People's Court (Germany)
The court had jurisdiction over a rather broad array of "political offenses", which included crimes like black marketeering, work slowdowns, defeatism, and treason against Nazi Germany.
These crimes were viewed by the court as Wehrkraftzersetzung ("the disintegration of defensive capability") and were accordingly punished severely; the death penalty was meted out in numerous cases.
The court handed down an enormous number of death sentences under Judge-President Roland Freisler, including those that followed the plot to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944.
The president of the court often acted as prosecutor, denouncing defendants, then pronouncing his verdict and sentence without objection from defense counsel, who usually remained silent throughout.
A proceeding at the People's Court would follow an initial indictment in which a state or city prosecutor would forward the names of the accused to the Volksgerichtshof for charges of a political nature.
Defendants were hardly ever allowed to speak to their attorneys beforehand and when they did the defense lawyer would usually simply answer questions about how the trial would proceed and refrain from any legal advice.
A film camera ran behind the red-robed Roland Freisler so that Hitler could view the proceedings, and to provide footage for newsreels and a documentary entitled Traitors Before the People's Court.
[10] The accused were forced to wear shabby clothes, denied neckties and belts or suspenders for their trousers, and were marched into the courtroom handcuffed to policemen.
However, Major General Helmuth Stieff attempted to raise the issue of his motives before being shouted down, and Witzleben managed to call out "You may hand us over to the executioner, but in three months, the disgusted and harried people will bring you to book and drag you alive through the dirt in the streets!"
On 21 August, the accused were Fritz Thiele, Friedrich Gustav Jaeger, and Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld who was able to mention the "...many murders committed at home and abroad" as a motivation for his actions.
In the aftermath of the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, senior intelligence analyst Lieutenant Colonel Alexis von Roenne was arrested on account of his links with many of the conspirators.
Although not directly involved in the plot, he was nonetheless tried, found guilty by the show trial, and hanged on a meat hook at Plötzensee Prison on 12 October 1944.
[11] Field Marshal von Witzleben's prediction of Roland Freisler's fate proved slightly incorrect, as he died in a bombing raid in February 1945, approximately half a year later.
[12][13] On 3 February 1945, Freisler was conducting a Saturday session of the People's Court, when USAAF Eighth Air Force bombers attacked Berlin.
"[16] Freisler's death saved Schlabrendorff[18] – he was later re-tried and, in an exceptionally rare instance for the court's last nine months in existence, acquitted by its new acting president, Wilhelm Crohne.
The only member of the People's Court ever to be held liable for his actions was Chief Public Prosecutor Ernst Lautz [de], who in 1947 was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment by a US Military Tribunal, during the Judges' Trial, one of the "subsequent Nuremberg proceedings".
