About Walther Funk
Walther Immanuel Funk (18 August 1890 – 31 May 1960) was a German economist, Nazi official and convicted war criminal who served as Reichsminister for the Economy from 1938 to 1945 and president of the Reichsbank from 1939 to 1945. Funk oversaw the mobilization of the economy for Germany's rearmament and World War II, and the expropriation of assets of victims from Nazi concentration camps. He was convicted for crimes against humanity by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Funk was a finance journalist before joining the Nazi Party in 1931 and being appointed to a senior post at the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Funk was appointed as economics minister by Adolf Hitler to replace Hjalmar Schacht, as well as a member of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich and the Central Planning Board. Funk served as economics minister for nearly all of World War II until he was removed on 5 May 1945 after being left out of the Flensburg Government. Funk was tried and convicted as a major war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg after the war and sentenced to life in prison. Funk was incarcerated in West Berlin until he was released on health grounds in 1957 and died three years later. Funk, who was a nationalist and anti-Marxist, resigned from the Berliner Börsenzeitung in the summer of 1931 and joined the Nazi Party, becoming close to Gregor Strasser, who arranged his first meeting with Adolf Hitler. He said that when he first came into contact with Funk at Nuremberg "he looked extremely worn and downcast." But "Funk reasoned skillfully and in a way that stirred my pity" in the witness box.
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