Wilhelm Frick (12 March 1877 – 16 October 1946) was the Interior Minister of Nazi Germany from 30 January 1933 to 20 August 1943, succeeding Franz Bracht and preceding Heinrich Himmler.
Biography[]
Wilhelm Frick was born on 12 March 1877 in Alsenz, Bavaria, German Empire to a Protestant schoolteacher. Frick served in a Bavarian police department, but he was rejected as unfit for service with the Imperial German Army during World War I, and he was introduced to Adolf Hitler by police chief Ernst Poehner. Frick allowed Hitler to hold rallies, and Frick and Poenher helped Hitler in the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. On 30 January 1933, he was appointed Minister of the Interior of Nazi Germany by Hitler after Hitler was elected as the new Chancellor of Germany, managing his police forces. Frick drafted the September 1935 Nuremberg Laws against Jews and extended universal conscription for the Wehrmacht to Austria and the Sudetenland. In 1936, Hitler named Heinrich Himmler chief of all German police, limiting Frick's power, and in 1943 Himmler replaced him as Interior Minister. He was arrested in Prague in 1945, and in 1946 he was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials and hanged.
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