the Cabinet as a Reich Minister (without portfolio). August 1943: Karl Hermann Frank is granted cabinet rank as Minister of State for the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. September 1943: Speer's ministerial authority is extended to cover the entire German war industry, and is elevated to Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. January 1944: Dönitz accepts the Golden Party Badge and becomes a member of the Nazi Party. April 1944: Backe becomes Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. April 1945: Göring and Lammers forced to resign from the cabinet. End of cabinet The last meeting of Hitler's cabinet took place on 5 February 1938. As the Third Reich government was disintegrating at the end of the Second World War and following Hitler's death on 30 April 1945, it was succeeded by the short-lived Goebbels Cabinet, which was itself replaced on 2 May by the Cabinet of Schwerin von Krosigk commonly known as the Flensburg Government. Postwar indictment and result of prosecutions As part of the Reichsregierung (Reich Government) the Reich Cabinet was indicted as a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal. It was ultimately adjudged at the conclusion of the Nuremberg trials not to be a criminal organization. With regard to the individual members, by the fall of the Nazi regime in May 1945 five members of the Reich Cabinet had committed suicide (Hitler, Bormann, Himmler, Goebbels & Rust). Six others had already died (von Eltz-Rübenach, von Fritsch, Gürtner, Kerrl, Röhm & Todt). However, 15 surviving members of the Cabinet were individually indicted and tried for war crimes by the IMT along with Martin Bormann who was tried in absentia as he was thought to be still alive. Eight were sentenced to death (Bormann, Hans Frank, Frick, Göring, Keitel, von Ribbentrop, Rosenberg & Seyss-Inquart) six were imprisoned (Dönitz, Funk, Hess, von Neurath, Raeder & Speer) and two (Schacht & von Papen) were acquitted. An additional four Cabinet members (Darré, Lammers, Meissner & Schwerin von Krosigk) were tried by a US military court in the subsequent Ministries Trial; all but Meissner were convicted and imprisoned. One (Schlegelberger) was tried in the Judges' Trial and imprisoned. One (Karl Hermann Frank) was tried by a Czech court and sentenced to death. Another five (Backe, von Blomberg, von Brauchitsch, Seldte & Thierack) died in Allied custody before being brought to trial. Finally, the remaining cabinet members, including some of those acquitted in the Allied