Talk:Wilhelm Frick

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
MILHIST This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.

"He was minister post until August 1943." It is unclear what is meant.
S.

Contents

[edit] Only One Not to Testify?

I thought Hess also refused to testify.

It seems like it's a lot more complicated then that:
His last words before the tribunal were, "I have no regrets." For decades he was addressed only as prisoner number seven. Throughout the investigations prior to trial Hess claimed amnesia, insisting that he had no memory of his role in the Nazi Party. He went on to pretend not to recognise even Hermann Göring — who was as convinced as the psychiatric team that Hess had lost his mind. Hess then addressed the court, several weeks into hearing evidence, to announce that his memory had returned — thereby destroying what would likely have been a strong defence of diminished responsibility. He later confessed to having enjoyed pulling the wool over the eyes of the investigative psychiatric team.
I guess you could say he refused to testify since it sounds like he probably didn't testify by his own violition but he confused people to do so it probably wasn't a simple refusal Nil Einne (talk) 20:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 1924

How could he have entered the Nazi Party in 1924 if it was dormant at that time?

[edit] Additional Details

The article seems to be pretty sparse with respect to the detail of Frick's activities. For example, although it mentions his connection with the Enabling Law and the infamous Nuremberg Laws, it omits one decree that was largely his personal handiwork - the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. This was issued by Frick in July 1933, and led directly to the extermination of mentally and physically handicapped people. Originally the decree called for compulsory sterilisation, but as the Nazis consolidated their power, sterilisation was eventually replaced by outright murder. He was further implicated in personal inspections of Nazi medical experimentation upon human beings.

He was also responsible for assorted anti-Jewish measures directly, such as the 'Aryanisation' of the Civil Service, and as a more general contributor to the Nazi conspiracy, he was directly responsible for the abolition of civil liberties, the end of the right of free assembly, and the end of the privacy of the postal and telephone services. Although as a result of internal power struggles, his authority weakened with time, it was Frick who, in name at least (though later not in fact), was the superior official to Himmler, and whose Ministry of the Interior directly governed concentration camps and extermination camps, which Frick personally inspected. Frick contributed to the end of civil liberties further with the issuing of the decree covering so-caled 'protective custody', under which opponents of the régime were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps. The underlying cynicism of many of Frick's pseudo-legal decress no doubt echoed that of Hitler himself.

Frick was also involved in the curious early history of the Nazi Party, at a time when Hitler, having renounced his Austrian citizenship, was stateless. Frick was responsible for various schemes to confer German citizenship on Hitler by securing him employment in the State apparatus.

A considerable body of detailed coverage of Frick's in-depth activites can be found here: [1]

[edit] Image:Deadwilhelmfrick.jpg

Do we really need this graphic image of Frick's corpse in this article? It'd be okay with me if there were some warning in the text above that or if it were only linked and not displayed inline. But please, think of the more sensitive readers that might be offended. (I am aware of that many other articles of the Nuremberg defendants contain pictures of the executed, but none of them is as gruesome as this one with the blood on his face and his facial expression...) --Adolar von Csobánka (Talk) 23:07, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


I agree, that image is highly disturbing. -Hellkyte

[edit] Police forces

Wilhelm Frick, as Minister of the Interior, did not control German police forces, which were under the control of the Ministers of the Interior of the individual German States. I will correct this in 48 hours in the absence of adverse comment.--Anthony.bradbury 20:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dead guy image

I removed the image of the corpse, because no one disputed that it was more disturbing than useful above (and the point was also made on the reference desk). I encourage anyone to revert boldly if you feel it is somehow useful or encyclopedic; I do not want to discourage discussion or the forming of a fuller consensus. Faithfully, Deltopia (talk) 20:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I reverted it as I think removing disturbing encyclopedic content from WWII articles is hopeless and counterproductive. Plus, I remember as a kid that seeing stuff like that was a big draw to reading reference material. :)
I don't object to putting one of those "click here to see something ooky" boxes around it, but I don't know how to do that. --Sean 21:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Your reversion was quite justified. There are similar pictures of other dead Nazi leaders. And if we start removing pictures we personally do not like where would it end? Clio the Muse (talk) 00:29, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I also vote that the image be put back. However, isn't there already a wikipolicy on this sort of thing? We have images of much worse, this image isn't all that bad. Imagine if it was in color? Rfwoolf (talk) 01:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I concur--it's a powerful historical image, completely germane to the subject of the article. "Gross and disturbing" is not a compelling reason to remove, as long as the image has strong relevance and adds value to the article.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 02:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)


"Gross and disturbing" is absolutely a compelling reason to remove an image -- see here for a discussion on the Goatse.cx talk page (neither of those links should actually contain a disturbing picture). I know that's a little extreme an example, but it demonstrates the principle that if a picture is icky enough, we can cut it. In this instance, I took as evidence that the picture was disturbing both the comments in the section above, the note on WP:RD/H -- and to be real honest, I don't think it adds anything to this article. That said, consensus means someone gets voted down, so if all of y'all agree that it's cool and useful, I will go along with it... Faithfully, Deltopia (talk) 14:48, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
There is a long-standing consensus that Wikipedia is not censored and that accordingly, we decide to include or exclude images only on their encyclopedic merits, and not according to their impact on people's sensitivities (compare Talk:Muhammad/FAQ). I think that Image:Deadwilhelmfrick.jpg is perfectly appropriate for illustrating the last stage in the career, so to speak, of this person, and should remain in the article. Sandstein (talk) 22:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
to Deltopia: Goatse is a bad example. Unlike this picture, it was "gross" for the sake of being gross; also, if people want to look at that image, it's all over the web; just Google it. None of that is the case with this picture. The photo of dead Frick has a certain educational value, though we can debate how great that value is.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 01:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I have no problem with pictures of dead people per se, but I'm worried that the inclusion of this one is POV. If we had a photo of Amelia Earhart's (for instance) corpse washed up on a tropical beach with crabs eating her eyes, would we use it at the end of the article? No. The reason such a picture is being allowed here is that the bastard got what was coming to him. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is at least a paragraph on how evil the Nazis were. However evil the Nazis were, such a paragraph would not be allowed as unencyclopedic POV. (Don't get me wrong, I wish we could hang the bastard again.) --Milkbreath (talk) 11:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I think it's perfectly enc to show that WWII was a grim business to the bitter end. It's not about gloating that a Nazi got what was coming to him, but rather illustrating another gruesome facet of the bloodiest event in history. --Sean 18:30, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Do we have equally graphic pictures of dead Allied soldiers? (We shouldn't, IMO; the victors get to write the history and we should indulge that, but that is not an encyclopedic opinion.) I'm sure we could find some if we looked around. Would they be encyclopedic? But we don't, usually, show pictures of dead people because they are morbid, often grotesque, and never in good taste. (Ulysses S. Grant doesn't even have a picture of his tomb! And that article is ridiculously long, so we shouldn't add one!) A picture is -not- worth a thousand words, and no one who has read the 23d Psalm or the Gettysburg Address honestly believes that -- if we need to depict, encyclopedically, that Frick hanged and it was gross, we can just write that in the article. The image is a gross picture because we like gross and humiliating pictures, which is why we have Paris Hilton; it's prurient and I think it's worthless. I'll stop ranting now. Faithfully, Deltopia (talk) 03:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
There would be many people who would argue, disgusting as this guy may have been, he didn't deserve to die in that way and the photo highlights that it was a disgusting act and rather then parading him it serves to highlight that while the people who caught him were perhaps better then him, they definitely weren't perfect since they did something like this to him Nil Einne (talk) 09:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notice

This issue is the subject of further debate here.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 15:19, 24 February 2008 (UTC)