Lagi and Johanna were placed at the mercy of Roland Freisler, judge-president of Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court), one of the participants at the Wannsee Conference in 1942 which established the operations of the Holocaust. The Sondergericht or special court was established in 1934 by Hitler who had been angry at the outcome of the trials that had followed the Reichstag fire. Freisler became judge-president, known for wild temper tantrums and screaming fits. Few people who appeared before him survived. Around 2600 people were killed on his orders. He specified the manner; hanging or death by fallbeil, the German variation on the guillotine. Others were shot. American correspondent William Shirer described Freisler as ‘perhaps the most sinister and bloodthirsty Nazi in the Third Reich after Heydrich’ and ‘a vile, vituperative maniac’. Nazi chief public prosecutor Ernst Lautz presented Johanna with the treason indictment. She would appear before Freisler on 1 July 1944 along with Thadden, Irmgard Zarden and the diplomats Hilger van Scherpenberg and Otto Kiep. Lagi was not charged, perhaps because she had not been at most of the circle meeting the Gestapo infiltrator had attended. Minutes before the trial, Irmgard Zarden was introduced to a lawyer.
‘You know that I can’t do anything for you,’ he said and sat in a corner of the courtroom, saying nothing and charging 800 Reichsmark.
Gestapo spy Reckzeh was in court to give evidence. The three women and two men accused sat in a row. Freisler, in red robes, wanted to hear their life stories from them, without the good points.
‘The whole procedure was a charade and had nothing to do with a legal trial,’ Zarden said.
Johanna was accused of instructing Reckzeh on how to begin peace negotiations with the Allies. She replied that if she had wanted to do that she would have found a better messenger.
‘You called our treatment of the Jews inhuman?’ Freisler said.
‘Yes.’
What had Wilhelm Solf’s political ideology had been: ‘He was a humanitarian: he tried to be a good Christian, he served his country and helped his fellow men.’
‘Then he was a liberal?’
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