Hans Lammers

Hans Heinrich Lammers (1879 to 1962) was a German jurist and Nazi politician who served as Chief of the Reich Chancellery under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1945. Born in Lublinitz in Upper Silesia, he studied law at Breslau and Heidelberg, took a doctorate in 1904 and was appointed a district court judge at Beuthen in 1912. After losing an eye in the First World War he joined the German National People's Party, returned to the law and by 1922 was an undersecretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. He joined the Nazi Party in 1932, became head of the Reich Chancellery on the Nazi seizure of power and chief legal adviser to all government departments, was raised to Reichsminister in 1937 and sat on the Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich from 1939. He lost influence to Martin Bormann, was tried in the Ministries Trial, and was sentenced in 1949 to twenty years in prison, later reduced to ten, and released in December 1951.