Presidency of the People's Court On 20 August 1942, Hitler promoted Otto Georg Thierack to Reich Justice Minister, replacing the retiring Schlegelberger, and named Freisler to succeed Thierack as president of the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof). This court had jurisdiction over a broad array of political offences, including black marketeering, work slowdowns and defeatism. These actions were viewed by Freisler as Wehrkraftzersetzung (undermining defensive capability) and were punished severely, with many death sentences. The People's Court under Freisler's domination almost always sided with the prosecuting authority, to the point that being brought before it was tantamount to a capital charge. Its separate administrative existence beyond the ordinary judicial system, despite its trappings, rapidly turned it into an executive execution arm and psychological domestic terror weapon of Nazi Germany's totalitarian regime, in the tradition of a revolutionary tribunal rather than a court of law. He chaired the First Senate of the People's Court wearing a blood scarlet judicial robe, in a hearing chamber bedecked with scarlet swastika-draped banners and a large black sculpted bust of Adolf Hitler's head upon a high pedestal behind his chair, opening each hearing session with the Nazi salute from the bench. He acted as prosecutor, judge and jury combined, and also as his own recorder, thereby controlling the record of the written grounds for the sentences that he passed. The frequency of death sentences rose sharply under Freisler's rule. Approximately 90% of all cases that came before him ended in guilty verdicts. Between 1942 and 1945, more than 5,000 death sentences were decreed by him, 2,600 of these through the court's First Senate, which Freisler controlled. He was responsible in his three years on the court for as many death sentences as all other senate sessions of the court combined in the court's existence between 1934 and 1945. Freisler became known during this period for berating each member of the steady stream of defendants passing before him. He was known to be interested in Andrei Vyshinsky, the Chief Prosecutor of the Soviet purge trials, and had attended those show-trials to watch Vyshinsky's courtroom performances in a similar capacity in Moscow in 1938. White Rose show-trials On February 18, 1943, Sophie Scholl and Hans Scholl were captured by the Gestapo. Through questioning, it became clear that the two siblings were part of a resistance group called the White Rose that was attempting to sow discord in Germany by