Wilhelm Frick - Trial and Execution

Trial and Execution

Frick was arrested and trialed 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 about two weeks later on 16 October. Of his execution, journalist Joseph Kingsbury-Smith wrote:

The sixth man to leave his prison cell and walk with handcuffed wrists to the death house was 69-year-old Wilhelm Frick. He entered the execution chamber at 2.05 a.m., six minutes after Rosenberg had been pronounced dead. He seemed the least steady of any so far and stumbled on the thirteenth step of the gallows. His only words were, "Long live eternal Germany," before he was hooded and dropped through the trap.