Hans Michael Frank was a German politician, war criminal and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Frank in 1939
Head of the General Government in occupied Poland
Announcement of the execution of 50 Polish hostages as a reprisal for blowing up railway lines near Warsaw
Frank visiting Stanislau (now Ivano-Frankivsk). Ukrainian nationalists parade in the streets of the city, October 1941
The General Government, formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region, was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovakia and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II. The newly occupied Second Polish Republic was split into three zones: the General Government in its centre, Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in the west, and Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union in the east. The territory was expanded substantially in 1941, after the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, to include the new District of Galicia. The area of the Generalgouvernement roughly corresponded with the Austrian part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.
Hans Frank, head of the General Government, at a police parade in Kraków during the German occupation of Poland
Official proclamation of the General-Government in Poland by Germany, October 1939
Hans Frank with district administrators in 1942 – from left: Ernst Kundt, Ludwig Fischer, Hans Frank, Otto Wächter, Ernst Zörner, Richard Wendler
Announcement of the execution of 60 Polish hostages and a list of 40 new hostages taken by Nazi authorities in Poland, 1943
