Freisler Was Brought in to Provide Legal Cover

Few are aware of the fact that according to the laws of the Third Reich at that time, the Holocaust (as any other homicide) was a capital offence punishable by death. Adolf Hitler could have made it legal by issuing a written order (he did for the previous serial mass murder – Aktion T4) … but he didn’t.

So, Reinhard Heydrich had no other choice but to bring in (and to the Wannsee) someone from the Ministry of Justice (and from the courts) who would provide legal cover to the totally illegal (and thus totally criminal) “Holocaust project”.

And Roland Freisler was a perfect man for the job. He was an Alter K;mpfer (Old Fighter) as he joined NSDAP years before it came to power – in 1925 (allegedly switching from Bolshevism – not an uncommon thing in the 1920s).

He immediately gained a position of authority within the Party by using his legal training (he got his Doctorate in Law in 1922) to defend Party members and SA men who were regularly facing prosecutions for acts of political violence.

Soon he switched from practicing law to politics (happens all the time everywhere) and became the Deputy Gauleiter in Gau Hessen-Nassau Nord. In 1930, he was elected to the Hesse-Nassau provincial Landtag and in 1932 to Prussian Landtag. After the November 1933 German parliamentary election, he was elected as a deputy of the Reichstag, retaining his seat until his death.

In 1931, he made a very smart move that ultimately made him a stellar career in Nazi Germany (despite his allegedly Bolshevist past). He joined the Association of National Socialist German Legal Professionals, founded by Hans Frank – personal lawyer of Adolf Hitler and lawyer of NSDAP.

In February 1933, after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor, Freisler was appointed Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Justice. He was placed in charge of the personnel office and – being a fervent and committed anti-Semite – used his authority to force out Jewish members of the staff.

In June, he was promoted to State Secretary in the Ministry. On July 31, Prussian Minister president Hermann G;ring appointed him to the recently reconstituted Prussian State Council.

When the Prussian Ministry of Justice was merged with the Reich Ministry of Justice on April 1, 1935, Freisler became the State Secretary (rank second only to the Minister), where he served at the time of Wannsee Conference (hence the reason for inviting him).

In 1941, in a discussion at the “F;hrer Headquarters” about whom to appoint to replace Franz G;rtner, the Reich Justice Minister, who had died, Goebbels suggested Roland Freisler as an option; Hitler’s reply, referring to Freisler’s alleged “Red” past, was: “That old Bolshevik? No!”

Freisler was a committed Nazi ideologist and used his legal skills to put his ideology into enacting and enforcing German laws. He strongly advocated the creation of laws to punish Rassenschande (“race defilement”, the Nazi term for sexual relations between “Aryans” and “inferior races”), to be classed as “racial treason”. Freisler used racist laws in the United States (“Jim Crow”) as a model for anti-Jewish legislation in Germany.

In 1939, Freisler introduced the concept of ‘precocious juvenile criminal’ in the “Juvenile Felons Decree”. This provided the legal basis for imposing the death penalty and penitentiary terms on juveniles for the first time in German history.

On July 8 1940, the Justice Ministry received a written complaint from a senior local court judge protesting against the euthanasia killings of physically or mentally disabled individuals that had claimed his wards.

Freisler met with him and explained that the ministry was establishing orderly procedures for the program with “expert committees” and “grievance councils”, but he did not dispute the legality of the killings (he apparently was not aware that they were made legal by Hitler’s written order), arguing that the Nazi state had brought about a new concept of law.

This event made him a perfect candidate to provide a legal cover for the “Holocaust Project”. On 20 January 1942, Freisler, representing his boss – acting Reichsminister of Justice Franz Schlegelberger, attended the Wannsee Conference.

The official Wannsee Protocol does not contain any comments by Freisler. Most likely, they weren’t any – discussion of legal cover for the “Holocaust Project” were almost certainly conducted in private between him and Heydrich.

On the morning of February 3, 1945, Freisler was conducting a Saturday session of the much-feared People’s Court (he served as its President since August 20, 1942) when United States Army Air Force bombers attacked Berlin.

Hearing the air raid sirens, Freisler hastily adjourned the court and ordered that the prisoners be taken to an air raid shelter, but he stayed behind to gather files before leaving. A bomb struck the court building at 11:08,[6] causing a partial internal collapse, and a masonry column came crashing down on Freisler, crushing and killing him instantly.