Otto Georg Thierack

Otto Georg Thierack (1889 to 1946) was a German jurist and Nazi politician who headed the Nazi justice system as Reich Minister of Justice from 1942 to 1945. Born in Wurzen in Saxony, he served as a volunteer in the First World War, resumed his law studies and passed his assessor examination in 1920, and joined the Nazi Party in 1932 as leader of the party's jurists' organization. Appointed Saxony's justice minister in 1933, he became vice president of the Reich Court in 1935 and president of the People's Court in 1936, a post he held until August 1942, when Roland Freisler succeeded him. As Reich Minister of Justice he introduced the monthly Richterbriefe to steer judges' decisions, shortened clemency proceedings for those sentenced to death and had prisoners classed as asocial transferred to Himmler to be worked to death, and Hitler's political testament named him to continue in office. He killed himself in 1946 before he could face the Nuremberg Judges' Trial.