Hans Frank
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| “ | Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feelings of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible. | „ |
| ~ Hans Frank |
Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.
Frank was an early member of the German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). He took part in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, and later became Adolf Hitler's personal legal adviser as well as the lawyer of the NSDAP. In June 1933, he was named as a Reichsleiter (Reich Leader) of the party. In December 1934, Frank joined the Hitler Cabinet as a Reichsminister without portfolio.
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Frank was appointed Governor-General of the occupied Polish territories. During his tenure, he instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population and became directly involved in the mass murder of Jews. He engaged in the use of forced labour and oversaw four of the extermination camps. Frank remained head of the General Government until its collapse in early 1945.
After the war, Frank was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials. He was sentenced to death and executed by hanging in October 1946.
Biography edit
Frank, the middle child of three, was born in Karlsruhe to Karl, a lawyer, and his wife, Magdalena (née Buchmaier), a daughter of a prosperous baker. He graduated from high school at Maximilians gymnasium in Munich
Frank fought in World War I, studied economics and jurisprudence, and in 1921 joined the German Workers’ Party (which became the Nazi Party). Although the DAP evolved quite soon into NSDAP (Nazi Party), Frank waited until September 1923 to become a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), where he would eventually attain the rank of SA-Obergruppenführer in November 1937.
In October 1923, he officially joined the NSDAP. In November of the same year, Frank took part in the "Beer Hall Putsch", the failed coup attempt intended to parallel Benito Mussolini's March on Rome. In the aftermath of the attempted putsch, Frank fled to Austria, returning in Munich only in 1924, after the pending legal proceedings were stayed.
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Frank was appointed governor-general, becoming the supreme chief of occupied Poland’s civil administration. An enthusiastic proponent of Nazi racist ideology, Frank ordered the execution of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the wholesale confiscation of Polish property, the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Polish workers who were shipped to Germany, and the herding of most of Poland’s Jews into ghettos as a prelude to their extermination.
Frank participated in the growth of the politics leading to genocide in Poland. Under his guidance mass murder became a deliberate policy.
The General Government was the location of four out of six extermination camps, namely: Bełżec, Treblinka, Majdanek and Sobibór; Chełmno and Auschwitz Birkenau fell just outside the borders of the General Government.
Frank later claimed that the Holocaust was entirely controlled by Heinrich Himmler and the Schutzstaffel, and he - Frank - was unaware of the extermination camps in the General Government until early 1944, a claim found to be untrue by the Nuremberg tribunal.
During his testimony at Nuremberg, Frank claimed he submitted resignation requests to Hitler on 14 occasions, but Hitler would not allow him to resign. Frank fled the General Government in January 1945, as the Soviet Army advanced.
Frank was captured by U.S. Army troops on May 4, 1945, and was indicted for trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nüremberg. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and on Oct. 1, 1946, was sentenced to hang.