Helmut Ortner: Hitler's Executioner

by Ortner, Helmut

ISBN: 9781473889392

Published: 2018-10-19

Though little known, the name of the judge Roland Freisler is inextricably linked to the judiciary in Nazi Germany. As well as serving as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice, he was the notorious president of the 'People's Court', a man directly responsible for more than 2,200 death sentences; with almost no exceptions, cases in the 'People's Court' had predetermined guilty verdicts. It was Freisler, for example, who tried three activists of the White Rose resistance movement in February 1943\. Along with Christoph Probst, Sophie and Hans Scholl were arrested for their part in an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign which called for active opposition against the Nazi regime. Found guilty of treason, Freisler sentenced the trio to death by beheading; a sentence carried out the same day by guillotine. In August 1944, Freisler played a central role in the show trials that followed the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 20 July that year - a plot known...