00:00Summer, 1944. The Eastern Front was collapsing.
00:2910,000 dead every day. In Berlin, the conspiracy. The plan? A military putsch. An attempt on
00:44Hitler's life. Murder of the tyrant. The outcome? Four dead, 12 critically injured. He, however,
00:58survived the bomb. And swore merciless revenge. September, 1944. The Wolf's Lair. A film
01:25was being shown about the work of the Nazi senior hanging judge. Freisler will deal with
01:33it, declared Hitler.
02:03He had total control over the scene. And the effect was
02:33that he didn't care, because he had all the power. The embodiment of evil. In a rather
02:49pure form. Because he could get away with it. Others maybe weren't allowed to pay the price.
03:01He was a careerist, and he would probably have become something under another political flag,
03:11because he had then completely devoted himself to power. He could settle down. He was not a man
03:18with his own clear principles. This man laid down the principles. The dictator wanted to be loved.
03:40Whoever rejected him was persecuted.
04:10War. Also against his own people, with 40,000 dead. These bloodthirsty lawyers were the merciless
04:40soldiers. He was the pitiless general.
05:10Sometimes, crying is a shame. What do you want to say with those tears in your eyes?
05:21I'm very touched, Mr. Professor.
05:24But you mean something. Do you mean that you would do something like that again, if life would lead you like that again?
05:33No.
05:35But there are cases where there is no longer an effective role.
05:44And then you have the impression of a possessed, possessed by power, a lustful person, you have to say.
05:52It must have meant a high sense of lust to see people trembling in fear and to condemn them to death.
06:05A dictatorial rule, violated by the willing executioners.
06:19August 1914. The fatherland was calling. Enthusiastically, people left for war. Among them, the 20-year-old law student, Freisler.
06:30On his matriculation certificate, it said, conduct and diligence, good.
06:35In Russian captivity, he got top marks for it. The Bolshevists made him camp commissar.
06:41On his return from Russian captivity, Freisler became a lawyer.
06:52A new Germany. Freisler didn't like it. In his eyes, democracy was decadent.
07:00He wanted a national revolution. And the crisis came.
07:09The Weimar Republic lost its republicans.
07:13Freisler had long been a member of the National Socialist Party, which valued conduct and diligence.
07:21And, now and then, legal counsel.
07:28Now it came to the trials.
07:31And it was our Roland Freisler. We called him the rumbling Roland.
07:36He was now regularly the judge of the court.
07:45Freisler was a man of his word.
07:50He was a man of his word, and he was the judge of the court.
07:54Freisler, we also called him the raging Roland,
07:58who regularly took over the defense of his S.A. Rabauken in court.
08:20He was not a bad lawyer.
08:23But when he betrayed his fellow citizens,
08:29that was something of a success.
08:35That was sustainable.
08:38He was a great man.
08:54He wanted to be Hitler's henchman, and not only in Kassel.
09:041933, the seizure of power.
09:10In the capital and in the provinces.
09:23They broke into the town hall and threw the flag of Hagenkreuz on it.
09:29He even wanted to occupy the building of the Supreme Court.
09:37He was a lawyer, and he wanted to show that there was another wind in the justice system.
09:53It would contradict the purpose of the national uprising
09:57if the government took its measures from case to case.
10:02The approval of the Reichstag for trade and development.
10:08The Reichstag reduced its own powers.
10:11Germany was getting into uniform.
10:14Her lawyers, too.
10:23The assassins are fighting here.
10:28The commission is striking too far.
10:33It marches all the way to the future.
10:39Men like Freisler were in demand now.
10:43Only one thing held him back, the taint of a Bolshevist past.
10:48He never became the Minister of Justice.
10:54He was only a State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice.
11:08I have seen our attempt succeed.
11:12When I see that you, as soldiers of National Socialism,
11:20and thus bearers of the new state,
11:23as those who want to manage the backbone of the state,
11:27your legal care,
11:29participate internally, joyfully.
11:33Lawful meant whatever was useful to the nation.
11:37The Reichstag burned.
11:40Was there still justice?
11:42There were still judges?
11:47Leipzig.
11:48The Reichstag fire trial.
11:50The Nazis' first show trial.
11:52But the evidence was thin.
11:54There were acquittals.
11:56Was Hitler's Germany still subject to the rule of law?
12:10I think it was 1934 when the Volksgerichtshof was established.
12:15Because Hitler's regular courts were too strict or too religious.
12:23That was the reason why the political issues were dealt with by the Volksgerichtshof.
12:40Socialists, Social Democrats.
12:44To Freisler, the herald of the new justice,
12:47these were the traitors to the state.
13:11...was good.
13:13National Socialism is the starting point,
13:17the content and the goal of National Socialist legal thinking.
13:22And if I, as one of your oldest comrades, say,
13:26through the relationship of the German people with you,
13:30for the first time in the history of the German people,
13:33the concept of love for the leader has become a legal concept.
13:40Love of the Führer.
13:42Those who loved him most dearly became his first victims.
13:49The storm troopers lost their leader.
14:10I have to say, in this hour of war,
14:13I am responsible for the fate of the German nation
14:17and therefore for the German people of the Upper Court.
14:22It was the chance to settle others' scores.
14:25The former Chancellor, Schleicher,
14:27was a stumbling block on the path to absolute power.
14:34They murdered on orders.
14:36For my mother, they certainly did not have the order.
14:39But since she was in the same room,
14:41they saw a great danger from it and immediately shot her
14:45because she was a witness.
14:47And because afterwards it should have been said
14:50that he had resisted.
14:52And in reality, they only asked,
14:54after they had made their entrance,
14:57are you General von Schleicher?
15:00And he said, yes, and then the shots fell.
15:06The custodian of justice hushed up the murder.
15:36Brute force brought society into line.
15:43He wanted people willing to take orders,
15:46just as much as he wanted Herrenmenschen.
15:55Teutonic cult and racial mania in one breath.
16:01Anyway, he was a man of his word.
16:06Anyone who didn't fit this picture had no right to live,
16:09said the regime.
16:13And so the mentally ill were vilified and later murdered by law.
16:36You have to work healthy, German compatriots.
16:39If we today artificially restore the great law
16:42of reading with human means,
16:45then we restore the reverence for the laws of the Creator.
16:51Law is law, what is written in the law book.
16:54If it says the cyclists are executed,
16:57then the judge says, yes, they are cyclists.
17:00This is a death sentence, this positivism,
17:03the belief in the law and the banality of the law
17:06was the main mistake of these people.
17:09But fear also plays a role.
17:12Fear was also felt by the victims.
17:17Tens of thousands of Germans left the country.
17:22Emigration, fleeing from legalized terror.
17:27The whole society is rotting.
17:29The poison is in the bloodstream.
17:32No one trusts each other anymore.
17:34And this was exactly in a state that,
17:37as the highest goal,
17:39promoted the community, the friendship of all Germans.
17:46The sunny side of the Third Reich.
17:51But behind the facade, denunciation and distrust.
17:55Meanwhile, Freisler went on a trip to further his education.
18:02He went to Moscow in 1938
18:06for the Turchachevsky trial.
18:12He was hospitalized during the trial of Vyshinsky.
18:20Moscow. Lessons with Stalin's hanging judge.
18:24Sit down, please.
18:49The former camp commissar understood the lesson.
18:54People like Himmler and so on.
18:57They said, this man is one hundred percent.
19:00You can trust him.
19:03And he said to me,
19:05an important man, be glad.
19:07These people with bad conscience
19:09are the only ones we are sure of.
19:13They can't go anywhere else.
19:19Summer 1939.
19:22Everything seemed normal.
19:33The Germans were still seemingly carefree and unsuspecting.
19:39But all the signs pointed to a storm.
19:43He thought the time was ripe.
19:45The people needed Lebenfront.
19:58September. Poland was invaded.
20:00International law broken.
20:04At home, jurisdiction appropriate for wartime,
20:07Freisler demanded that the courts be the panzer divisions of justice.
20:15The courts were not.
20:17The people were not.
20:19The people were not.
20:21The people were not.
20:23The people were not.
20:25The people were not.
20:27The people were not.
20:29The people were not.
20:31The people were not.
20:35I am a political soldier of my Führer Adolf Hitler.
20:39So this slogan,
20:41he used this word many times.
20:44For the fanatic, a table at a café
20:46was also part of the home front.
20:50I like bean coffee better.
20:53It's getting better.
20:55We'll soon have real coffee again.
20:59I have an idea.
21:01I still live on the railway.
21:03I'll tell you one Wehrmacht transport after the other.
21:06Recently I counted at least one in the morning.
21:09Stop!
21:10You've said too much.
21:12If the enemy hears what this man is blabbering,
21:15he can cause us serious damage.
21:18So don't blabber.
21:20Keep quiet.
21:22And warn everyone who still doesn't keep their mouth shut.
21:25Warn him.
21:27Anyone who disregarded the warning
21:31ended up here.
21:33The guillotine.
21:57We can't do anything about it.
21:59He said, I'm not to be pitied.
22:02You are to be pitied.
22:04I pray for you.
22:15After the victory in France,
22:17the dictator at the height of his power.
22:21Stop! Stop!
22:41The conspiracy was a very long and difficult story.
22:44It went wrong again and again.
22:46It had to be rebuilt.
22:48Or there was some great victory
22:50that you had to say to yourself,
22:53it's impossible to kill him now.
22:56You couldn't.
22:58After the victory in France
23:01was over in six weeks,
23:04you couldn't kill Adolf
23:06if people didn't understand.
23:08In the Mosaic Hall of the new Reich Chancellery,
23:11the solemn act of state
23:13for the deceased Reich Minister of Justice Dr. Gürtner took place.
23:16Freisler, the careerist.
23:19He would dearly have liked to be the next Justice Minister.
23:22That old Bolshevik?
23:24No, said Hitler.
23:31He needed this man to do the dirty work
23:34for the people's court.
23:38Someone had to be the bloodhound.
23:42He would become the bloodhound.
23:47He was capable of learning.
23:50But, of course,
23:52he was very iron-willed.
23:55According to the motto,
23:58everything that is not for us is against us.
24:02And that had to go.
24:05Go into protective custody,
24:08into prison,
24:10into a concentration camp.
24:13Nazi justice made people disappear
24:18merely on suspicion.
24:43This was the Heimtücke Act.
24:46In this Heimtücke Act,
24:48you could do anything you wanted.
24:51It was such a flexible rubber paragraph
24:54that anyone who was charged
24:57according to the Heimtücke Act
25:00was actually lost if the court wanted him.
25:07Lost like the Jews,
25:09long since robbed of their rights.
25:12Anyone who stayed behind lived dangerously,
25:15without legal rights.
25:27Spring 1942.
25:32A villa on the Wannsee in Berlin.
25:35A ritual for the technocrats of the final solution.
25:43Among them, Roland Freisler, the lawyer,
25:46the anti-Semite, the hanging judge.
25:53Murder by law.
25:56The murder of justice.
25:59The murder of compassion.
26:12This is, of course,
26:15a view of the racial conditions
26:18that cannot bring morality,
26:21ethics or peace.
26:24If you say the niggers are half-open,
26:27the Jews must be killed,
26:30the Slavs are subhuman,
26:33it's all so wrong in itself
26:36that no justice can be built on it.
26:39But injustice certainly could.
26:41It was a dangerous game.
26:43The nation had long since lost its right to speak out.
26:46Now its ears were being blocked too.
27:12Hand on heart.
27:15Weren't you already poisoned by this poison?
27:20We heard through BBC London and Luxembourg,
27:23but we paid attention
27:26that the windows and doors were closed,
27:29and then we heard,
27:32as long as they were disturbed.
27:35BBC was often disturbed by Nazis.
27:38There was a death sentence
27:41and at least a prison sentence.
27:45Anyone brought before Freisler in this courtroom
27:48was virtually defenseless.
27:51We will finish with you.
27:54You are not called upon
27:57to act like a murderer.
28:00You are only called upon
28:03to speak out against Freisler
28:06against the German Reich,
28:09against our German people.
28:12Then the chairman said,
28:15you don't have to laugh like that.
28:18If we sentence you to death,
28:21you will be executed at 3 p.m.
28:24That's a serious matter.
28:27You heard what the prosecutor said.
28:30Then he goes out of the courtroom,
28:33and we have to imagine
28:36that we have opened a case today.
28:39Anyone who didn't confess was tortured.
28:45Intensive interrogation
28:48was what the Gestapo called it.
28:51I had 77 interrogations,
28:54of which only two without beating.
28:58I got a report from my husband.
29:01He was totally bloody inside.
29:07I couldn't imagine
29:10what they did to others.
29:13I couldn't imagine
29:16what they did to others.
29:22But that was the face of Nazi justice.
29:26Only those who betrayed their principles
29:29or pretended to be stupid
29:32could hope for mercy.
29:35I would like to say
29:38that I personally
29:41had no criminal thoughts.
29:44I only had one thought in my work,
29:47which was to bring the news
29:50that the leadership and the troops needed.
29:54I didn't know that before.
29:57A friend of ours brought it to me.
30:04He did it very cleverly.
30:07I, a poor Aryan girl,
30:10was seduced by an evil Jew.
30:13And on this primitive tour
30:16they are addressed.
30:19In the name of the German people,
30:22the fact that Wilhelm Küba
30:25deliberately supports the traitors
30:28cannot be confirmed.
30:31Not to mention the fact
30:34that he did not report
30:37any distorting statements in the Wehrmacht.
30:40He is therefore acquitted of these allegations.
30:43But an acquittal did not always mean freedom.
30:46And while he read out my sentence,
30:49someone came from behind
30:52and I couldn't see who it was.
30:55I could only see that he was a civilian
30:58and whispered in my ear,
31:01it doesn't matter what you get here
31:04and how much you get here,
31:07we'll take you to the concentration camp.
31:10Stalingrad.
31:13The beginning of the end.
31:40Only a few people put up any opposition.
31:43Munich students called for resistance
31:46in leaflets which concealed nothing.
32:11Lone heroes and a German porter.
32:15The White Rose was unmasked.
32:33Nazi sympathisers among their fellow students
32:36helped in the arrests.
32:41A case for Freisler,
32:44the hanging judge on an official journey.
33:05The Palace of Justice, Munich.
33:08The people's highest judge knew what was expected of him.
33:11He was to make short work of them.
33:14A one-day trial with three death penalties.
33:38He handed me a book and said,
33:41Mr President, I have one with me.
33:44Then Freisler took the book
33:47and threw it from the judge's table
33:50towards the lawyers,
33:53there was a smooth floor like here,
33:56and he slid it like this
33:59and then gave the content, triumphantly,
34:02the sentence, we don't need a law here.
34:05Munich, Stadelheim prison.
34:08The sentences against Hans and Sophie Scholl and a friend
34:11were carried out that very day.
34:30What was permitted and what was forbidden,
34:33the propaganda told you.
34:55Prison, really?
34:58The final count for 1944,
35:01300 death sentences.
35:04More than six per day.
35:31June 1944, invasion.
35:34The regime's days were numbered.
35:41In the east, the Central Army Division was collapsing.
35:44The Germans were on the move.
35:47The Germans were on the move.
35:50The Germans were on the move.
35:53The Germans were on the move.
35:56The Germans were on the move.
35:59The division was collapsing.
36:02The remnants of it were driven through Moscow.
36:09What was the German resistance doing?
36:12Brave men desperately sought contact.
36:17But the western powers refused to cooperate.
36:20They wanted unconditional surrender.
36:23Still, something had to be done.
36:53It was an act of cowardice of the Germans,
36:56who had simply gotten too involved with National Socialism.
36:59It was a very daring thing.
37:24The idea, the Home Guard was to assume power in Germany
37:27and try to end the war.
37:30The precondition, the death of the tyrant.
37:54There is a group of men who deal with the idea
37:57and who will one day win the overthrow.
38:03Murder the head of state?
38:06Who dared do that?
38:09None of the conspirators had access to him.
38:16Only when Count Stauffenberg was transferred
38:19to the Fuhrer's headquarters was there a chance.
38:39July 20th, 1944, 12.30,
38:43Stauffenberg with Hitler.
38:47The course of world history depended on the position of a briefcase.
39:00It was the last chance.
39:17The military putsch collapsed within hours.
39:20The conspirators had kept lists of names
39:23so the Gestapo had an easy time of it.
39:26For the hanging judge, it was his finest hour.
39:34It started in early August in the Supreme Court in Berlin.
39:47Two weeks after the crime, the People's Court
39:50tried against eight of the traitors
39:53who were involved in the crime of July 20th.
39:56Erwin von Witzleben,
39:59Erich Höppner,
40:02Friedrich Karl Klausink.
40:05The newsreel featuring the trial was never shown in the cinema.
40:08The propaganda ministry feared unwelcome discussion
40:11about Freisler's ranting during the proceedings.
40:16Peter Graf Jorg von Wartenburg,
40:19Robert Bernardis.
40:22Even his colleagues were perturbed.
40:46The accused Stief,
40:49in his statement about the production of explosives.
41:16This is humanity.
41:19You are... and what do I know.
41:22Then these tyrants came.
41:25I don't want to have anything to do with them.
41:46I am young, I am lost.
41:49My accomplices,
41:52Graf von Stauffenberg
41:55have reported this.
41:58They didn't run away.
42:01No, no.
42:04Freisler wanted to rob the defendants of their dignity,
42:07but he didn't succeed.
42:10Apparently, Freisler always bullied Schurke Schulenburg.
42:13But one day,
42:16he disguised himself
42:19and said, Graf Schulenburg,
42:22to which Fritzi had turned away,
42:25and said, Schurke Schulenburg, please.
42:30The hanging judge wanted them humiliated.
42:33General Höppner in a cardigan
42:36and without his dentures.
42:43You have done the right thing.
42:46Evil is a matter of intellect.
42:52Spiderman is a matter of character.
42:59You dirty old man, stop fumbling with your trousers,
43:02bellowed Freisler at Field Marshal Witzleben,
43:05whose braces had been taken away.
43:09Yet not one of the main conspirators
43:12showed the remorse demanded of them.
43:38I only hope that someone else
43:41will seduce them in a more favorable moment.
43:44Weren't you just imprisoned in Westpreußen?
43:47Yes, I was.
43:50But I think it was back and forth
43:53that you put the National Socialism at risk.
43:59Murder?
44:02You are
44:05a scoundrel.
44:08Get out of here.
44:13Yes or no, get out of here.
44:16Mr. President, I...
44:19Yes or no, give a clear answer.
44:23No.
44:24No, you can't get out of here
44:27because you are just a heap of misery.
44:32The spectators at the gruesome tribunal
44:35consisted almost exclusively
44:38of loyal servants of the regime.
44:41The victims' relatives were locked out.
45:01I heard the voice of Freisler
45:04through the doors.
45:07Today I no longer know
45:10what I imagined.
45:13I could only harm my husband
45:16by appearing there
45:19because he had to fear
45:22what would happen to her
45:25if she appeared here in the lion's den.
45:28It was unbearable.
45:31I still can't really speak
45:34about it today.
45:43The President of the People's Court,
45:46Dr. Roland Freisler, announces the verdict.
45:49The defendants are sentenced
45:52to death by hanging.
45:55The verdict was carried out
45:58two hours after the sentence.
46:01We found out outside
46:04that they had all been sent away
46:07for the execution.
46:10In the afternoon I went out
46:13to Plötzensee
46:16and asked the guard at the gate
46:19what had happened to the people
46:22who had come this afternoon
46:25between three and four.
46:28No one lived there anymore.
46:40They should be strung up
46:43like animals for slaughter.
46:46That was the tyrant's sentence.
46:49It was almost like a liberation.
46:52I had the feeling
46:55that he had escaped
46:58the terrible pressure
47:01and the horrors
47:04of the Gestapo.
47:07He had escaped
47:10the horrors
47:13of the Gestapo.
47:16He had escaped
47:19and was now with God.
47:32Attention! Attention!
47:35This is the command post
47:38of the 1st Plattdivision Berlin.
47:41The reported bombers
47:44from Braunschweig.
47:47It was a clear winter day,
47:50the sky was cloudless
47:53and you could see
47:56the air fortifications
47:59of the Americans
48:02closing up
48:05like a butterfly collection
48:08in the formations.
48:11It was a beautiful sight.
48:4211.03. Roland Freisler realized
48:45that there were still case files
48:48in the courtroom.
48:51He went to fetch them.
49:12Freisler was zealous to the end.
49:1511.08. A direct hit.
49:18Freisler's skull was fractured.
49:2920,000 people died
49:32when these bombs hailed down.
49:35Not one of them deserved to die
49:38He was one of those
49:41who, if he hadn't died,
49:44would have fought with Hitler to the end.
49:47Maybe he would have survived.
49:50It's possible.
49:53I can't imagine he would have tried
49:56to escape because it didn't work.
50:02The Forest Cemetery in Dahlem.
50:05Even the Justice Minister came to his funeral.
50:10Without a tombstone of his own,
50:13Roland Freisler was laid
50:16in his wife's family grave.
50:19After the war, she and the children
50:22dropped his name and to this day
50:25they wish not to be associated with him.
50:36Barely one of Hitler's bloodthirsty lawyers
50:39followed his fuhrer to the grave.
50:44They had little to fear,
50:47if anything at all.
51:06Of the 258 judges and public prosecutors
51:09in the People's Court,
51:1295 found re-employment
51:15in the justice system in West Germany.
51:21That's more than one in three.
51:35To be continued...
52:05Thank you for watching.
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