
10:28The commission is striking too far.
10:33It marches all the way to the future.
10:39Men like Freisler were in demand now.
10:43Only one thing held him back, the taint of a Bolshevist past.
10:48He never became the Minister of Justice.
10:54He was only a State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice.
11:08I have seen our attempt succeed.
11:12When I see that you, as soldiers of National Socialism,
11:20and thus bearers of the new state,
11:23as those who want to manage the backbone of the state,
11:27your legal care,
11:29participate internally, joyfully.
11:33Lawful meant whatever was useful to the nation.
11:37The Reichstag burned.
11:40Was there still justice?
11:42There were still judges?
11:47Leipzig.
11:48The Reichstag fire trial.
11:50The Nazis' first show trial.
11:52But the evidence was thin.
11:54There were acquittals.
11:56Was Hitler's Germany still subject to the rule of law?
12:10I think it was 1934 when the Volksgerichtshof was established.
12:15Because Hitler's regular courts were too strict or too religious.
12:23That was the reason why the political issues were dealt with by the Volksgerichtshof.
12:40Socialists, Social Democrats.
12:44To Freisler, the herald of the new justice,
12:47these were the traitors to the state.
13:11...was good.
13:13National Socialism is the starting point,
13:17the content and the goal of National Socialist legal thinking.
13:22And if I, as one of your oldest comrades, say,
13:26through the relationship of the German people with you,
13:30for the first time in the history of the German people,
13:33the concept of love for the leader has become a legal concept.
13:40Love of the Führer.
13:42Those who loved him most dearly became his first victims.
13:49The storm troopers lost their leader.
14:10I have to say, in this hour of war,
14:13I am responsible for the fate of the German nation
14:17and therefore for the German people of the Upper Court.
14:22It was the chance to settle others' scores.
14:25The former Chancellor, Schleicher,
14:27was a stumbling block on the path to absolute power.
14:34They murdered on orders.
14:36For my mother, they certainly did not have the order.
14:39But since she was in the same room,
14:41they saw a great danger from it and immediately shot her
14:45because she was a witness.
14:47And because afterwards it should have been said
14:50that he had resisted.
14:52And in reality, they only asked,
14:54after they had made their entrance,
14:57are you General von Schleicher?
15:00And he said, yes, and then the shots fell.
15:06The custodian of justice hushed up the murder.
15:36Brute force brought society into line.
15:43He wanted people willing to take orders,
15:46just as much as he wanted Herrenmenschen.
15:55Teutonic cult and racial mania in one breath.
16:01Anyway, he was a man of his word.
16:06Anyone who didn't fit this picture had no right to live,
16:09said the regime.
16:13And so the mentally ill were vilified and later murdered by law.
16:36You have to work healthy, German compatriots.
16:39If we today artificially restore the great law
16:42of reading with human means,
16:45then we restore the reverence for the laws of the Creator.
16:51Law is law, what is written in the law book.
16:54If it says the cyclists are executed,
16:57then the judge says, yes, they are cyclists.
17:00This is a death sentence, this positivism,
17:03the belief in the law and the banality of the law
17:06was the main mistake of these people.
17:09But fear also plays a role.
17:12Fear was also felt by the victims.
17:17Tens of thousands of Germans left the country.
17:22Emigration, fleeing from legalized terror.
17:27The whole society is rotting.
17:29The poison is in the bloodstream.
17:32No one trusts each other anymore.
17:34And this was exactly in a state that,
17:37as the highest goal,
17:39promoted the community, the friendship of all Germans.
17:46The sunny side of the Third Reich.
17:51But behind the facade, denunciation and distrust.
17:55Meanwhile, Freisler went on a trip to further his education.
18:02He went to Moscow in 1938
18:06for the Turchachevsky trial.
18:12He was hospitalized during the trial of Vyshinsky.
18:20Moscow. Lessons with Stalin's hanging judge.
18:24Sit down, please.
18:49The former camp commissar understood the lesson.
18:54People like Himmler and so on.
18:57They said, this man is one hundred percent.
19:00You can trust him.
19:03And he said to me,
19:05an important man, be glad.
19:07These people with bad conscience
19:09are the only ones we are sure of.
19:13They can't go anywhere else.
19:19Summer 1939.
19:22Everything seemed normal.
19:33The Germans were still seemingly carefree and unsuspecting.
19:39But all the signs pointed to a storm.
19:43He thought the time was ripe.
19:45The people needed Lebenfront.
19:58September. Poland was invaded.
20:00International law broken.
20:04At home, jurisdiction appropriate for wartime,
20:07Freisler demanded that the courts be the panzer divisions of justice.
20:15The courts were not.
20:17The people were not.
20:19The people were not.
20:21The people were not.
20:23The people were not.
20:25The people were not.
20:27The people were not.
20:29The people were not.
20:31The people were not.
20:35I am a political soldier of my Führer Adolf Hitler.
20:39So this slogan,
20:41he used this word many times.
20:44For the fanatic, a table at a café
20:46was also part of the home front.
20:50I like bean coffee better.
20:53It's getting better.
20:55We'll soon have real coffee again.
20:59I have an idea.
21:01I still live on the railway.
21:03I'll tell you one Wehrmacht transport after the other.
21:06Recently I counted at least one in the morning.
21:09Stop!
21:10You've said too much.
21:12If the enemy hears what this man is blabbering,
21:15he can cause us serious damage.
21:18So don't blabber.
21:20Keep quiet.
21:22And warn everyone who still doesn't keep their mouth shut.
21:25Warn him.
21:27Anyone who disregarded the warning
21:31ended up here.
21:33The guillotine.
21:57We can't do anything about it.
21:59He said, I'm not to be pitied.
22:02You are to be pitied.
22:04I pray for you.
22:15After the victory in France,
22:17the dictator at the height of his power.
22:21Stop! Stop!
22:41The conspiracy was a very long and difficult story.
22:44It went wrong again and again.
22:46It had to be rebuilt.
22:48Or there was some great victory
22:50that you had to say to yourself,
22:53it's impossible to kill him now.
22:56You couldn't.
22:58After the victory in France
23:01was over in six weeks,
23:04you couldn't kill Adolf
23:06if people didn't understand.
23:08In the Mosaic Hall of the new Reich Chancellery,
23:11the solemn act of state
23:13for the deceased Reich Minister of Justice Dr. Gürtner took place.
23:16Freisler, the careerist.
23:19He would dearly have liked to be the next Justice Minister.
23:22That old Bolshevik?
23:24No, said Hitler.
23:31He needed this man to do the dirty work
23:34for the people's court.
23:38Someone had to be the bloodhound.
23:42He would become the bloodhound.
23:47He was capable of learning.
23:50But, of course,
23:52he was very iron-willed.
23:55According to the motto,
23:58everything that is not for us is against us.
24:02And that had to go.
24:05Go into protective custody,
24:08into prison,
24:10into a concentration camp.
24:13Nazi justice made people disappear
24:18merely on suspicion.
24:43This was the Heimtücke Act.
24:46In this Heimtücke Act,
24:48you could do anything you wanted.
24:51It was such a flexible rubber paragraph
24:54that anyone who was charged
24:57according to the Heimtücke Act
25:00was actually lost if the court wanted him.
25:07Lost like the Jews,
25:09long since robbed of their rights.
25:12Anyone who stayed behind lived dangerously,
25:15without legal rights.
25:27Spring 1942.
25:32A villa on the Wannsee in Berlin.
25:35A ritual for the technocrats of the final solution.
25:43Among them, Roland Freisler, the lawyer,
25:46the anti-Semite, the hanging judge.
25:53Murder by law.
25:56The murder of justice.
25:59The murder of compassion.
26:12This is, of course,
26:15a view of the racial conditions
26:18that cannot bring morality,
26:21ethics or peace.
26:24If you say the niggers are half-open,
26:27the Jews must be killed,
26:30the Slavs are subhuman,
26:33it's all so wrong in itself
26:36that no justice can be built on it.
26:39But injustice certainly could.
26:41It was a dangerous game.
26:43The nation had long since lost its right to speak out.
26:46Now its ears were being blocked too.
27:12Hand on heart.
27:15Weren't you already poisoned by this poison?
27:20We heard through BBC London and Luxembourg,
27:23but we paid attention
27:26that the windows and doors were closed,
27:29and then we heard,
27:32as long as they were disturbed.
27:35BBC was often disturbed by Nazis.
27:38There was a death sentence
27:41and at least a prison sentence.
27:45Anyone brought before Freisler in this courtroom
27:48was virtually defenseless.
27:51We will finish with you.
27:54You are not called upon
27:57to act like a murderer.
28:00You are only called upon
28:03to speak out against Freisler
28:06against the German Reich,
28:09against our German people.
28:12Then the chairman said,
28:15you don't have to laugh like that.
28:18If we sentence you to death,
28:21you will be executed at 3 p.m.
28:24That's a serious matter.
28:27You heard what the prosecutor said.
28:30Then he goes out of the courtroom,
28:33and we have to imagine
28:36that we have opened a case today.
28:39Anyone who didn't confess was tortured.
28:45Intensive interrogation
28:48was what the Gestapo called it.
28:51I had 77 interrogations,
28:54of which only two without beating.
28:58I got a report from my husband.
29:01He was totally bloody inside.
29:07I couldn't imagine
29:10what they did to others.
29:13I couldn't imagine
29:16what they did to others.
29:22But that was the face of Nazi justice.
29:26Only those who betrayed their principles
29:29or pretended to be stupid
29:32could hope for mercy.
29:35I would like to say
29:38that I personally
29:41had no criminal thoughts.
29:44I only had one thought in my work,
29:47which was to bring the news
29:50that the leadership and the troops needed.
29:54I didn't know that before.
29:57A friend of ours brought it to me.
30:04He did it very cleverly.
30:07I, a poor Aryan girl,
30:10was seduced by an evil Jew.
30:13And on this primitive tour
30:16they are addressed.
30:19In the name of the German people,
30:22the fact that Wilhelm Küba
30:25deliberately supports the traitors
30:28cannot be confirmed.
30:31Not to mention the fact
30:34that he did not report
30:37any distorting statements in the Wehrmacht.
30:40He is therefore acquitted of these allegations.
30:43But an acquittal did not always mean freedom.
30:46And while he read out my sentence,
30:49someone came from behind
30:52and I couldn't see who it was.
30:55I could only see that he was a civilian
30:58and whispered in my ear,
31:01it doesn't matter what you get here
31:04and how much you get here,
31:07we'll take you to the concentration camp.
31:10Stalingrad.
31:13The beginning of the end.
31:40Only a few people put up any opposition.
31:43Munich students called for resistance
31:46in leaflets which concealed nothing.
32:11Lone heroes and a German porter.
32:15The White Rose was unmasked.
32:33Nazi sympathisers among their fellow students
32:36helped in the arrests.
32:41A case for Freisler,
32:44the hanging judge on an official journey.
33:05The Palace of Justice, Munich.
33:08The people's highest judge knew what was expected of him.
33:11He was to make short work of them.
33:14A one-day trial with three death penalties.
33:38He handed me a book and said,
33:41Mr President, I have one with me.
33:44Then Freisler took the book
33:47and threw it from the judge's table
33:50towards the lawyers,
33:53there was a smooth floor like here,
33:56and he slid it like this
33:59and then gave the content, triumphantly,
34:02the sentence, we don't need a law here.
34:05Munich, Stadelheim prison.
34:08The sentences against Hans and Sophie Scholl and a friend
34:11were carried out that very day.
34:30What was permitted and what was forbidden,
34:33the propaganda told you.
34:55Prison, really?
34:58The final count for 1944,
35:01300 death sentences.
35:04More than six per day.
35:31June 1944, invasion.
35:34The regime's days were numbered.
35:41In the east, the Central Army Division was collapsing.
35:44The Germans were on the move.
35:47The Germans were on the move.
35:50The Germans were on the move.
35:53The Germans were on the move.
35:56The Germans were on the move.
35:59The division was collapsing.
36:02The remnants of it were driven through Moscow.
36:09What was the German resistance doing?
36:12Brave men desperately sought contact.
36:17But the western powers refused to cooperate.
36:20They wanted unconditional surrender.
36:23Still, something had to be done.
36:53It was an act of cowardice of the Germans,
36:56who had simply gotten too involved with National Socialism.
36:59It was a very daring thing.
37:24The idea, the Home Guard was to assume power in Germany
37:27and try to end the war.
37:30The precondition, the death of the tyrant.
37:54There is a group of men who deal with the idea
37:57and who will one day win the overthrow.
38:03Murder the head of state?
38:06Who dared do that?
38:09None of the conspirators had access to him.
38:16Only when Count Stauffenberg was transferred
38:19to the Fuhrer's headquarters was there a chance.
38:39July 20th, 1944, 12.30,
38:43Stauffenberg with Hitler.
38:47The course of world history depended on the position of a briefcase.
39:00It was the last chance.
39:17The military putsch collapsed within hours.
39:20The conspirators had kept lists of names
39:23so the Gestapo had an easy time of it.
39:26For the hanging judge, it was his finest hour.
39:34It started in early August in the Supreme Court in Berlin.
39:47Two weeks after the crime, the People's Court
39:50tried against eight of the traitors
39:53who were involved in the crime of July 20th.
39:56Erwin von Witzleben,
39:59Erich Höppner,
40:02Friedrich Karl Klausink.
40:05The newsreel featuring the trial was never shown in the cinema.
40:08The propaganda ministry feared unwelcome discussion
40:11about Freisler's ranting during the proceedings.
40:16Peter Graf Jorg von Wartenburg,
40:19Robert Bernardis.
40:22Even his colleagues were perturbed.
40:46The accused Stief,
40:49in his statement about the production of explosives.
41:16This is humanity.
41:19You are... and what do I know.
41:22Then these tyrants came.
41:25I don't want to have anything to do with them.
41:46I am young, I am lost.
41:49My accomplices,
41:52Graf von Stauffenberg
41:55have reported this.
41:58They didn't run away.
42:01No, no.
42:04Freisler wanted to rob the defendants of their dignity,
42:07but he didn't succeed.
42:10Apparently, Freisler always bullied Schurke Schulenburg.
42:13But one day,
42:16he disguised himself
42:19and said, Graf Schulenburg,
42:22to which Fritzi had turned away,
42:25and said, Schurke Schulenburg, please.
42:30The hanging judge wanted them humiliated.
42:33General Höppner in a cardigan
42:36and without his dentures.
42:43You have done the right thing.
42:46Evil is a matter of intellect.
42:52Spiderman is a matter of character.
42:59You dirty old man, stop fumbling with your trousers,
43:02bellowed Freisler at Field Marshal Witzleben,
43:05whose braces had been taken away.
43:09Yet not one of the main conspirators
43:12showed the remorse demanded of them.
43:38I only hope that someone else
43:41will seduce them in a more favorable moment.
43:44Weren't you just imprisoned in Westpreußen?
43:47Yes, I was.
43:50But I think it was back and forth
43:53that you put the National Socialism at risk.
43:59Murder?
44:02You are
44:05a scoundrel.
44:08Get out of here.
44:13Yes or no, get out of here.
44:16Mr. President, I...
44:19Yes or no, give a clear answer.
44:23No.
44:24No, you can't get out of here
44:27because you are just a heap of misery.
44:32The spectators at the gruesome tribunal
44:35consisted almost exclusively
44:38of loyal servants of the regime.
44:41The victims' relatives were locked out.
45:01I heard the voice of Freisler
45:04through the doors.
45:07Today I no longer know
45:10what I imagined.
45:13I could only harm my husband
45:16by appearing there
45:19because he had to fear
45:22what would happen to her
45:25if she appeared here in the lion's den.
45:28It was unbearable.
45:31I still can't really speak
45:34about it today.
45:43The President of the People's Court,
45:46Dr. Roland Freisler, announces the verdict.
45:49The defendants are sentenced
45:52to death by hanging.
45:55The verdict was carried out
45:58two hours after the sentence.
46:01We found out outside
46:04that they had all been sent away
46:07for the execution.
46:10In the afternoon I went out
46:13to Plötzensee
46:16and asked the guard at the gate
46:19what had happened to the people
46:22who had come this afternoon
46:25between three and four.
46:28No one lived there anymore.
46:40They should be strung up
46:43like animals for slaughter.
46:46That was the tyrant's sentence.
46:49It was almost like a liberation.
46:52I had the feeling
46:55that he had escaped
46:58the terrible pressure
47:01and the horrors
47:04of the Gestapo.
47:07He had escaped
47:10the horrors
47:13of the Gestapo.
47:16He had escaped
47:19and was now with God.
47:32Attention! Attention!
47:35This is the command post
47:38of the 1st Plattdivision Berlin.
47:41The reported bombers
47:44from Braunschweig.
47:47It was a clear winter day,
47:50the sky was cloudless
47:53and you could see
47:56the air fortifications
47:59of the Americans
48:02closing up
48:05like a butterfly collection
48:08in the formations.
48:11It was a beautiful sight.
48:4211.03. Roland Freisler realized
48:45that there were still case files
48:48in the courtroom.
48:51He went to fetch them.
49:12Freisler was zealous to the end.
49:1511.08. A direct hit.
49:18Freisler's skull was fractured.
49:2920,000 people died
49:32when these bombs hailed down.
49:35Not one of them deserved to die
49:38He was one of those
49:41who, if he hadn't died,
49:44would have fought with Hitler to the end.
49:47Maybe he would have survived.
49:50It's possible.
49:53I can't imagine he would have tried
49:56to escape because it didn't work.
50:02The Forest Cemetery in Dahlem.
50:05Even the Justice Minister came to his funeral.
50:10Without a tombstone of his own,
50:13Roland Freisler was laid
50:16in his wife's family grave.
50:19After the war, she and the children
50:22dropped his name and to this day
50:25they wish not to be associated with him.
50:36Barely one of Hitler's bloodthirsty lawyers
50:39followed his fuhrer to the grave.
50:44They had little to fear,
50:47if anything at all.
51:06Of the 258 judges and public prosecutors
51:09in the People's Court,
51:1295 found re-employment
51:15in the justice system in West Germany.
51:21That's more than one in three.
51:35To be continued...
52:05Thank you for watching.