Wilhelm Frick

Germany state institutions Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces 1877–1946 ✕ Executed

Early Nazi leader who, as interior minister from 1933 to 1943, drafted the laws of Gleichschaltung and the Nuremberg Laws

Born in Alsenz in the Bavarian Palatinate, the son of a teacher, he studied law and as a Munich police official generously licensed meetings of Hitler and the Nazi Party. Head of the Munich criminal police in 1923, he took part in the Beer Hall Putsch and was convicted of high treason but avoided prison. A Reichstag deputy from 1924 to 1945, he joined the re-founded Nazi Party in 1925 and became its parliamentary leader in 1928. In 1930, as interior minister of Thuringia, he became the first Nazi to hold ministerial office in Germany. Interior minister in Hitler’s cabinet from 1933, he drafted the laws of Gleichschaltung and the racial laws, above all the Nuremberg Laws. Losing ground to the SS, he yielded the interior ministry to Himmler in 1943 and became Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Convicted at Nuremberg, he was hanged in 1946.