On
this date, November 22, 1946, the Reich Minister of Justice, Otto Georg
Thierack, committed suicide by poisoning himself. I will post information about
this Nazi Scarface Judge from Wikipedia and other links.
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| Otto Georg Thierack in 1940 |
Reich
Minister of Justice
|
|
In
office
20 August 1942 – 30 April 1945 |
|
President
|
Adolf Hitler
|
Chancellor
|
Adolf Hitler (Führer)
|
Preceded by
|
Franz Schlegelberger
|
Succeeded by
|
none
|
Personal
details
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|
Born
|
19 April 1889
Wurzen, Saxony, German Empire |
Died
|
22 November 1946 (aged 57)
Sennelager, Paderborn, Germany |
Nationality
|
German
|
Political party
|
Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1932
|
Otto Georg Thierack (19 April 1889 – 22 November 1946) was a Nazi jurist
and politician.
Early
life and career
Thierack
was born in Wurzen in Saxony. He took part in the First World War from 1914 to
1918 as a volunteer, reaching the rank of lieutenant. He suffered a face injury
and was decorated with the Iron Cross, second class. After the war ended, he
resumed his interrupted law studies and ended them in 1920 with his Assessor
(junior lawyer) examination. In the same year, he was hired as a court Assessor
in Saxony.
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A meeting of the four Nazis who imposed Nazi
ideology on the legal system of Germany. From left to right: Roland Freisler, Franz Schlegelberger, Otto Georg Thierack, and Curt
Rothenberger.
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Joining
of the Nazi party
On
1 August 1932, Thierack joined the Nazi Party. After the Nazis seized power in
1933, he managed within a very short time to rise high in the ranks from a
prosecutor to President of the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof).
The groundwork on which this rise was built was not merely that Thierack had
been a Nazi Party member, but rather also that he had been leader of the
National Socialist jurists' organization, the so-called Rechtswahrerbund.
Nazification
efforts as Justice Minister of Saxony
On
12 May 1933, having been appointed Saxony's justice minister, it was Thierack's
job to "Nazify" justice, which was a part of the Nazis' Gleichschaltung that he had to put into
practice in Saxony. After going through several mid-level professional posts,
he became Vice President of the Reich Court in 1935 and in 1936 President of
the Volksgerichtshof, which had been newly founded in 1934. He held this
job, interrupted as it was by two stints in the armed forces, until 1942, when
he was succeeded in the position by Roland Freisler.
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| Roland Freisler shakes hands with Otto Georg Thierack |
Persecution
and debasement of law as Reich Minister of Justice
On
20 August 1942, Thierack assumed the office of Reich Minister of Justice. He
introduced the monthly Richterbriefe in October 1942, in which were
presented model – from the Nazi leaders' standpoint – decisions, with names
left out, upon which German jurisprudence was to be based. He also introduced
the so-called Vorschauen and Nachschauen ("previews"
and "inspections"). After this, the higher state court presidents, in
proceedings of public interest, had at least every fortnight to discuss with
the public prosecutor's office and the State Court president – who had to pass
this on the responsible criminal courts – how a case was to be judged before
the court's decision.
Thierack
not only made penal prosecution of all unpopular persons and groups harsher.
"Antisocial" convicts on the whole were much more often turned over
to the SS.
This usually meant Jews, Poles, Russians, and Gypsies. Soon afterwards, though,
he utterly forwent any pretense of legality and simply began handing these
people over to the SS. Thierack came to an understanding with Heinrich Himmler that certain categories of prisoners were to be, to use their
words, "annihilated through work". Ever since coming to office as
Reich Minister of Justice in August 1942, Thierack had seen to it that the
lengthy paperwork involved in clemency proceedings for those sentenced to death
was greatly shortened.
At
Thierack's instigation, the execution shed at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin was outfitted with
eight iron hooks in December 1942 so that several people could be put to death
at once, by hanging (there had already been a guillotine there for quite a
while). At the mass executions beginning on 7 September 1943, it also happened
that some prisoners were hanged "by mistake". Thierack simply covered
up these mistakes and demanded that the hangings continue.
Suicide
after war
After
the Allies arrested him, Thierack committed suicide in Sennelager, Paderborn,
by poisoning before he could be brought before the court at the Nuremberg Judges' Trial.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.desertwar.net/otto-georg-thierack.html
Martin Broszat writes Thierack took office had “initiated the
final phase of the extreme selloff of justice”. Sarah Schadler perspective this
judgment and question whether Thierack had delivered actually generous
competencies. He made Himmler promises that he does – as in the case of the
controversial approval of Gestapo instead
Prosecutor – not always cheated on the competencies of the To preserve
Justice. However Thierack was not fundamentally in opposition to the political
police, but he was himself an advocate draconian severity, in the prosecution
“racially inferior groups” and he was not interested in the “delivery of social
misfits to the police,” he voluntarily gave up skills from.
Thierack was a ruthless “arch-careerist”, “power hungry”,
“ambitious” and “scheming” and is described by staff as “hardworking and
robust,” “autocratic” and “autocratic”. Thierack of Hitler’s political line was
closer than its predecessor and was further nominated in the Political
Testament of Adolf Hitler as Minister of
Justice.
Thierack was a “fanatical Nazi”, took the steering instruments
such as judges letters Urteilsvor and looking up, reporting and control travels
influence on the case, eroded the independence of judges and reduced to a
“referral freedom”. During his tenure, the number of death sentences rose, less
than three percent of e clemency were endorsed by him. For the tightening of
the penal system and the handling of night-and-dagger methods Thierack was
responsible. In January 1943, Rudolf Hoess led him through the main camp of Auschwitz.
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