LAMMERS: I became acquainted with Herr Frank in the course of the year 1932. If I understand you rightly, you want to hear about his activities only from the outbreak of the war?
DR. SEIDL: Up to the outbreak of the war.
LAMMERS: He was Chief of the Legal Division of the Party, then Chief of the National Socialist Lawyers’ Association (Juristenbund) which later on became the so-called Lawyers’ League (Rechtswahrerbund). Then he became a member of the Reichstag, and at the time of the seizure of power in 1933, he became Minister of Justice in Bavaria. At the same time he became Reich Commissioner for Legal Reforms.
Later on—and I do not remember the exact year—he became Reich Minister without Portfolio; and he was the President of the Academy of German Law. He finally became Governor General.
THE PRESIDENT: We have had the Defendant Frank’s posts proved to us already, I should think, probably more than once. We do not require them from Dr. Lammers.
DR. SEIDL: I can put another question to the witness.
Witness, what was the relationship between Frank and Hitler?
LAMMERS: The relationship between the two was, at the beginning, I should like to say, good and proper, but not particularly close. At any rate, during the whole time he did not belong to those who could be called the closest advisers of the Führer.
DR. SEIDL: What was Frank’s attitude towards the “Police State” and the question of concentration camps?
LAMMERS: Frank repeatedly made speeches in public in which he stood up for the constitutional state, for right and law, by attacking the “Police State” and in which—although not in very strong terms—he always took a stand against internment in concentration camps, because such internment was without a legal basis. These speeches made by Frank were frequently the cause of severe disapproval on the part of Hitler, so that in the end the Führer instructed me to forbid his making speeches and he was forbidden to publish the printed version of these speeches. Finally, Frank’s activity in standing up for the constitutional state resulted in his being removed from his office as the Reich Chief of the Legal Division of the Party.