Frank, Hans

Hans Frank, (born May 3, 1900, Karlsruhe, Ger.—died Oct. 16, 1946, Nürnberg), German politician and lawyer who served as governor-general of Poland during World War II.

Frank fought in World War I, studied economics and jurisprudence, and in 1921 joined the German Workers’ Party (which became the Nazi Party). He eventually became the party’s chief legal counsel and Hitler’s personal lawyer. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Frank was appointed to a variety of important posts, including president of the Reichstag and minister of justice in the Nazi government.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Frank was appointed governor-general, becoming the supreme chief of occupied Poland’s civil administration. An enthusiastic proponent of Nazi racist ideology, Frank ordered the execution of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the wholesale confiscation of Polish property, the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Polish workers who were shipped to Germany, and the herding of most of Poland’s Jews into ghettos as a prelude to their extermination. Frank remained as governor-general until the war’s end, although Hitler stripped him of his other posts in 1942. He was captured by U.S. Army troops on May 4, 1945, and was indicted for trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and on Oct. 1, 1946, was sentenced to hang.