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B. FRICK'S PARTICIPATION IN PROMOTING THE NAZI CONSPIRATORS' ACCESSION TO POWER.

Frick has admitted that he was one of the men who helped Hitler to power (3043-PS).

(1) Frick's activities in early days of conspiracy. In the very beginning of the Nazi Party and its conspiracy, Frick misused his various governmental positions in order to hold a "protecting hand over the National Socialist Party and Hitler." This he stated solemnly in his speech before the Munich People's Court during the Putsch trial (3119-PS; see "The Hitler Trial Before the People's Court in Munich" (Der Hitler Prozess vor dem Volksgericht in Muenchen), published by Knorr & Hirth, G.M.B.H., Muenchen, 1924.)

When Hitler was arrested during those early revolutionary days, Frick used his position in the Munich Police Department to release him under his own authority (3124-PS).

Frick participated in the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch of 8 November 1923-9 November 1923, and was tried with Hitler on a charge of complicity in treason. He was convicted and received a suspended sentence of one year and three months in a fortress (3132-PS).

Hitler's appreciation of Frick's assistance during those years is demonstrated by the fact that Hitler honored Frick by men-

[Page 655]

tioning his name in Mein Kampf, the Nazi bible. Only two other defendants in this proceeding, Hess and Streicher, share that honor. In this reference Hitler said of Frick:

"He [Munich Police President Poehner] and his coworker Dr. Frick are in my estimation the only men in government positions, who have the right to collaborate in the establishment of a Bavarian Nation."

(2) Frick's activities as member of Reichstag. Having been elected to the Reichstag on 4 May 1924, Frick stated that it was his task not to "support, but to undermine the parliamentary system" (2742-PS)

In the Reichstag Frick immediately proposed those discriminatory measures against the Jews which were enacted after he and the other Nazi conspirators had come into power in 1933. On 25 August 1924 Frick demanded in the Reichstag that all Jews be removed from public office (3128-PS). Two days later he returned with a motion calling for "special legislation for all embers of the Jewish race"

In 1930, a significant investigative report was prepared by the Prussian Ministry of the Interior (2513-PS). This official report analyzed the criminal activities of Hitler, Frick, and other Nazis. It stated that Frick had to be regarded as the most influential leader of the NSDAP next to Hitler. This document reported that at the 1927 Party Congress in Nurnberg, Frick said that the Nazi Party would first infiltrate into parliament and misuse its privileges, then abolish it and thus open the way for racial dictatorship. The document also reported that Frick stated in a speech in 1929 at Pyrite that this fateful struggle would first be taken up with the ballot, but that this could not continue indefinitely, for history had taught that in a battle "blood must be had and iron broken." As early as 1929, according to this same report, Frick announced that a Special Peoples' Court would be created, in which the enemies of the Nazi Party would be called to account for their political acts (2513-PS).

(3) Frick's activities as Minister of Interior and Education in Thuringia. Frick's prominent role in helping to bring the Nazis to power was recognized when on 23 January 1930 he was appointed Minister of the Interior and Education in the German State of Thuringia, the first ministerial appointment controlled by the National Socialists

It was in this capacity that Frick began his manipulation to provide Adolf Hitler with German citizenship, an essential step

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toward the realization of the Nazi conspiracy. It must be remembered that Hitler at that time was not a German citizen and was regarded by the Prussian police administration as an undesirable alien. This lack of German citizenship was most damaging to the cause of the Nazi Party because, as an alien, Hitler could not become a candidate for the Reich Presidency in Germany.

In the beginning, Frick was unsuccessful when he tried to grant Hitler German citizenship by appointing Hitler as police officer in Thuringia, thus conferring German citizenship automatically. Later he succeeded with a similar maneuver. This was expressly confirmed by Otto Meissner, former State Secretary and Chief of Hitler's Presidential Chancellery, in an affidavit which reads in part as follows:

"Frick also, in collaboration with Klagges, Minister of Brunswick, succeeded in naturalizing Hitler as a German citizen in 1932 by having him appointed a Brunswick government official (Counsellor of Government). This was done in order to make it possible for Hitler to run as a candidate for the office of President of the Reich." (3564-PS)

During his tenure as State Minister in Thuringia, Frick again misused his official authority in order to advance the Nazi conspiracy through measures designed to establish Nazi control over the police, and over the administration and curriculum of universities and schools. Three of his measures are specially note-worthy:

(a) Appointment of the Nazi race theoretician, Dr. Guenther, as Professor at the University of Jena, against the wishes of the faculty.

(b) Compulsory introduction in the schools of Nazi prayers whose nationalistic, militaristic, and blasphemous character was such that three out of the five were declared unconstitutional by the German Constitutional Court on 11 July 1930.

(C) Infiltration of Nazis in the Police, which twice provoked a rupture in the administrative relations between the State of Thuringia and the Reich Ministry of the Interior, and resulted in the withdrawal of the important police subsidy payment of the Reich to the State. (3122-PS; 3128-PS)

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