Editing Roland Freisler (section)

== Career in Nazi Germany ==
In February 1933, after the [[Nazi seizure of power]], Freisler was appointed Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Justice under [[Hans Kerrl]]. He was placed in charge of the personnel office and used his authority to force out Jewish members of the staff.{{sfn|Struck|2017|p=175}} By June, he was promoted to [[State Secretary]] in the Ministry. On 31 July, Prussian [[Minister president]] [[Hermann Göring]] appointed him to the recently reconstituted [[Prussian State Council (Nazi Germany)|Prussian State Council]].{{sfn|Lilla|2005|pp=202, 296}} On the founding of the [[Academy for German Law]] by Hans Frank in October 1933, Freisler was made a member.{{sfn|Klee|2007|p=163}} He was the chairman of its Criminal Law Committee, head of its department of scientific studies and editor of the Academy newspaper.{{sfn|Struck|2017|p=176}} When the Prussian Ministry of Justice was merged with the [[Reich Ministry of Justice]] on 1 April 1935, Freisler became the State Secretary in the unified Ministry, where he served until August 1942.

Freisler's mastery of legal texts, mental agility, dramatic courtroom verbal dexterity and verbal force, in combination with his zealous conversion to [[Nazism|Nazi]] ideology, made him the most feared judge in [[Nazi Germany]], and the personification of Nazism in domestic law. However, despite his talents and loyalty, Adolf Hitler never appointed him to any post beyond the legal system. That might have been because he was a lone figure, lacking support within the senior echelons of the Nazi hierarchy, but he had also been politically compromised by his brother, [[Oswald Freisler]], also a lawyer. Oswald had acted as a defence counsel against the regime's authority several times during the increasingly politically driven trials by which the Nazis sought to enforce their tyrannical control of German society, and he had the habit of wearing his Nazi Party membership badge in court whilst doing so. Propaganda minister [[Joseph Goebbels]] reproached Oswald Freisler and reported his actions to Adolf Hitler who, in response, ordered Freisler's expulsion from the Party. (Oswald Freisler died, allegedly by suicide, in 1939.)<ref name="UW">Wesel, Uwe. "Drei Todesurteile pro Tag" (Three death sentences per day), ''Die Zeit'', 3 February 2005. [https://archive.today/20130213024657/http://zeus.zeit.de/text/2005/06/A-Freisler Text in German] Uwe Wesel is professor emeritus of Legal History in Berlin's Free University.</ref> 

In 1941, in a discussion at the "Führer Headquarters" about whom to appoint to replace [[Franz Gürtner]], the Reich Justice Minister, who had died, Goebbels suggested Roland Freisler as an option; Hitler's reply, referring to Freisler's alleged "Red" past, was: "That old Bolshevik? No!"<ref name="GK"/><ref name="UW"/>