Hans Frank was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, on May 23, 1900. At age 17
he joined the German army and fought in World War I. After the war he
got involved in the "freikorps" movement, extreme right-wing
paramilitary units that engaged in intimidation, extortion, street
brawls and political murders (many of these groups were later absorbed
into the SS when the Nazis came to power).
Frank joined the Nazi party and took part in the abortive "Beer Hall
Putsch" of 1923, when Adolf Hitler and a
small band of Nazi followers attempted, unsuccessfully, to overthrow
the Bavarian government. Frank later became a lawyer and a legal
advisor to both Hitler and the Nazi party. In 1930 he was elected to
the German parliament (Reichstag). Upon Hitler's ascension to German
Chancellor in 1933, Frank was appointed as Justice Minister in Bavaria.
In 1934, when Hitler moved against Ernst Röhm
and the "brownshirts" of the SA, whom he feared were planning to seize
power from him, Frank apparently objected to the summary executions of
many of the SA's leaders, but his objections were ignored and the
executions were carried out. As a result, Frank lost much of what
influence he had in the party organization.
When World War II broke out Frank was appointed Governor General of
Poland, and under his administration the infamous death camps were
utilized as part of the Nazis' "Final Solution" program of
exterminating European Jews, which resulted in the death of millions of
Jews, Gypsies and other "undesirables". Also under his administration,
the SS and Gestapo were known to have committed horrific atrocities
against Polish civilians whom they suspected of being involved with the
Polish resistance, including mass rapes, liquidation of entire
villages, massacres of women and children and wholesale deportations to
concentration camps (at his trial after the war Frank denied any and
all knowledge of those incidents and placed the blame on
Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS).
Frank was captured by Allied forces in May of 1945 and placed on trial
with other high Nazi officials at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal,
charged with, among other things, crimes against humanity. He was found
guilty and sentenced to death. Before the sentence was carried out he
converted to Roman Catholicism, and finally admitted his involvement in
the carrying out of the Holocaust, among other things, and asked to be
forgiven. He was hanged on October 1, 1946.
