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Post by pieter on Oct 14, 2022 18:21:39 GMT -7
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 (German: Generalgouvernement, Polish: Generalne Gubernatorstwo) in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Frank was an early member of the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). He took part in the failed Beer Hall Putsch (8–9 November 1923), also called Hitlerputsch or Bierkeller-Putsch (in German), 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.
Hans Frank in SA uniform in 1933
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 Polish 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; Bełżec, Treblinka, Majdanek and Sobibór. Frank remained head of the General Government until its collapse in early 1945. During that time, over 4 million people were murdered under his jurisdiction.
Hans Frank playing chess
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. For more information read the links below: English: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Frank#Death_campsPolish: pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_FrankGerman: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_FrankDanish: da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_FrankUkrainian: uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81_%D0%A4%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BARussian: ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BA,_%D0%93%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81 Hebrew: he.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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Post by pieter on Oct 14, 2022 18:53:13 GMT -7
The son of Hans Frank, Niklas Frank, whom loathes his father, but still is a German Nationalist/Chauvinist in his own words.
Niklas Frank has an extreme view about Germans 'as people without empathy'.
As a German he doesn't trust Germans and warned foreigners not to trust Germans.
Interesting how Niklas Frank speaks about Polish people
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Post by pieter on Oct 15, 2022 9:05:58 GMT -7
Hans Frank  Hans Frank, Head of the General Government in occupied PolandIn September 1939, Frank was assigned as Chief of Administration to Gerd von Rundstedt in the German military administration in occupied Poland. Beginning 26 October 1939, following the completion of the invasion of Poland, Frank served as Governor-General of the occupied Polish territories, overseeing the General Government, the area of Poland not directly incorporated into Germany (roughly 90,000 km2 out of the 187,000 km2 Germany had gained).
Frank oversaw the segregation of the Jews into ghettos. From the outset, Jews were discriminated against savagely and rations given to them were slender. He oversaw the enormous Warsaw ghetto, and the use of Polish civilians as forced labour. In 1942, he lost his positions of authority outside the General Government after annoying Hitler with a series of speeches in Berlin, Vienna, Heidelberg, and Munich and also as part of a power struggle with Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the State Secretary for Security – head of the SS and the police in the General Government. Krüger himself was ultimately replaced by Wilhelm Koppe.
Gauleiter Hans Frank in occupied Krakow greets the leaders of German Sonderdienst in April 1941 at Wawel.
On 16 December 1941, Frank spelled out to his senior officials the approaching annihilation of the Jews:
“A great Jewish migration will begin in any case. But what should we do with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled in Ostland, in villages? We were told in Berlin, 'Why all this bother? We can do nothing with them either in Ostland or in the Reichskommissariat. So liquidate them yourselves.' 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.”
An assassination attempt by the Polish Secret State (Polskie Państwo Podziemne) on 29/30 January 1944 (the night preceding the 11th anniversary of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany) in Szarów near Kraków failed. A special train with Frank travelling to Lviv was derailed after an explosive device discharged but no one was killed. Around 100 Polish hostages from Montelupich prison were executed as a punishment for the act. Hans Frank with the Chairman of the Highlanders Committee Wacław Krzeptowski
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Post by pieter on Oct 15, 2022 17:53:03 GMT -7
The son of Otto Wachter Otto Wächter Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter (8 July 1901, Vienna, Austria-Hungary – 14 July 1949, Rome, Italy) was an Austrian lawyer, Nazi politician and a high-ranking member of the SS, a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party ( NSDAP). His rank within the SS was SS-Gruppenführer. During the occupation of Poland in World War II, he was the Governor of the district of Kraków in the General Government and then of the District of Galicia (now mainly in Ukraine). Later, in 1944, he was appointed as head of the German Military Administration in the (Italian Fascist) puppet state of the Republic of Salò in Italy of Benito Mussolini (29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945). During the last two months of the war, he was responsible for the non-German forces at the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt , RSHA) in Berlin.
In 1940, 68,000 Jews were expelled from Kraków and in 1941 the Kraków Ghetto was created for the remaining 15,000 Jews by his decrees. On 28 September 1946, the Polish government requested the Military Governor of the United States Zone that Wächter be delivered to Poland for trial for "mass murder, shooting and executions. Under his command of District Galicia more than one hundred thousand Polish citizens lost their lives."
He managed to evade the Allied authorities for 4 years. In 1949, Wächter was given refuge by anti-communist Austrian bishop Alois Hudal in the Vatican where he died the same year, aged 48, reportedly from kidney disease. Austrian bishop Alois Hudal helped to rescue and give Otto Wächter refuge in the Vatican where Wächter died from kidney diseaseEarly life and Nazi activist Otto Gustav von Wächter was the third child and only son of Martha (née Pfob), daughter of the owner of the Graben Hotel in the centre of Vienna. His father, Joseph Baron von Wächter, was born in northern Bohemia and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In the last year of the First World War, Joseph Freiherr von Wächter was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Maria Theresa, which earned him the title of Freiherr (Baron). In 1922, after the First Austrian Republic was established, he was twice nominated as Minister of Defence in the Cabinet of Monsignor Dr Ignaz Seipel.
Otto Wächter spent his first years in Vienna before the family moved to Trieste (then part of Austria-Hungary) in 1908. For the duration of World War I, he lived in southern Bohemia, studying and taking his A-levels in 1919 in České Budějovice, where everyday life was dominated by the national differences between Germans and Czechs.
The family moved to Vienna, where Wächter studied law and joined national and sporting organizations. In April 1923, he joined the SA (Brownshirts) and became Austrian Champion in M8+ (eight-man rowing team). He received his doctorate in 1924 and in 1929 began practicing as a lawyer. His clients included indicted members of the Nazi Party, which he joined on 24 October 1930 (party No: 301093). On 11 September 1932, Wächter married Charlotte Bleckmann (born 20 October 1908), daughter of a Styrian steel magnate.
Wächter continued to work for the Nazi Party in Vienna as organizer and defender of accused Nazis in court and played a leading role in the organization of the failed July Putsch of 25 July 1934, which eventually led to the assassination of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. After the failed coup, Wächter fled to Nazi Germany. He entered the SS on 1 January 1932, (SS No: 235368) and completed his German military service in Freising, Bavaria. In 1935, his Austrian citizenship was denied and German citizenship conferred upon him while he completed his academic training and education as a lawyer in Germany. In 1937, he started working in the relief organization of Austrian NS-refugees in Berlin.State Secretary in the Nazi government in ViennaThe day after the Anschluss, (annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany) on 12 March 1938, Wächter returned to Vienna, where he took on the post of state commissar in the "Liquidation Ministry" under the Nazi governor of Austria, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, from 24 May 1938 to 30 April 1939. The government body he headed known as the "Wächter-Kommission", and responsible for the dismissal and/or compulsory retirement of all Austrian officials who did not conform with the Nazi regime. Because the former Austrian bureaucracy was strictly antisemitic, only a small fraction of the officials were actually dismissed.Governor of Kraków, Poland Following the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Germans established a state known as the General Government which was ruled over by Hans Frank. Until 1940, his deputy was Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who took Wächter with him to the General Government, where he was appointed as Governor of the administrative district of Kraków. Wächter chose the two crowns of Galicia in the coat-of-arms issued for the nobility of his father. As Governor of Kraków, he was under the direct and local supervision of Frank and had to face the fanatical actions of the local SS and police forces.
The arrest on 6 November 1939 of the entire staff of professors and academics of the Jagiellonian University and other academic institutions and their subsequent deportation to Sachsenhausen concentration camp called Sonderaktion Krakau ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderaktion_Krakau ) resulted in widespread condemnation worldwide. Wächter publicly criticised the action which took place without his knowledge and reportedly tried to free the academics.
In his capacity as Governor, an execution warrant for 52 Poles in Bochnia was issued 18 December 1939 under Wächter's signature, as reprisal for killing two Viennese police officers.
Likewise in December 1940, a decree organizing the expulsion of the city's 68,000 Jews also appeared under his name as did a further decree ordering the remaining 15,000 Jews to move into the newly created Kraków Ghetto ("Jewish Residence Zone") issued on 3 March 1941.
Wächter, unlike his wife who was often in the company of the Franks, tried to keep his distance from them. The family lived in a pseudo-Romanesque villa in Przegorzaly on a steep slope above the Vistula outside Kraków, which belonged to Professor Szyszko-Bohusz, head of the restoration measures of the Royal Wawel. The atmosphere of the confiscated building did not meet with the approval of Wächter's wife, so she built a house which she called “Wartenberg Castle”. Frustrated with the severe limitations of his role, Wächter was about to resign from his office in Kraków, when he received a new posting in Galicia.
Due to the "Special action Krakow", he was indicted by exiled Poles in New York in 1942.Governor of Galicia, General Government Hans Frank with districts administrators in 1942 from left: Ernst Kundt, Ludwig Fischer, Hans Frank, Otto Wächter, Ernst Zörner, Richard Wendler.Following Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Soviet-occupied eastern part of the former Austrian province of Galicia was attached to the General Government as the District of Galicia. Its capital city, variously known as L'viv (Ukrainian), Lwów (Polish) and Lemberg (German), had been - after Vienna, Budapest and Prague - the largest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Poles, Ukrainians and Jews had lived together for centuries. The first German governor was Karl Lasch, an intimate friend of Frank, who was later arrested and shot for extensive black market activities on orders of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Wächter was chosen by Adolf Hitler "as the best man on the spot", and installed as Governor on 22 January 1943. Otto von Wächter (right) with other German Nazi government officials of occupied Poland.His first official visit was to the influential and respected Greek Catholic Metropolit Andrij Aleksander Szeptycki (Sheptytsky). With his assistance, Wächter endeavored to promote a greater degree of co-operation among the occupying Germans and the ethnic elements in the district of Galicia. Consequently, he immediately found himself in conflict with SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the Reichsführer’s representative in the General Government and executor of his planned large scale resettlement programs. At the government meeting in Kraków on 17 February, Wächter publicly opposed plans to "germanize" the city of Lemberg, which would have resulted in the expulsion of its entire population stating: "A German colonization of the East during the war would bring about the collapse of production."
Wächter's continued opposition to Krüger's policies led to a number of open confrontations. To avoid further altercations, Himmler offered Wächter the chance to relocate to Vienna, which he declined. As Governor of Galicia, he remained a firm believer in the principle "Germany first". He was frequently obliged to use his influence and connections by first circumventing General Governor Hans Frank and by exploiting the strained relations between Frank and Himmler to pursue his own policies. Wächter selected men with liberal views for the key posts in his administration, notably his department heads Otto Bauer and Dr Ludwig Losacker [de], whom he consulted before deciding all important issues.
In late 1942, Wächter visited the “Reichskommissariat Ukraine” (eastern Ukraine) to witness first hand the effect of the implementation of the Nazi Untermensch (subhuman) philosophy by Gauleiter Erich Koch and his policies of repression and subjugation. On his return in December 1942, he sent a secret ten page letter to Martin Bormann in the Führer Headquarters in Berlin, criticizing the serious mistakes made in the handling of the Ukrainians.
Whilst Governor of Galicia, he established a Waffen-SS Division recruited from the Ukrainian population of Galicia, under German supervision, to fight against the hated Bolsheviks. The formation of the unit was approved by Himmler after the disastrous German defeat at Stalingrad. Wächter submitted the proposal to Himmler on 1 March 1943, and, on 28 April, the SS Division Galicia was publicly inaugurated.Wächter and the Waffen-SS Galizien Ukrainian volunteers of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division-SS Galitsia march past (L to R) Fritz Freitag, Heinrich Himmler and Otto WachterIn 1943, Wächter conceived the idea of creating a Waffen-SS division made up of Ukrainians. The division was organized as a part of a program of creating foreign (e.g., Estonian, Latvian) formations of the Waffen-SS to fight with the Germans on the Soviet front. Wachter first proposed his idea to the SS Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler on March 1, 1943, and wanted to name them, Division Ukraine. Wächter succeeded in creating the division; however, they would eventually be called Division Galizien. The creation of the Division Galizien was announced on April 28, 1943 at ceremonies throughout Galicia. Wächter appointed the members of the Military Board of the Division Galizien and had good relations with them. In 1945, he was the commander in chief of all Waffen SS divisions made up of non-Germans.
In organizing Waffen-SS Galizien, Wächter worked closely with the head of the Ukrainian Central Committee in Cracow, Volodymyr Kubijovyč. Kubijovyč supported the division's formation, regarding it as a Ukrainian armed force and hoping to influence its character and organization as the core of a future national army.
In March 1945, the German government announced the formation of the Ukrainian National Army. Wächter successfully secured the appointment of General Pavlo Shandruk, a former officer in the Polish Army, as commander of the Ukrainian National Army. On April 25, 1945, the Waffen-SS Galizien would be officially reorganized as the First Division of the Ukrainian National Army, and swear a new oath of loyalty to the Ukrainian people.
Ukraine remains divided on the legacy of World War II, although nationalists, hardcore rightists and neo-Nazis continue to honor the Waffen-SS Galizien today through yearly celebrations.End of the warWith the loss of the entire District of Galicia on 26 July 1944 to the advancing Red Army, Wächter sought to be released from his administrative obligations in the General Government so that he could take up a position in the Waffen-SS. In response, Himmler agreed to order his release on the basis that he assume a new commission as "Chief of the Military Administration to the Plenipotentiary General of the German Wehrmacht in Italy headed by SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff.
Himmler felt Wächter would be "of immense use in this equally interesting and difficult field." On assuming his new post, Wächter relocated to Gardone on Lake Garda.
As the German situation at the front worsened day by day, in a vain attempt to regain the military initiative the Nazi authorities became increasingly desperate and sought to exploit the Eastern European Anti-Bolshevik movements. In so doing, on 30 January 1945, Himmler appointed Wächter as subsidiary head of the Group D of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, which sought to utilize and combine the Russian Liberation Army of General Andrey Vlasov and the newly formed Ukrainian National Army which included the 1st Ukrainian Division (formerly the SS 14th Galician Division), the creation of which he had instigated.
Vlasov's 'federalist' concept which required the subordination of all the other former Soviet nationalities to his overall command, proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for Wächter who was unable to bring about the unification of Vlasov and the separatist Ukrainians led by General Pavlo Shandruk. Nevertheless, Wächter redoubled his efforts with the Ukrainians whom he rejoined on 7 April 1945 in Carinthia. On 8 May 1945, Wächter informed General Shandruk of the unconditional surrender of the German Reich with the following words: "Now, General, you are the central figure in the action of saving the Division, and possibly of all of us who are with you." In Zell am See, amidst the German collapse, his wife burned a crate full of documents he had methodically collected to justify his deeds, which should demonstrate "that he had done everything to help so many people".Postwar and deathFollowing the defeat of Germany, Wächter remained with the staff of the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army until 10 May. He left them near Tamsweg in the Salzburg mountain district to avoid being taken prisoner and inevitable extradition to the Soviet Union. Together with a young member of the 24th Waffen-Gebirgs-(Karstjäger-) Division of the Waffen-SS, he successfully hid for four years, sustained by his wife who supplied both men with food and equipment from secret pick-up points. In the spring of 1949 Wächter crossed the border to South Tyrol in Italy where he met his wife and his elder children for the last time.
On 24 April 1949, he arrived in Rome, where, through pro-Nazi Bishop Alois Hudal, rector of the Teutonic College of Santa Maria dell'Anima, he found rudimentary accommodation in the clerical institute “Vigna Pia” on the southern outskirts of Rome under the name of Alfredo Reinhardt. In June, he took part in an Italian film, playing the part of an actor and was in the process of collecting information about a flight to South America. As a result of his daily morning swim in the polluted Tiber, he appeared jaundiced on 3 July. On 9 July, he was taken to Santo Spirito Hospital near the Vatican where Wächter revealed his true identity. He received last rites from Hudal in the evening of 13 July and died the next morning. He died, most likely, of Leptospirosis (Weil's disease).Historical controversy Otto and wife Charlotte smile for a picture with Horst and his sister TrauteAlthough Otto Wächter was undeniably a primary perpetrator of the Holocaust and a leader of the Jewish extermination campaign, his son, Horst, claims his father was "a good Nazi". Horst has appeared in an episode of the PBS television series, Independent Lens, entitled "My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did", and has also been interviewed by multiple news sources in an attempt to change his father’s legacy. Horst claims his father "was against the racial ideology of putting other races below Aryan Germans" and maintains he never made an anti-Semitic speech. Horst believes that his father "was an unwilling cog in the Nazi killing machine," and "became doomed and murdered for something he never planned and executed himself."
Despite Horst Wächter’s claims of his father's innocence, they have been refuted by considerable evidence. This includes family photo albums held by Horst himself at his home, Schloss Hagenberg (near Mistelbach, Lower Austria; the albums feature pictures of Otto Wächter with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Hans Frank and Joseph Goebbels, and a book with the inscription "With my best wishes on your birthday, —H. Himmler, 8 July 1944." These personal mementos place Wächter among the inner circles of the Nazi party, and at the heart of its day-to-day operations.
Nazi documents detail Wächter's involvement with the establishment of ghettos, and the Final Solution as well. Wächter’s name is seen on the order to establish the Kraków ghetto, where many inhabitants perished, and the rest would eventually be liquidated as a part of Operation Reinhard. Wächter also ran the transportation systems, which would carry trains of Jews to their death under his watch. The US Justice Department also holds documents indicting Wächter. One, signed on March 13, 1942 by Wächter, was an order to restrict the employment of Jews throughout Galicia. The Justice Department also maintains a document from Heinrich Himmler to Wilhelm Stuckart, the State Secretary to the Reich Minister of the Interior in Berlin, on Wächter's future, dated August 25, 1942. It describes how Himmler was recently in Lemberg and asked Wächter if he would want to be transferred out to Vienna. Wächter replied to Himmler that he did not want to go to Vienna. This document implies Wächter willingly wanted to stay in Lemberg for the implementation of Operation Reinhard and directly refutes Horst’s claim that his father “had no chance to leave the system.”
While Wächter was Governor of Galicia, he oversaw the implementation of the Final Solution. After 75,000 Jews died in the first month during Operation Reinhard, Hans Frank made a speech in the Parliament of Galicia praising Wächter’s job for “making Lemberg a proud city." Although these actions would almost certainly indict Wächter for command responsibility, Wächter was not directly responsible for Operation Reinhard, since he was a member of the civil government. The dual German administration in the General Government meant that he did not control the SS or Police; these matters in Lemberg were under the control of SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Katzmann, the SS and Police Leader of the District of Galicia. Although he likely would have worked closely with the SS to carry out the operations, he was not directly a part of the group that implemented them.
As far as direct responsibility, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal claims in his book The Murderers Among Us, that Wächter personally oversaw the transportation of four thousand Jews to extermination camps and was responsible for killing at least 800,000 Jews. Specifically, Wiesenthal also claims to have seen Wächter in Lemberg on August 15, 1942, while his mother and other Jews were being loaded on a train to their death. However, Horst owns a letter written by his father for his mother on that date, from a party meeting in Krakow. Horst believes Wiesenthal may have mistaken Fritz Katzmann for his father since, according to the letter, Wächter was not in Lemberg on August 15th.
On September 28, 1946 the Polish government sent a document to the Military Governor of the United States Zone of Germany requesting "that Wächter be delivered to Poland for trial for mass murder, shooting and executions. Under his command of District Galicia, more than one hundred thousand Polish citizens lost their lives."
Due to Wächter’s death in Rome in 1949, he was never tried for charges in Poland. The extent of his criminal involvement in the final solution was never brought before a court.
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Post by karl on Oct 15, 2022 19:00:20 GMT -7
Pieter
I must say and excellent historic document requiring considerable research and presentation very well proofread. Some of the official names myself do recognize from other historical sources and then some that are new.
The war although of the fighting, what escapes many historians is the complication of taking over administration of occupied countries with a military Government. With this is not of personal agreement of the war with resulting inhuman complexity that was with it.
Karl
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Post by pieter on Oct 16, 2022 13:00:45 GMT -7
Jaga,
Like many Nazi's I see Hans Frank as an opportunist, someone who was caught somewhere in the twenties by Adolf Hitler's hypnotic charisma (which was thoroughly trained ans staged by the way), lust for power and influence and making use of his previous law firm as a lawjer, his knowledge of legal jurisdiction, law, common law jurisdictions, extensive research into relevant facts, managing relationships, the application of abstract principles of law to the concrete facts, and administrative matters. Frank had a long career within the Nazi movement starting in 1919/1920 and ending with his death in Nürberg by hanging on 16 October 1946.
Adolf Hitler had a natural charisma, dominance and gift of speaking, but he was also thoroughly trained ans staged to speak for large audiences during the twenties
At seventeen Hans Frank joined the German Army fighting in World War I, but did not serve time at the front. He did however witnessed the humiliation of the German and Austrian populations who suffered under the repair payments of Germany and Austria towards the allied Powers the USA, France and the United Kingdom. Witnessed the occupation of the Ruhr by the French, the Silesian Polish uprisings (from August 1919 to July 1921 in Upper Silesia) in which Poles did kill Germans (and vice versa) in reprisal for the killing of Polish miners by the Weimar Republic's Provisional National Army (Vorläufige Reichsheer), the German lefist uprsisings of far left German socialists (Unabhängige Sozialdemokraten of the USPD) and German communists of the KPD party and thus the short lived Bavarian Soviet Republic (Räterepublik Baiern, Münchner Räterepublik -12 April 1919 – 3 May 1919-) and later in the late twenties and early thirties the fierce battles between the paramilitary Rotfrontkämpferbund (RFB) of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany)on one side and the SA and German police on the other side. Often the German police had to fight against the SA Brownshirts (Braunhemden) and Communist Redfront on the same time. After the prohibtion of the Redfront you had the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus [de] ("Fighting Alliance against Fascism") in 1930 and the German original Antifaschistische Aktion a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933. Frank, Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Himmler, Röhm and other Nazi's also saw the competition on the Far right of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) and it's paramilitary wing, Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (Kampfstaffeln), the far right aristocratic Monarchist conservative Nationalist and Prussian old core of the Reichswehr around general and president Paul von Hindenburg (2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934), general Walther von Lüttwitz ("Father of the Freikorps": 2 February 1859 – 20 September 1942), the German Freikorps commander Hermann Ehrhardt (29 November 1881 – 27 September 1971), Kurt von Schleicher (7 April 1882 – 30 June 1934), and the German civil servant and journalist Wolfgang Kapp (24 July 1858 – 12 June 1922), best known for being the leader of the Kapp Putsch (Berlin 13–18 March 1920) and other persona on the far right side.
Election poster of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP), Reichstagswahl 6. November 1932.The DNVP was a Proto-fascist, German nationalist, National conservative, Right-wing populist, Restoration of the monarchy promoting, Political Protestant, Antisemitic and Economic nationalist political party in the Weimarer republic (1919-1933) and a competitor of the NSDAP party of Adolf Hitler on the far right flank of the German political spectrum of that time.
Frank was an educated man, he studied law and economics at the universities of Munich and Kiel. He was from the beginning of the German Workers' Party (DAP), the predecessor of the Nazi party (NSDAP) until the end in 1945 with the Nazi party and movement and therefor was a Nazi through and through. He was a member of the antisemitic Thule-Gesellschaft before Nazism even had risen as a powerful ideology or movement.
Polish armored car Korfanty in 1920 made by Polish fighters in Woźniak foundry. It was one of the two created, the second was named Walerus – Woźniak.
The sunwheel-like swastika used by the Thule Society and the German Workers' Party.
The Thule Society (Thule-Gesellschaft; 1918-1925), originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum ("Study Group for Germanic Antiquity"), was a German occultist and Völkisch group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend. The society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers' Party), which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party). According to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer.
Frank turned against Nazism after he was captured by American troops on 4 May 1945, at Tegernsee in southern Bavaria, but remained an anti-Semitic fanatic.
In the historical sense I do not consider him bad or good, but a henchman of Adolf Hitler, a man whom considered himself King of Poland, King of other people, and a man under whom leadership many Poles, Jews, Ukrainians and others suffered tremendously. A man without a consciousness, without empathy and without a future. The Nazi system, regime and occupation was a failed system, because it was build on pseudo science, a faltering and weak ideology, racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, imperialism, exploitation, robbery, theft, pillaging, plunder, destruction and occupation, oppression and humiliation of others. Frank would have gone for Power and Influence in any system. Whether it was the Deutsches Reich (German empire) of Wilhelm II (in the case of when Germany had won the Firtst World War or that war would never had take place), or the Weimarer Republic would have lasted longer, or Hans Frank would have lived in the DDR (Communist East-Germany) or the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (present day Germany. He in an opportunistic way would have found a Powerful position, gained wealth and probably hurt others. It is in the nature of the man. Also in democracies you have criminal, corrupt, nepotist crooks like Hans Frank. I think his son Niklas Frank can't be objective in his hatred and loathing and disgust for his father, but I can understand Niklas Frank. It is not easy to be the son of such a man.
The Polish Underground State (Polskie Państwo Podziemne), the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), the Gwardia Ludowa /Armia Ludowa (Communist resistance) and the Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (NSZ) hindered Hans Frank regime despite his strong forces of Waffen-SS, the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, Ordnungspolizei, Gestapo, SD (Sicherheitsdienst) and SiPo (Sicherheitspolizei) he couldn't control the whole of Poland totally. In certain forests/woods, mountainous area's, Hamlets, villages and parts of Polish cities and towns the Polish resistance had a strong presence, and the Soviets were coming closer to the borders of the General Government of Hans Frank. Frank fled the General Government in January 1945, as the Soviet Army advanced.
Hans Frank was 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 remained as governor-general until the war’s end, although Hitler stripped him of his other posts in 1942.
Pieter
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Post by pieter on Oct 16, 2022 17:14:12 GMT -7
On many of the images I see the notorious SS-Obergruppenführer Arthur Seyß-Inquart (July 1892 – 16 October 1946) the Austrian Nazi politician who served as Chancellor of Austria in 1938 for two days before the Anschluss. His positions in Nazi Germany included "deputy governor to Hans Frank in the General Government of Occupied Poland, and Reich commissioner for the German-occupied Netherlands" including shared responsibility "for the deportation of Dutch Jews and the shooting of hostages". Among the Dutch people he was mockingly referred to as "Zes en een kwart" (six and a quarter), a play on his name, and the fact that Seyss-Inquart suffered from a limp.
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