Karl Hermann Frank
After the end of WW2, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were tried for numerous crimes
they had committed during the war. One of them was Karl Hermann Frank infamous for
his brutality among the Czechs who rereferred to Frank by the nickname “the bloody dog “.
Karl Hermann Frank was born on 24 January 1898 in Carlsbad, then Austria-Hungary.
His father taught him to hate Jews and the Czechs and Frank never even learned the Czech language.
After the end of WW1, the German speaking areas where Frank lived
known as Sudetenland became a part of Czechoslovakia.
Frank belonged to Sudeten Germans and wanted the Sudetenland to become a part of Germany.
He became an active member of protofascist party of Germans in Czechoslovakia named
the German National Socialist Workers' Party and when the Sudetenland became a part of the
Third Reich in October 1938, he finally joined the Nazi Party and SS soon after.
In 1939, Frank became a secretary of state of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
as well as chief of police. Heinrich Himmler trusted him and made him responsible for the Nazi
police apparatus in the protectorate including the gestapo - the secret police of Nazi Germany.
He cooperated closely with Reinhard Heydrich, acting governor of the protectorate and the Nazi
architect of the Holocaust. They got along well as they were both brutal and ruled by terror.
Their enemies were either imprisoned or shot and the Jews ended up in concentration camps.
When Reinhard Heydrich died on June 4, 1942 after an assassination attempt by Czechoslovak
paratroopers, Karl Frank played a key role in the civilian massacre and destruction
of the Czech villages of Lidice and Ležáky. To revenge Heydrich’s death,
Frank ordered the shooting of all men in Lidice, sending all the women to the concentration camps
and placing those children considered worthy of germanization in the care of SS families. Children
not worthy of germanization were murdered. He was seen personally coming to inspect
the destruction of the village and was said to be satisfied with the results.
In 1943 he became even more powerful after becoming a
Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia.
In April 1945 when Frank saw that his reign of terror was over, he knew he would have to face
justice for all the crimes he had committed during the war. He decided to flee from Prague
and surrender to the Americans as he was afraid of being captured by the Russians.
On May 9, 1945 Karl Frank was arrested by US army troops but his plan did not work out.
He was extradited back to Prague and tried in 1946.
Although no attorney wanted to defend him, he di eventually get one. At the trial he claimed he
had just followed the orders and had represented only a small part of the criminal Nazi regime.
However, it did not help him. On 21 May, 1946 the People’s
court sentenced Karl Hermann Frank to death by hanging for treason and the massacre of civilians
of the Czech villages of Lidice and Ležáky. He did not accept his fate and asked the
Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš for mercy which he was not granted.
Frank’s crimes were so serious that his execution was held publicly. More than 5000 people,
including 7 surviving women from Lidice who sat in the front row, gathered in Pankrac prison to
witness the execution of the most hated man in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Karl Hermann Frank was hanged on 22 May, 1946 at the age of 48. An avowed Nazi until the bitter
end, his last words were “Germany must live even if we die. Long live the German nation.
Long live the German spirit." There were no tears shed for Karl Hermann Frank
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