Victims of the Volksgerichtshof (Roland Freisler revisited)

[Hubert Flottz]

Victims of the Volksgerichtshof

Helmuth Hübener. At the age of 17, he was the youngest opponent of the Third Reich to be executed as a result of a trial by the Volksgerichtshof.

Julius Fučík, a Czechoslovakian journalist, Communist Party of Czechoslovakia leader, and a leader in the forefront of the anti-Nazi resistance. On August 25, 1943 in Berlin, he was accused of high treason in connection with his political activities. He was found guilty, and he was beheaded two weeks later, on September 8, 1943.

Artur Nebe, an SS-Gruppenführer (General). He was a conspirator in the July 20 Bomb Plot conspiracy. The head of the Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo, and commander of Einsatzgruppe B, Nebe oversaw massacres in the Reich, the Russian front and other locations as commanded by his superiors in the SS. After the failure to assassinate Hitler, Nebe hid on an island in the Wannsee until he was betrayed by one of his mistresses. He was hanged with piano wire on March 21, 1945.

Erwin von Witzleben, a German Generalfeldmarschall. He was a Wehrmacht conspirator in the July 20 Bomb Plot conspiracy. Witzleben, who would have been Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht in the planned post-coup government, arrived at OKH-HQ (Oberkommando des Heeres Headquarters) in Berlin on July 20 to assume command of the coup forces. He was arrested the next day and tried by the People's Court on August 8. He was sentenced to death and hanged the same day in Plötzensee. MORE...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksgerichtshof

A Lesson in Dissent

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Hans and Sophie Scholl were German teenagers in the 1930s. Like other young Germans, they enthusiastically joined the Hitler Youth. They believed that Adolf Hitler was leading Germany and the German people back to greatness.

Their parents were not so enthusiastic. Their father--Robert Scholl--told his children that Hitler and the Nazis were leading Germany down a road of destruction. Later--in 1942--he would serve time in a Nazi prison for telling his secretary: "The war! It is already lost. This Hitler is God's scourge on mankind, and if the war doesn't end soon the Russians will be sitting in Berlin."

Gradually, Hans and Sophie began realizing that their father was right. They concluded that, in the name of freedom and the greater good of the German nation, Hitler and the Nazis were enslaving and destroying the German people.

They also knew that open dissent was impossible in Nazi Germany, especially after the start of World War II. Most Germans took the traditional position-that once war breaks out, it is the duty of the citizen to support the troops by supporting the government. MORE...

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0196a.asp

Roland Freisler

Roland Freisler (October 30, 1893 – February 3, 1945) was a prominent Nazi. He became State Secretary at the Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the Volksgerichtshof.

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On August 20 1942, Hitler promoted Otto Thierack to Reich Justice Minister and named Freisler to succeed Thierack as president of the Volksgerichtshof ("People's Court"). This court had jurisdiction over a rather broad array of "political offenses", which included crimes like black marketeering, work slowdowns, and defeatism. These crimes were viewed by Freisler's court as Wehrkraftzersetzung ("destruction of defensive capability") and were accordingly punished severely, the death penalty being meted out in numerous cases.

The number of death sentences rose sharply under Freisler's stewardship. Approximately 90% of all proceedings ended with sentences of death or life imprisonment, the sentences frequently having been determined before the trial. Between 1942 and 1945 more than 5000 death sentences were handed out, and of these, 2600 through the court's First Senate, which Freisler headed. Thus, Freisler alone was responsible, in his three years on the court, for as many death sentences as all other senate sessions of the court together in the entire time the court existed, between 1934 and 1945.

Freisler acted as judge, prosecutor and jury all embodied in a single person. He was particularly known for humiliating defendants and barking loudly at them. A number of the trials for defendants in the July 20 plot before the People's Court were filmed and recorded. In the 1944 trial against Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld, for example, Freisler screamed so loudly, the technicians who were filming the proceeding had major problems making the defendants' words audible. Count Schwerin, like many other defendants in the plot, was sentenced to death by hanging. Among this and other show trials, Freisler headed the 1943 proceedings against the members of the "White Rose" resistance group.

Freisler chaired the First Senate of the People's Court. Insofar as he led the proceedings, he designated himself as court reporter. That way, he was also responsible for the composition of written grounds for the sentences, that he wrote up in his own unique fashion, namely in accordance with his own notions of a "National Socialist criminal court." Meanwhile, he introduced judgment advisories with remarks like "Off with his head," and "The beet must be uprooted," and so forth. MORE...

http://www.answers.com/topic/roland-freisler

TRUST BUSH/CHENEY? I don't...

[Hubert Flottz]

1. The Anatomy of "The White Rose"

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The White Rose Trials

The first White Rose trial was that of Christoph, Hans, and Sophie. Hans and Sophie at first refused to admit to the accusations but finally gave in after four days of interrogation by the Gestapo agent Robert Mohr.<50> Gestapo agents found some stamps, envelopes, and a typewriter which the group had been using to produce and mail out their leaflets. After this happened, Hans and Sophie realized it was pointless to deny the charges and then tried to provide some protection for Christoph and the others by pleaded guilty and taking on all responsibility for the leaflets.<51> The official charges brought against them in the indictment were, "treasonable aid to the enemy, preparation for high treason, and demoralization of the troops."<52> In a last outcry against Hitler, Sophie wrote the word, "Freedom," on the back of the indictment document. The lawyer who was assigned to Hans and Sophie by the court did not make any attempt at all in the three and a half hour court proceedings to defend their case.<53> Sophie told the judge ruling in their case, the President of the People's Court, Roland Freisler, that what they had done was only "what many people are thinking."<54> She also said that Germany had already lost the war and she also said to the judge, "Why are you so cowardly as to not recognize that?"

The second trial was on April 19, 1943. It included accusations against Huber, Schmorell, Graf, and eleven other co-conspirators.<56> They were accused of circulating leaflets and being aware of subversive activities.<57> Some of these co-conspirators were Eugen Grimminger (a Stuttgart tax consultant and friend of the Scholl family), Traute LaFrenz (Probst's ex-girl friend), Falk Harnack, and Jürgen (George) Wittenstein. The trial lasted fourteen hours and Judge Roland Freisler sentenced Huber, Schmorell, and Graf to death. Their families attempted to get their sentences commuted, but they were refused. Schmorell and Huber died at the guillotine on July 13, 1943. After being questioned for a few months more, Graf was also executed on October 12, 1943. Grimminger received a ten-year jail sentence and LaFrenz received one year in prison. Wittenstein was sent to the Italian front. He was wounded there and came back to Germany when the war was over. Harnack was set free.<58> Judge Freisler explained this by saying that Harnack had "extenuating circumstances" because he was the "only remaining son" in his family.<59> Actually, Gestapo agents told Freisler to set Harnack free so that they could watch him to try to catch him with other resistance groups. Several months after this, Harnack was sent to the Greek front to fight the Greek partisans. Here, he was ordered arrested, but was warned in time to escape. Then, he fought with the Greek partisans until the German defeat.<60> After this, there were three more, though lesser, trials. MORE...

http://sextant.cnu.edu/Brittany_Bishop/BBishop.htm

[Hubert Flottz]

2. Never say..."NEVER AGAIN"

We have become a nation of outlaws and the only people who can save us now, are the people who installed Bush in 2000...

Will the SCOTUS uphold the Rule Of Law or will they play politics with our democracy and our Constitution?

[shance]

3. We cannot look to our leaders any more. They are not leading us

in the right direction.

We need to be looking to each other, investing locally and in each others small businesses, and stop giving so much power to Washington, where they are draining this country of essentially all that is good.

[Hubert Flottz]

4. There will be no easy way out of this place we now find our country

in. Each day we sink a little deeper into a hell of our own making. Just like the Germans we let the worst slide and foolishly pray for the best! Nothing worth having comes easy.