Wilhelm Frick Wilhelm Frick ( 12 March 187716 October 1946 ) was a prominent German politician of the Nazi Party , who served as Reich Minister of the Interior in the Hitler Cabinet from 1933 to 1943 . After the end of World War II , he was tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and executed . Early life and family . Frick was born in the Palatinate municipality of Alsenz , then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria , Germany , the last of four children of Protestant teacher Wilhelm Frick sen . ( d . 1918 ) and his wife Henriette ( née Schmidt ) . He attended the gymnasium in Kaiserslautern , passing his Abitur exams in 1896 . He went on studying philology at the University of Munich , but soon after turned to study law in Heidelberg and Berlin , taking the " Staatsexamen " in 1900 , followed by his doctorate the next year . Serving as a referendary since 1900 , he joined the Bavarian civil service in 1903 , working as an attorney at the Munich Police Department . He was appointed a " Bezirksamtassessor " in Pirmasens in 1907 and became acting district executive in 1914 . Rejected as unfit , Frick did not serve in World War I . He was promoted to the official rank of a " Regierungsassessor " and , at his own request , re - assumed his post at the Munich Police Department by 1917 . On 25 April 1910 , Frick had married Elisabetha Emilie Nagel ( 1890 – 1978 ) in Pirmasens . They had two sons and a daughter . The marriage ended in an ugly divorce in 1934 . A few weeks later , on 12 March , Frick remarried in Münchberg to Margarete Schultze - Naumburg ( 1896 – 1960 ) , the former wife of the Nazi Reichstag MP Paul Schultze - Naumburg . Margarete gave birth to a son and a daughter . Nazi career . In Munich , Frick witnessed the end of the war and the German Revolution of 1918 – 1919 . He sympathized with " Freikorps " paramilitary units fighting against the Bavarian government of Premier Kurt Eisner . Chief of Police Ernst Pöhner introduced him to Adolf Hitler , whom he helped willingly with obtaining permissions to hold political rallies and demonstrations . Elevated to the rank of an " Oberamtmann " and head of the " Kriminalpolizei " security service from 1923 , he and Pöhner participated in Hitler ' s failed Beer Hall Putsch on 9 November . Frick tried to suppress the State Police ' s operation , wherefore he was arrested and imprisoned , and tried for aiding and abetting high treason by the People ' s Court in April 1924 . After several months in custody , he was given a suspended sentence of 15 months ' imprisonment and was dismissed from his police job . Later during the disciplinary proceedings , the dismissal was declared unfair and revoked , on the basis that his treacherous intention had not been proven . Frick went on to work at the Munich social insurance office from 1926 onwards , in the rank of a " Regierungsrat " 1st class by 1933 . In the aftermath of the Putsch , Wilhelm Frick was elected a member of the German Reichstag parliament in the federal election of May 1924 . He had been nominated by the National Socialist Freedom Movement , an electoral list of the far - right German Völkisch Freedom Party and the banned Nazi Party . On 1 September 1925 , Frick joined the re - established NSDAP . He associated himself with the radical Gregor Strasser ; making his name by aggressive anti - democratic and antisemitic Reichstag speeches , he climbed to the post of the Nazi parliamentary group leader ( " Fraktionsführer " ) in 1928 . On 23 January 1930 Wilhelm Frick was appointed State Minister of the Interior and of Education in the coalition government of Thuringia , being the first Nazi to hold any ministerial - level post in pre - Nazi Germany . He exploited his position to dismiss and Social Democratic officials and to replace them with Nazi Party members , wherefore Thuringia ' s subsidies were temporarily suspended by Reich Minister Carl Severing . Frick also appointed the eugenicist Hans F . K . Günther a professor of social anthropology at the University of Jena , banned several newspapers as well as pacifist drama and film performances like " All Quiet on the Western Front " based upon the novel by Erich Maria Remarque . He was removed from office by a Social Democratic motion of no confidence in the Thuringian Landtag parliament on 1 April 1931 . Reich Minister . When Reich president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933 , Frick joined his government as Reich Minister of the Interior . Together with Reichstag Speaker Hermann Göring , he was one of only two Nazi Reich Ministers in the original Hitler Cabinet , and the only one who actually had a portfolio ; Göring served as minister without portfolio until 5 May . A mighty rival arose in the establishment of the Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels on 13 March . Though Frick held a key position , especially in organizing the federal elections of March 1933 , he initially had far less power than his counterparts in the rest of Europe . Notably , he had no authority over the police ; in Germany law enforcement has traditionally been a State and local matter . Indeed , the main reason that Hindenburg and Franz von Papen agreed to give the interior ministry to the Nazis was that it was almost powerless at the time . Frick ' s power dramatically increased as a result of the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 . He was responsible for drafting many of the " Gleichschaltung " laws that consolidated the Nazi regime . Within a few days of the Enabling Act ' s passage , Frick helped draft a law appointing " Reichskommissar e " to disempower the state governments . Under the Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich , which converted Germany into a highly centralized state , the newly implemented " Reichsstatthalter " ( state governors ) were directly responsible to him . By 1935 , he also had sole power to appoint the mayors of all municipalities with populations greater than 100 , 000 ( except for the city state s of Berlin and Hamburg , where Hitler reserved the right to appoint the mayors for himself ) . In May 1934 , he was appointed Prussian State Minister of the Interior under Minister - President Göring . Frick was instrumental in the racial policy of Nazi Germany drafting laws against Jewish citizens , like the " Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service " and the notorious Nuremberg Laws in September 1935 . Already in July 1933 , he had implemented the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring including forced sterilizations , which later cuilminated in the killings of the Action T4 " euthansia " programme supported by his ministry . Frick also took a leading part in Germany ' s re - armament in violation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty . He drafted laws introducing universal military conscription and extending the Wehrmacht service law to Austria after the 1938 " Anschluss " , as well as to the " Sudetenland " territories of the First Czechoslovak Republic annexed according to the Munich Agreement . In the summer 1938 Frick was named the patron " ( Schirmherr ) " of the Deutsches Turn - und Sportfest in Breslau , a patriotic sports festival attended by Hitler and all the Nazi top brass . In this event he presided the ceremony of " handing over " the new Nazi Reich Sports League ( NSRL ) standard to " Reichssportführer " Hans von Tschammer und Osten , marking the further nazification of sports in Germany . From the mid - to - late 1930s Frick lost favour irreversibly within the Nazi Party after a power struggle involving attempts to resolve the lack of coordination within the Reich government . For example , in 1933 he tried to restrict the widespread use of " protective custody " orders that were used to send people to concentration camps , only to be begged off by " SS - Reichsführer " Heinrich Himmler . His power was greatly reduced in 1936 when Hitler named Himmler chief of all German police forces . This effectively united the police with the SS and made it virtually independent of Frick ' s control , since the SS was responsible only to Hitler . A long - running power struggle between the two culminated in Frick being replaced by Himmler as interior minister in 1943 . However , he remained in the cabinet as a Minister without portfolio . Besides Hitler himself , he and Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk were the only members of the Third Reich ' s cabinet to serve continuously from Hitler ' s appointment as Chancellor until his death . Frick ' s replacement as Reich interior minister did not reduce , however , the growing administrative chaos and infighting between party and state agencies . Frick was then appointed to the ceremonial post of Protector of Bohemia and Moravia . Its capital Prague , where Frick used ruthless methods to counter dissent , was one of the last Axis - held cities to fall at the end of World War II in Europe . Trial and execution . Frick was arrested and tried before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg , where he was the only defendant besides Rudolf Hess who refused to testify on his own behalf . For his role in formulating the Enabling Act as Minister of the Interior , the later Nuremberg Laws ( as co - author with Wilhelm Stuckart ) , that led to people under those laws being sent to German concentration camps , Frick was convicted of planning , initiating and waging wars of aggression , war crimes and crimes against humanity . Frick was also accused of being one of the highest persons responsible for the existence of the concentration camps . Wilhelm Frick was sentenced to death on 1 October 1946 , and was hanged on 16 October . Of his execution , journalist Joseph Kingsbury - Smith wrote :