Helmut Ortner

Hitler's Executioner

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The biography of the infamous judge who oversaw Nazi justice for the Third Reich as president of the “People’s Court.”
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. He found them guilty of treason and 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 more commonly as Operation Valkyrie. Many of the ringleaders were tried by Freisler in the “People’s Court.” Nearly all of those found guilty were sentenced to death by hanging, the sentences being carried out within two hours of the verdicts being passed.
Roland Freisler’s mastery of legal texts and dramatic courtroom verbal dexterity made him the most feared judge in the Third Reich. In this in-depth examination, Helmut Ortner not only investigates the development and judgments of the Nazi tribunal, but the career of Freisler, a man who was killed in February 1945 during an Allied air raid.
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356 printed pages
Original publication
2018
Publication year
2018
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Quotes

  • besserebrennikhas quoted5 years ago
    She has completely lost her sense of time when the president and the associate judges re-enter the courtroom to pronounce sentence. Once again, Freisler’s piercing voice rings out:

    ‘Defendant Sensfuss – stand!’

    Not guilty!

    ‘Defendant Törber – stand!’

    Not guilty!

    Margot sees a glimmer of hope. If the other two were acquitted, I might get away with only a prison sentence …

    ‘Defendant von Schade – stand!’

    Margot’s gaze is fixed straight ahead.
  • besserebrennikhas quoted5 years ago
    The court retires to consider its verdict. But is that verdict not a foregone conclusion? Margot von Schade sits depressed and uneasy on her chair. Time appears to stand still. She feels as if she were in a vacuum.
  • besserebrennikhas quoted5 years ago
    Roland Freisler was no demon from the pit of hell; he was a typical representative of the German people. His career was a German career. He was the merciless agent of a merciless judiciary, a consistent accomplice to a murderous system, an exemplary murderer in judge’s robes – and it was the Germans who made his deeds, his influence and his career possible.

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