1918, with their internees being repatriated to Germany after the Armistice between Russia and the Central Powers had been signed, Freisler for a brief period became attached in some way to the Red Guards, though this is not supported by any known documentary evidence. Another possibility is that after the Russian Revolution the description "Commissar" was merely an administrative title given by the Bolshevik authority for anyone employed in an administrative post in the prison camps without the political connotations that the title later acquired. However, in the early days of his Nazi Party career in the 1920s, Freisler was a part of the movement's left wing. In the late 1930s, during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the Soviet Union, Freisler attended the Moscow Trials to watch the proceedings against the condemned. Freisler later rejected any insinuation that he had ever co-operated with the Soviets, the ideological nemesis of Nazi Germany, but his subsequent career as a political official in Germany was overshadowed by rumours about his time as a "Commissar" with the "Reds". Post-war legal career He returned to Germany in 1919 to complete his law studies at the University of Jena, and qualified as a Doctor of Law in 1922. From 1924, he worked as a solicitor in Kassel, and was also elected as a city councillor as a member of the Völkisch-Sozialer Block ("People's Social Block"), an ultranationalist splinter party. He joined the Nazi Party in July 1925 as Member #9679, and gained authority immediately within the organisation by using his legal training to defend members of it who were regularly facing prosecutions for acts of political violence. As the Party transitioned from a fringe political beer-hall and street fighting movement into a political party, Freisler was elected to the Prussian Landtag, and later he became a Member of the Reichstag. In 1927, Karl Weinrich, a Nazi member of the Prussian Landtag along with Freisler, characterised his then reputation in the rapidly expanding Nazi movement in the late 1920s: "Rhetorically Freisler is equal to our best speakers, if not superior; particularly on the broad masses he has influence, but thinking people mostly reject him. Party Comrade Freisler is usable as only a speaker though and is unsuitable for any position of authority because of his unreliablity and moodiness." Career in Nazi Germany In February 1933, after Hitler had seized power over the German state, Freisler was appointed