1) Spoliations in Tunisia. The Germans went into Tunisia on 10 November
1942 and were driven out by the Allied Armies in May 1943. During this
period they indulged in numerous acts of spoliation.
THE PRESIDENT: Do you think that it is necessary to go into details of
the seizures in this part of the country if they are of the same sort as
those in other parts of the country?
M. GERTHOFFER: Mr. President, it is similar; there is only one
difference, and that concerns the amount. I believe the principle cannot
be contested by anyone; therefore I shall go on.
Gentlemen, I shall also pass over the question of compulsory labor. I
shall conclude my summary, however, by pointing out to the Tribunal that
French economy suffered enormous losses from the deportation of workers,
a subject which was discussed by my colleague. We have calculated the
losses in working hours and we estimate—and this will be my only
remark—that French economy lost 12,550 million working hours through
the deportation of workers, a figure which does not include the number
of workers who were more or less forced to work for the Germans in
enterprises in France.
If you will permit me, gentlemen, I shall conclude this presentation
concerning France by giving you a general review of the situation; and I
shall refer once more to Hemmen, the economic dictator who actually
ruined my country upon the orders of his masters, the defendants. While
in the first five reports submitted, despite their apparently technical
nature, the author shows the assurance of the victor who can allow
himself to do anything, in the last report of 15 December 1944 at
Salzburg, the only one I shall refer to, Hemmen sought visibly, while
giving his work a technical quality, to plead the case of Germany—that
of his Nazi masters and his own case. He only succeeded, however, in
bringing forth unwittingly an implacable accusation against the
nefarious work with which he was entrusted. Here are some short
extracts, gentlemen, of Hemmen’s final report.
On Page 1 of his report, Page 2 of the French text, he implied the
co-responsibility of the German leaders, and Göring particularly. He
writes as follows:
“According to the directives formulated on 5 July 1940 by the
Reich Marshal and Delegate of the Four Year Plan, concerning the
existing legal situation, the Armistice Convention does not give
us rights in the economic domain of the unoccupied parts of
France, not even when loosely interpreted.”
A little farther on he admits blackmail with regard; to the demarcation
line with these words (Page 3 of the translation):
“The Pétain Government manifested from the beginning a strong
desire to re-establish rapidly the destroyed economy by means of
German support and to find work for the French population in
order to avoid the threat of unemployment, but above all to
reunite the two French zones, separated by the demarcation line,
into a unified economic and administrative territory. They were
at the same time willing to bring this territory into line with
German economic direction, under French management, thoroughly
reorganizing it according to the German model.”
Then Hemmen adds:
“In return for considerable relaxations regarding the
demarcation line, the Armistice Delegation has come to an
agreement with the French Government to introduce into French
legislation the German law, relating to foreign currency.”
Farther on, concerning pressure, on Page 4, and Page 7 of the
translation, Hemmen wrote:
“Thereby the automatic rise of prices aggravated by the
unchecked development of the black market was felt all the more
strongly, since wages were forcibly fixed.”
I pass over the passage in which Hemmen speaks of French resistance.
However, I should like to point out to the Tribunal that, on Page
13—Page 29 of the translation—Hemmen tries to show through financial
evaluations and most questionable arguments that the cost of the war per
head was heavier for the Germans than for the French. He himself
destroys with one word the whole system of defense which he had built up
by writing at the end of his bold calculations that from autumn 1940 to
February 1944 the cost of living increased 166 percent in France, while
in Germany it increased only 7 percent. Now, gentlemen, it is, I am
quite sure, through the increase in the cost of living that one measures
the impoverishment of a country.
Last of all, on Page 4, and this is my last quotation from the Hemmen
report, he admits the German crime in these terms:
“Through the removal, for years, of considerable quantities of
merchandise of every kind without economic compensation, a
perceptible decrease in substance had resulted with a
corresponding increase in monetary circulation, which had led
ever more noticeably, to the phenomena of inflation and
especially to a devaluation of money and a lowering of the
purchasing power.”
These material losses, we may say, can be repaired. Through work and
saving we can re-establish, in a more or less distant future, the
economic situation of the country. That is true, but there is one thing
which can never be repaired—the results of privations upon the physical
state of the population.
If the other German crimes, such as deportations, murders, massacres,
make one shudder with horror, the crime which consisted of deliberately
starving whole populations is no less odious.
In the occupied countries, in France particularly, many persons died
solely because of undernourishment and because of lack of heat. It was
estimated that people require from 3,000 to 3,500 calories a day and
heavy laborers about 4,000. From the beginning of the rationing in
September 1940 only 1,800 calories per day per person were distributed.
Successively the ration decreased to 1,700 calories in 1942, then to
1,500, and finally fell to 1,220 and 900 calories a day for adults and
to 1,380 and 1,300 for heavy laborers; old persons were given only 850
calories a day. But the true situation was still worse than the ration
theoretically allotted through ration cards; in fact, frequently a
certain number of coupons were not honored.
The Germans could not fail to recognize the disastrous situation as far
as public health was concerned, since they themselves estimated in the
course of the war of 1914-1918 that the distribution of 1,700 calories a
day was a “regime of slow starvation, leading to death.”
What aggravated the situation still more was the quality of the rations
which were distributed. Bread was of the poorest quality; milk, when
there was any, was skimmed to the point where the fat content amounted
to only 3 percent. The small amount of meat given to the population was
of bad quality. Fish had disappeared from the market. If we add to that
an almost total lack of clothing, shoes, and fuel, and the fact that
frequently neither schools nor hospitals were heated, one may easily
understand what the physical condition of the population was.
Incurable sicknesses such as tuberculosis developed and will continue to
extend their ravages for many years. The growth of children and
adolescents is seriously impaired. The future of the race is a cause for
the greatest concern. The results of economic spoliation will be felt
for an indefinite period.
THE PRESIDENT: Could you tell me what evidence you have for your figures
of calories?
M. GERTHOFFER: I am going to show you this at the end of my
presentation. It is a report of a professor at the Medical School of
Paris who has been specially commissioned by the Dean of the University
to make a report on the results of undernourishment. I will quote it at
the end of my statement. I am almost there.
The results of this economic spoliation will be felt for an indefinite
length of time. The exhaustion is such that, despite the generous aid
brought by the United Nations, the situation of the occupied countries,
taken as a whole, is still alarming. In fact, the complete absence of
stocks, the insufficiency of the means of production and of transport,
the reduction of livestock and the economic disorganization, do not
permit the allotting of sufficient rations at this time. This poverty,
which strikes all occupied countries, can disappear only gradually over
a long period of time, the length of which no one can yet determine.
If in certain rich agricultural regions the producers were able during
the occupation to have and still do have a privileged situation from the
point of view of food supply, the same is not true in the poorer regions
nor in urban districts. If we consider that in France the urban
population is somewhat more numerous than the rural population, we can
state clearly that the great majority of the French population was
subject to and still remains subject to a food regime definitely
insufficient.
Professor Guy Laroche, delegated by the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
of Paris to study the consequences of undernourishment in France as a
result of German requisitions, has just sent a report on this question.
I do not wish to prolong my explanation by reading the entire report. I
shall ask the Tribunal’s permission to quote the conclusion, which I
submit as Document Number RF-264(bis). I received the whole report only
a few days ago. It is submitted in its entirety, but I have not been
able to have 50 copies made of it. Two copies have been made and are
being submitted. Here are Dr. Laroche’s conclusions:
“We see how great the crime of rationing was, which was imposed
by the Germans upon the French during the occupation period from
1940 to 1944. It is difficult to give exact figures for the
number of human lives lost due to excessive rationing. We would
need general statistics and these we have been unable to
establish.
“Nevertheless, without overestimating, we may well believe that,
including patients in institutions, the loss of human life from
1940 to 1944 reached at least 150,000 persons. We must add a
great number of cases which were not fatal, of physical and
mental decline often incurable, of retarded development in
children, and so forth.
“We think that three conclusions can be drawn from this report,
which of course is incomplete:
“1.) The German occupation authorities deliberately sacrificed
the lives of patients in institutions and hospitals.
“2.) From the way everything happened it seemed as if they had
wished to organize, in a rational and scientific fashion, the
decline of the health of adolescents and adults.
“3.) Suckling babies and young children received a normal
ration; it is probable that this privileged position is
explained by the fact that the Nazi leaders hoped to spread
their doctrine more easily among beings who would not have known
any other conditions of life and who would, because of a planned
education, have accepted their doctrine, for they knew they
could not expect to convince adolescents and adults except
through force.”
The report is signed by Professor Guy Laroche.
This report, gentlemen, has attached to it a photograph, which you will
find at the end of the document book. I beg to hand it to you. The
unfortunate beings that you see in that picture are not the victims of a
concentration or reprisal camp. They are simply the patients of an
asylum in the outskirts of Paris who fell into this state of physical
weakness as a result of undernourishment. If these men had had the diet
of the asylum prior to rationing, they would have been as strong as
normal people. Unfortunately for them they were reduced to the official
rationing and were unable to obtain the slightest supplement.
Do not let adversaries say: “But the German people are just as badly
off!”
I should reply that, in the first place, this is not true. The German
did not suffer cold for four years; he was not undernourished. On the
contrary, he was well-fed, warmly clothed, warmly housed, with products
stolen from the occupied countries, leaving only the minimum necessary
for existence for the peoples of these countries.
Remember, gentlemen, the words of Göring when he said: “If famine is to
reign, it will not reign in Germany.”
Secondly I should say to my adversaries if they made such an objection:
The Germans and their Nazi leaders wanted the war which they launched,
but they had no right to starve other peoples in order to carry out
their attempt at world domination. If today they are in a difficult
situation, it is the result of their own behavior; and they seem to me
to have no right to take recourse to the famous sentence: “I did not
want that.”
I am coming to the end of my statement. If you will permit me,
gentlemen, I will conclude in two minutes the whole of this presentation
by reminding the Tribunal in a few words what the premeditated crime
was, of which the German leaders have been accused, from the economic
point of view.
The application of racial and living space theories was bound to
engender an economic situation which could not be solved and force the
Nazi leaders to war.
In a modern society because of the division of labor, of its
concentration, and of its scientific organization, the concept of
national capital takes on more and more a primary importance, whatever
may be the social principles of its distribution between nationals, or
its possession in all or in part by states.
Now, a national capital, public or private, is constituted by the joint
effort of the labor and the savings of successive generations.
Saving, or the putting into reserve of the products of labor as a result
of deprivations freely consented to, must exist in proportion to the
needs of the concentration of the industrial enterprises of the country.
In Germany, a country highly-industrialized, this equilibrium did not
exist. In fact, the expenditures, private or public, of that country
surpassed its means; saving was insufficient. The establishment of a
system of obligatory savings was formulated only through the creation of
new taxes and has never replaced true savings.
As a result of the war of 1914-1918, after having freed herself of the
burden of reparations (and I must point out that two-thirds of the sum
remained charged to France as far as this country is concerned),
Germany, who had established her gold reserve in 1926, began a policy of
foreign loans and spent without counting the cost. Finding it impossible
to keep her agreements, she found no more creditors.
After Hitler’s accession to power her policy became more definite. She
isolated herself in a closed economic system, utilizing all her
resources for the preparation of a war which would permit her, or at
least that is what she hoped, to take through force the property of her
western neighbors and then to turn against the Soviet Union in the hope
of exploiting, for her profit, the immense wealth of that great country.
It is the application of the theories formulated in _Mein Kampf_, which
had as a corollary the enslavement and then the extermination of the
populations of conquered countries.
In the course of the occupation the invaded nations were systematically
pillaged and brutally enslaved; and this would have permitted Germany to
obtain her war aims, that is to say, to take the patrimony of the
invaded countries and to exterminate their populations gradually, if the
valor of the United Nations had not delivered them. Instead of becoming
enriched from the looted property, Germany had to sink it into a war
which she had provoked, right up to the very moment of her collapse.
Such actions, knowingly perpetrated and executed by the German leaders
contrary to international law and particularly contrary to the Hague
Convention, as well as the general principles of penal law in force in
all civilized nations, constitute War Crimes for which they must answer
before your high jurisdiction.
Mr. President, I should like to add that the French Prosecution had
intended to present a statement on the pillage of works of art in the
occupied countries of western Europe. But this question has already been
discussed in two briefs of our American colleagues, briefs which seem to
us to establish beyond any question the responsibility of the
defendants. In order not to prolong the hearing, the French Prosecution
feels that it is its duty to refrain from presenting this question
again; but we remain respectfully at the disposal of the Tribunal in
case, in the course of the trial, they feel they need further
information on this question.
The presentation of the French Prosecution is concluded. I shall give
the floor to Captain Sprecher of the American Delegation, who will make
a statement on the responsibility of the Defendant Fritzsche.
CAPTAIN DREXEL A. SPRECHER (Assistant Trial Counsel for the United
States): May it please the Tribunal, I notice that Dr. Fritz, the
defendant’s attorney, is not here; and in view of the late hour, it
would be agreeable if we hold it over until tomorrow.
THE PRESIDENT: It is 5 o’clock now, so we shall adjourn in any event
now.
[_The Tribunal adjourned until 23 January 1946 at 1000 hours._]
FORTY-FIRST DAY
Wednesday, 23 January 1946
_Morning Session_
CAPT. SPRECHER: May it please the Tribunal, it is my responsibility and
my privilege to present today the case on the individual responsibility
of the Defendant Hans Fritzsche for Crimes against Peace, War Crimes,
and Crimes against Humanity as they relate directly to the Common Plan
or Conspiracy.
With the permission of the Tribunal, it is planned to make this
presentation in three principal divisions:
First, a short listing of the various positions held by the Defendant
Fritzsche in the Nazi State.
Second, a discussion of Fritzsche’s conspiratorial activities within the
Propaganda Ministry from 1933 through the attack on the Soviet Union.
Third, a discussion of Fritzsche’s connection, as a Nazi propagandist,
to the atrocities and the ruthless occupation policy which formed a part
of the Common Plan or Conspiracy.
In listing Fritzsche’s positions, it is not intended at first to
describe the functions of these positions. Later on, in describing some
of Fritzsche’s conspiratorial acts, I shall take up a discussion of some
of these positions which he held.
Fritzsche’s Party membership and his various positions in the propaganda
apparatus of the Nazi State are shown by two affidavits by Fritzsche
himself: Document Number 2976-PS, which is already in evidence as
Exhibit USA-20; and Document Number 3469-PS, which I offer in evidence
as Exhibit USA-721. Both of these affidavits have been put into the four
working languages of this Tribunal.
Fritzsche became a member of the Nazi Party on the 1st of May 1933, and
he continued to be a member until the collapse in 1945. Fritzsche began
his services with the staff of the Reich Ministry for Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda, hereinafter referred to as the Propaganda
Ministry, on the 1st of May 1933; and he remained within the Propaganda
Ministry until the Nazi downfall.
Before the Nazis seized political power in Germany and beginning in
September 1932, Fritzsche was head of the Wireless News Service
(Drahtloser Dienst), an agency of the Reich Government at that time
under the Defendant Von Papen. After the Wireless News Service was
incorporated into the Propaganda Ministry of Dr. Goebbels in May 1933,
Fritzsche continued as its head until the year 1938. Upon entering the
Propaganda Ministry in May 1933, Fritzsche also became head of the news
section of the Press Division of the Propaganda Ministry. He continued
in this position until 1937. In the summer of 1938, Fritzsche was
appointed deputy to one Alfred Ingemar Berndt, who was then head of the
German Press Division.
The German Press Division, in the Indictment, is called the Home Press
Division. Since “German Press Division” seems to be a more literal
translation, we have called it the German Press Division throughout this
presentation. It is sometimes otherwise known as the Domestic Press
Division. We shall show later that this division was the major section
of the Press Division of the Reich Cabinet.
Now in December 1938 Fritzsche succeeded Berndt as the head of the
German Press Division. Between 1938 and November 1942 Fritzsche was
promoted three times. He advanced in title from Superior Government
Counsel to Ministerial Counsel, then to Ministerialdirigent, and finally
to Ministerialdirektor.
In November 1942 Fritzsche was relieved of his position as head of the
German Press Division by Dr. Goebbels and accepted from Dr. Goebbels a
newly created position in the Propaganda Ministry, that of
Plenipotentiary for the Political Organization of the Greater German
Radio. At the same time he also became head of the Radio Division of the
Propaganda Ministry. He held both these positions in radio until the
Nazi downfall.
There are two allegations of the Indictment concerning Fritzsche’s
positions for which we are unable to offer proof. These allegations
appear at Page 34 of the English translation.
The first unsupported allegation states that Fritzsche was
“Editor-in-Chief of the official German News Agency (Deutsches
Nachrichtenbüro).” The second unsupported allegation states that
Fritzsche was “head of the Radio Division of the Propaganda Department
of the Nazi Party.” Fritzsche denies having held either of these
positions, in his affidavit, and therefore these two allegations must
fall for want of proof.
Before discussing the documentation of the case I wish, in passing, to
state my appreciation for the assistance of Mr. Norbert Halpern, Mr.
Alfred Booth, and Lieutenant Niebergall, who sits at my right, for their
assistance in research, analysis, and translation.
The Tribunal will note the relative shortness of this document book. It
has been marked as Document Book MM. It contains only 32 pages, which
have been numbered consecutively in red pencil for your convenience. The
shortness of the documentation on this particular case is possible only
because of a long affidavit made by the Defendant Fritzsche, which was
signed by him on the 7th of January 1946.
It seems appropriate to comment on this significant document before
proceeding. It is before Your Honors as Document Number 3469-PS,
beginning at document book Page 19. As I said, it has been translated
into the four working languages of this proceeding.
This affidavit contains materials which have been extracted from
interrogations of Fritzsche and many materials which Fritzsche
volunteered to give himself, upon request made by me, through his
Defense Counsel, Dr. Fritz. Some of the portions of the final affidavit
were originally typed or handwritten by the Defendant Fritzsche himself
during this Trial or during the holiday recess. All these materials were
finally incorporated into one single affidavit.
This affidavit contains Fritzsche’s account of the events which led to
his entering the Propaganda Ministry and his account of his later
connections with that Ministry. Before Fritzsche made some of the
statements in the affidavit concerning the role of propaganda in
relation to important foreign political events, he was shown
illustrative headlines and articles from the German press at that time,
so that he could refresh his recollection and make more accurate
statements.
It is believed that the Tribunal will desire to consider many portions
of this affidavit independent of this presentation, along with the proof
on the conspirators’ use of propaganda as a principal weapon in the
conspiracy. Some of this proof, you will recall, was submitted by Major
Wallis in the first days of this Trial in connection with Brief E,
entitled “Propaganda, Censorship, and Supervision of the Cultural
Activities,” and the corresponding document book, to which I call the
Tribunal’s attention.
In the Fritzsche affidavit there are a number of statements which I
would say were in the nature of self-serving declarations. With respect
to these, the Prosecution requests only that the Tribunal consider them
in the light of the whole conspiracy and the indisputable facts which
appear throughout the Record. The Prosecution did not feel, either as a
matter of expediency or of fairness, that it should request Fritzsche,
through his defense lawyer, Dr. Fritz, to remove some of these
self-serving declarations at this time and submit them later in
connection with his defense.
Since I shall refer to this affidavit at numerous times throughout the
presentation, perhaps the members of the Tribunal will wish to place a
special marker in their document book.
By referring to Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the affidavit, the Tribunal will
note that Fritzsche first became a successful journalist in the service
of the Hugenberg Press, the most important chain of newspaper
enterprises in pre-Nazi Germany. The Hugenberg concern owned papers of
its own, but primarily it was important because it served newspapers
which principally supported the so-called “national” parties of the
Reich, including the NSDAP.
In Paragraph 5 of his affidavit Fritzsche relates that in September
1932, when the Defendant Von Papen was Reich Chancellor, he was made
head of the Wireless News Service, replacing someone who was politically
unbearable to the Papen regime. The Wireless News Service, I might say,
was a government agency for spreading news by radio.
Fritzsche began making radio broadcasts at about this time with very
great success, a success which Goebbels recognized and was later to
exploit very efficiently on behalf of these Nazi conspirators.
The Nazis seized power on the 30th of January 1933. From Paragraph 10 of
the Fritzsche affidavit we find that that very evening, the 30th of
January 1933, two emissaries from Goebbels visited Fritzsche. One of
them was Dressler-Andress, head of the Radio Division of the NSDAP; the
other was an assistant of Dressler-Andress named Sadila-Mantau. These
two emissaries notified Fritzsche that although Goebbels was angry with
Fritzsche for writing a critical article concerning Hitler, still
Goebbels recognized Fritzsche’s public success on the radio since the
previous fall. They stated further that Goebbels desired to retain
Fritzsche as head of the Wireless News Service on certain conditions:
(1) That Fritzsche discharge all Jews; (2) that he discharge all other
personnel who would not join the NSDAP; and (3) that he employ with the
Wireless News Service the second Goebbels’ emissary, Sadila-Mantau.
Fritzsche refused all these conditions except the hiring of
Sadila-Mantau. This was one of the first ostensible compromises after
the seizure of power which Fritzsche made on his road to the Nazi camp.
Fritzsche continued to make radio broadcasts during this period in which
he supported the National Socialist coalition government then still
existing.
In early 1933 SA troops several times called at the Wireless News
Service and Fritzsche prevented them, with some difficulty, from making
news broadcasts.
In April 1933 Goebbels called the young Fritzsche to him for a personal
audience. At Paragraph 9 of his affidavit, Document Number 3469-PS,
Fritzsche has volunteered the following concerning his prior
relationships with Dr. Goebbels:
“I was acquainted with Dr. Goebbels since 1928. Apparently he
had taken a liking to me, besides the fact that in my press
activities I had always treated the National Socialists in a
friendly way until 1931.
“Already before 1933 Goebbels, who was the editor of _The
Attack_ (_Der Angriff_), Nazi newspaper, had frequently made
flattering remarks about the form and content of my writings,
which I did as contributor of many ‘national’ newspapers and
periodicals, among which were also some of more reactionary
character.”
At the first Goebbels-Fritzsche discussion in early April 1933, Goebbels
informed Fritzsche of his decision to place the Wireless News Service
within the Propaganda Ministry as of 1 May 1933. He suggested that
Fritzsche make certain rearrangements in the personnel which would
remove Jews and other persons who did not support the NSDAP. Fritzsche
debated with Goebbels concerning some of these steps. It must be said
that during this period Fritzsche made some effort to place Jews in
other jobs.
In a second conference with Goebbels, shortly thereafter, Fritzsche
informed Goebbels about the steps he had taken in reorganizing the
Wireless News Service. Goebbels thereupon informed Fritzsche that he
would like to have him reorganize and modernize the entire news services
of Germany within the control of the Propaganda Ministry.
It will be recalled by the Tribunal that on the 17th of March 1933,
approximately two months before this time, the Propaganda Ministry had
been formed by decree, 1933 _Reichsgesetzblatt_, Part I, Page 104, our
Document Number 2029-PS.
Fritzsche was intrigued by the Goebbels offer. He proceeded to conclude
the Goebbels-inspired reorganization of the Wireless News Service; and
on the 1st of May 1933, together with the remaining members of his
staff, he joined the Propaganda Ministry. On this same day he joined the
NSDAP and took the customary oath of unconditional loyalty to the
Führer. From this time on, whatever reservations Fritzsche may have had,
either then or later, to the course of events under the Nazis, Fritzsche
was completely within the Nazi camp. For the next 13 years he assisted
in creating and in using the principal propaganda devices which the
conspirators employed with such telling effect in each of the principal
phases of this conspiracy.
From 1933 until 1942 Fritzsche held one or more positions within the
German Press Division. For 4 years indeed he headed this Division,
during those crucial years 1938 to 1942. That covers the period when the
Nazis undertook actual military invasions of neighboring countries. It
is, therefore, believed appropriate to spell out in some detail, before
this Tribunal, the functions of this German Press Division. These
functions will show the important and unique position of the German
Press Division as an instrument of the Nazi conspirators not only in
dominating the minds and the psychology of Germans through the German
Press Division and through the radio but also as an instrument of
foreign policy and psychological warfare against other nations.
The already broad jurisdiction of the Propaganda Ministry was extended
by a Hitler decree of the 30th of June 1933, found in 1933
_Reichsgesetzblatt_, Part I, Page 449. From that decree I wish to quote
only one sentence. It is found in Document 2030-PS, your document book
Page 3:
“The Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda is
competent for all problems concerning the mental moulding of the
nation, the propaganda for the State, for culture and economy,
and the enlightenment at home and abroad about these questions.
Furthermore, he is in charge of the administration of all
institutions serving these purposes.”
It is important to underline the stated propaganda objective of
“enlightenment at home and abroad.”
For a clear exposition of the general functions of the German Press
Division of the Propaganda Ministry, the Tribunal is referred to
Document Number 2434-PS, document book Page 5. It is offered in evidence
as Exhibit USA-722. This document is an appropriate excerpt from a book
by Georg Wilhelm Müller, a Ministerial Director in the Propaganda
Ministry, of which the Tribunal is asked to take judicial notice.
Fritzsche’s affidavit, Paragraphs 14, 15, and 16, beginning at Page 22
of your document book, contains an exposition of the functions of the
German Press Division, a description which confirms and adds to the
exposition in Müller’s book. Concerning the German Press Division,
Fritzsche’s affidavit states:
“During the whole period from 1933 to 1945 it was the task of
the German Press Division to supervise the entire domestic press
and to provide it with directives by which this division became
an efficient instrument in the hands of the German State
leadership. More than 2,300 German daily newspapers were subject
to control.
“The aim of this supervision and control, in the first years
following 1933, was to change basically the conditions existing
in the press before the seizure of power. That meant the
coordination into the New Order of those newspapers and
periodicals which had been serving capitalistic individual
interests or party politics. While the administrative functions
wherever possible were exercised by the professional
associations and the Reich Press Chamber, the political
direction of the German press was entrusted to the German Press
Division.
“The head of the German Press Division held daily press
conferences in the Ministry for the representatives of all
German newspapers. Thereby all instructions were given to the
representatives of the press. These instructions were
transmitted daily, almost without exception and mostly by
telephone from headquarters by Dr. Otto Dietrich, Reich Press
Chief, in a set text, the so-called ‘Daily Parole of the Reich
Press Chief.’ Before the formulation of this text the head of
the German Press Division submitted to him, Dietrich, the
foremost press wishes expressed by Dr. Goebbels and by other
ministries. This was the case especially with the wishes of the
Foreign Office about which Dr. Dietrich always wanted to make
decisions personally or through his representatives at
headquarters, Helmut Sündermann and chief editor Lorenz.
“The actual interpretation of the direction in detail was thus
left entirely to the individual work of the various editors.
Therefore, it is by no means true that the newspapers and
periodicals were a monopoly of the German Press Division or that
essays and leading articles had to be submitted by them to the
Ministry. Even in war times this happened in exceptional cases
only. The less important newspapers and periodicals which were
not represented at the daily press conferences received their
information in a different way—by providing them either with
ready-made articles and reports, or by confidential printed
instruction. The publications of all other official agencies
were directed and coordinated likewise by the German Press
Division.
“To enable the periodicals to get acquainted with the daily
political problems of newspapers and to discuss these problems
in greater detail, the _Informationskorrespondenz_ was issued
especially for periodicals. Later on it was taken over by the
Periodical Press Division. The German Press Division likewise
was in charge of pictorial reporting insofar as it directed the
employment of pictorial reporters at important events.
“In this way, and conditioned upon the prevailing political
situation, the entire German press was, by the German Press
Division, made a permanent instrument of the Propaganda
Ministry. Thereby, the entire German Press was subordinate to
the political aims of the government. This was exemplified by
the timely limitation and the emphatic presentation of such
press polemics as appeared to be most useful, as shown for
instance in the following themes: The class struggle of the
system era; the Leadership Principle and the authoritarian
state; the party and interest politics of the system era; the
Jewish problem; the conspiracy of world-Jewry; the Bolshevistic
danger; the plutocratic democracy abroad; the race problem
generally; the church; the economic misery abroad; the foreign
policy; the living space (Lebensraum).”
This description of Fritzsche establishes clearly and in his own words
that the German Press Division was the instrument for subordinating the
entire German press to the political aims of the government.
We now pass to Fritzsche’s first activities on behalf of the
conspirators within the German Press Division. It is appropriate to read
again from his affidavit, Paragraph 17, your document book Page 23.
Fritzsche begins by describing a conference with Goebbels in late April
or early May 1933:
“At this time Dr. Goebbels suggested to me, in my capacity as
the expert on news technique, the establishment and direction of
a section ‘News’ within the Press Division of his Ministry, in
order to thoroughly organize and modernize the German news
agencies. In carrying out the task assigned to me by Dr.
Goebbels my field covered the entire news service for the German
press and the radio in accordance with the directions given by
the Propaganda Ministry, excepting at first the DNB”—German
News Agency.
An obvious reason why the DNB was excepted from Fritzsche’s field at
this time is that the DNB did not come into existence until the year
1934 as we shall later see. Later on, in Paragraph 17 of the Fritzsche
affidavit, the Tribunal will note the tremendous funds put at the
disposal of Fritzsche in building up the Nazi news services. Altogether
the German news agencies received a 10-fold increase in their budget
from the Reich, an increase from 400,000 to 4 million marks. Fritzsche
himself selected and employed the chief editor for the Transocean News
Agency and also for the Europa Press. Fritzsche states that some of the
“directions of the Propaganda Ministry which I had to follow were,” and
then skipping, “. . . increase of German news copy abroad at any cost,”
and then skipping again, “. . . spreading of favorable news on the
internal construction and peaceful intentions of the National Socialist
system.”
About the summer of 1934 the Defendant Funk, then Reich Press Chief,
achieved the fusion of the two most important domestic news agencies,
the Wolff Telegraph Agency and the Telegraph Union, and thus formed the
official German news agency, ordinarily known as DNB. It has already
been pointed out to the Tribunal that the Indictment is in error in
alleging that Fritzsche himself was Editor-in-Chief of the DNB.
Fritzsche held no position whatsoever with the DNB at any time. However,
as head of the news section of the German Press Division, Fritzsche’s
duties gave him official jurisdiction over the DNB, which was the
official domestic news agency of the German Reich after 1934. In the
last part of Paragraph 17 of this affidavit, Fritzsche states that he
coordinated the work of the various foreign news agencies “at home and
within European and overseas foreign countries with one another and in
relationship to DNB.”
The Wireless News Service was headed by Fritzsche from 1932 to 1937.
After January 1933, the Wireless News Service was the official
instrument of the Nazi Government in spreading news over the radio.
During the same time that Fritzsche headed the Wireless News Service, he
personally made radio broadcasts to the German people. These broadcasts
were naturally subject to the controls of the Propaganda Ministry and
reflected its purposes. The influence of Fritzsche’s broadcasts upon the
German people, during this period of consolidation of control by the
Nazi conspirators, is all the more important since Fritzsche was
concurrently head of the Wireless News Services, which controlled for
the government the spreading of all news by radio.
It is by now well known to the world that the Nazi conspirators
attempted to be, and often were, very adept in psychological warfare.
Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on the
strategy of expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to
weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically
for the impending Nazi madness. They used the press after their earlier
conquests as a means for further influencing foreign politics and in
maneuvering for the next following aggression.
By the time of the occupation of the Sudetenland on the 1st of October
1938, Fritzsche had become deputy head of the entire German Press
Division. Fritzsche states that the role of German propaganda before the
Munich Agreement on the Sudetenland was directed by his immediate chief,
Berndt, then head of the German Press Division. In Paragraph 27 of the
Fritzsche affidavit, Page 26 of your document book, Fritzsche describes
this propaganda which was directed by Berndt. Speaking of Berndt,
Fritzsche states:
“He exaggerated minor events very strongly, sometimes used old
episodes as new—and there even came complaints from the
Sudetenland itself that some of the news reported by the German
press was untrustworthy. As a matter of fact, after the great
foreign political success at Munich in September 1938, there
arose a noticeable crisis in the confidence of the German people
in the trustworthiness of its press. This was one reason for the
recalling of Berndt, in December 1938 after the conclusion of
the Sudeten action, and for my appointment as head of the German
Press Division. Beyond this, Berndt, by his admittedly
successful but still primitive military-like orders to the
German press, had lost the confidence of the German editors.”
Now, what happened at this time? Fritzsche was made head of the German
Press Division in place of Berndt. Between December 1938 and 1942,
Fritzsche, as head of the German Press Division, personally gave to the
representatives of the principal German newspapers the “daily parole of
the Reich Press Chief.” During this history-making period he was the
principal conspirator directly concerned with the manipulations of the
press. The first important foreign aggression after Fritzsche became
head of the German Press Division was the incorporation of Bohemia and
Moravia. In Paragraph 28 of the affidavit, your document book, Page 26,
Fritzsche gives his account of the propaganda action surrounding the
incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia as follows:
“The action for the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia, which
took place on 15 March 1939, while I was head of the German
Press Division, was not prepared for such a long period as the
Sudeten action. According to my memory it was in February that I
received the order from the Reich Press Chief, Dr. Dietrich, and
repeated requests by the envoy Paul Schmidt of the Foreign
Office, to draw the attention of the press to the aspirations of
Slovakia for independence and to the continued anti-German
coalition politics of the Prague Government. I did this. The
daily paroles of the Reich Press Chief and the press conference
minutes at that time show the wording of the pertinent
instructions. The following were the typical headlines of
leading newspapers and the conspicuous leading articles of the
German daily press at that time: (1) The terrorizing of Germans
within the Czech territory by arrest, shooting at Germans by the
state police, destruction and damaging of German homes by Czech
mobs; (2) the concentration of Czech forces on the Sudeten
frontier; (3) the kidnapping, deportation, and persecution of
Slovakian minorities by the Czechs, (4) the Czechs must get out
of Slovakia; (5) secret meetings of Red functionaries in Prague.
“Some few days before the visit of Hacha, I received the
instruction to publish in the press very conspicuously the
incoming news on the unrest in Czechoslovakia. Such information
I received only partly from the German News Agency DNB but
mostly from the Press Division of the Foreign Office and some
from big newspapers with their own news services. Among the
newspapers offering information was, above all, the _Völkischer
Beobachter_ which, as I learned later on, received its
information from the SS Standartenführer Gunter D’Alquen, who
was at that time at Bratislava. I had forbidden all news
agencies and newspapers to issue news on unrest in
Czechoslovakia until I had seen it. I wanted to avoid a
repetition of the very annoying accompaniments of the Sudeten
action propaganda, and I did not want to suffer a loss of
prestige caused by untrue news. Thus, all news checked by me was
admittedly full of tendency but not invented. Following the
visit of Hacha in Berlin and after the beginning of the invasion
of the German Army, which took place on 15 March 1939, the
German press had enough material for describing these events.
Historically and politically the event was justified with the
indication that the declaration of independence of Slovakia had
required an interference and that Hacha with his signature had
avoided a war and had reinstated a thousand-year-old union
between Bohemia and the Reich.”
The propaganda campaign of the press preceding the invasion of Poland on
the 1st of September 1939—and thus the propaganda action just preceding
the precipitation of World War II—bears again the handiwork of
Fritzsche and his German Press Division. In Paragraph 30 of Fritzsche’s
affidavit, document book Page 27, Fritzsche speaks of the conspirators’
treatment of this episode as follows:
“Very complicated and varying was the press and propagandists
treatment in the case of Poland. Under the influence of the
German-Polish Agreement, the German press was for many years
forbidden, on principle, to publish anything on the situation of
the German minority in Poland. This was still the case when in
the spring of 1939 the German press was asked to become somewhat
more active as to the problem of Danzig. Also when the first
Polish-English conversations took place and the German press was
advised to use a sharper tone against Poland, the question of
the German minority still remained in the background. At first
during the summer this problem was picked up again and created
immediately a noticeable sharpening of the situation. Each
larger German newspaper had for some time quite an abundance of
material on complaints and grievances of the Germans in Poland
without the editors having had a chance to use this material.
The German papers, from the time of the minority discussions at
Geneva, still had correspondents or free collaborators in
Katowice, Bydgoszcz, Posen, Toruń, _et cetera_. Their material
now came forth with a bound. Concerning this, the leading German
newspapers brought but in accordance with directions given for
the so-called daily paroles the following articles, in
conspicuous setting: (1) Cruelty and terror against racial
Germans and the extermination of racial Germans in Poland; (2)
Construction of field works by thousands of racial German men
and women in Poland; (3) Poland, land of servitude and disorder;
the desertion of Polish soldiers; the increased inflation in
Poland; (4) provocation of frontier clashes upon direction of
the Polish Government; the Polish aspirations for conquest; (5)
persecution of Czechs and Ukrainians by Poland. The Polish press
retorted hotly.”
The press campaign preceding the invasion of Yugoslavia followed the
conventional pattern. You will find the customary defamations, the lies,
the incitement and the threats, and the usual attempt to divide and to
weaken the victim. Paragraph 32 of the Fritzsche affidavit, your
document book Page 28, outlines this propaganda action as follows:
“During the period immediately preceding the invasion of
Yugoslavia, on the 6th of April 1941, the German press
emphasized by headlines and leading articles the following
boldly made up announcements: (1) The systematic persecution of
racial Germans in Yugoslavia including the burning down of
German villages by Serbian soldiers and the confining of racial
Germans in concentration camps, as well as the physical
mishandling of German-speaking persons; (2) the arming of
Serbian bandits by the Serbian Government; (3) the indictment of
Yugoslavia by the plutocrats against Germany; (4) growing
anti-Serbian feeling in Croatia; (5) the chaotic situation of
the economic and social conditions in Yugoslavia.”
Since Germany had a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and
because these conspirators wanted the advantage of surprise, there was
no special propaganda campaign immediately preceding the attack on the
U.S.S.R. Fritzsche in Paragraph 33 of his affidavit discussed the
propaganda line, however, for the justification of this aggressive war
to the German people:
“During the night from the 21st to the 22d of June 1941,
Ribbentrop called me in at about 5 o’clock in the morning for a
conference in the Foreign Office at which representatives of the
domestic and foreign press were present. Ribbentrop informed us
that the war against the Soviet Union would start that same day
and asked the German press to present the war against the Soviet
Union as a preventive war for the defense of the fatherland, a
war which was forced upon us by the imminent danger of an attack
of the Soviet Union against Germany. The claim that this was a
preventive war was later repeated by the newspapers which
received their instructions from me during the usual daily
parole of the Reich Press Chief. I myself have also given this
presentation of the cause of the war in my regular broadcasts.”
Fritzsche, throughout his affidavit, constantly refers to his technical
and expert assistance to the colossal apparatus of the Propaganda
Ministry. In 1939 he apparently became dissatisfied with the efficiency
of the existing facilities of the German Press Division in furnishing
grist for the propaganda mill and for its intrigues. He established a
new instrument for improving the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda. In
Paragraph 19 of his affidavit, Page 24 of your document book, Fritzsche
describes this new propaganda instrument as follows:
“About the summer of 1939 I established within the German Press
Division a section called ‘Speed Service.’”
And then skipping and quoting again:
“. . . at the start it had the task of checking the correctness
of news from foreign countries. Later on, about the fall of
1939, this section also worked on the compilation of material
which was put at the disposal of the entire German press: For
instance, dates from the British Colonial policy, political
statements of the British Prime Minister in former times,
descriptions of social distress in hostile countries, _et
cetera_. Almost all German newspapers used such material as a
basis for their polemics, whereby close concentration in the
fighting front of the German press was gained. The title ‘Speed
Service’ was chosen because materials for current comments were
supplied with particular speed.”
Throughout this entire period preceding and including the launching of
aggressive war, Fritzsche made regular radio broadcasts to the German
people under the following titles: “Political Newspaper Review,”
“Political and Radio Show,” and later “Hans Fritzsche Speaks.” His
broadcasts naturally reflected the polemics and the control of his
Ministry and thus of the Common Plan or Conspiracy.
We of the Prosecution contend that Fritzsche, one of the most eminent of
Goebbels’ propaganda team, helped substantially to bathe the world in
the blood bath of aggressive war.
With the Tribunal’s consent I will now pass to proof bearing on
Fritzsche’s incitement of atrocities and his encouragement of a ruthless
occupation policy. The results of propaganda as a weapon of the Nazi
conspirators reach into every aspect of this conspiracy, including the
abnormal and inhuman conduct involved in the atrocities and the ruthless
exploitation of occupied countries. Most of the ordinary members of the
German nation would never have participated in or tolerated the
atrocities committed throughout Europe if they had not been conditioned
and goaded to barbarous convictions and misconceptions by the constant
grinding of the Nazi propaganda machine. Indeed, the propagandists who
lent themselves to this evil mission of instigation and incitement are
more guilty than the credulous and callous minions who headed the firing
squads or operated the gas chambers, of which we have heard so much in
this proceeding. For the very credulity and callousness of those minions
was in large part due to the constant and evil propaganda of Fritzsche
and his official associates.
With respect to Jews, the Department of Propaganda within the Propaganda
Ministry had a special branch for the “Enlightenment of the German
people and of the world as to the Jewish question, fighting with
propagandistic weapons against enemies of the State and hostile
ideologies.” This quotation is taken from a book written in 1940 by
Ministerial Director Müller, entitled _The Propaganda Ministry_. It is
found in Document Number 2434(a)-PS, your document book Page 10, offered
in evidence as Exhibit USA-722. It is another excerpt from Ministerial
Director Müller’s book and I merely ask that you take judicial notice of
it for that one sentence that I have read.
Fritzsche took a particularly active part in this “enlightenment”
concerning the Jewish question in his radio broadcasts. These broadcasts
literally teemed with provocative libels against Jews, the only logical
result of which was to inflame Germany to further atrocities against the
helpless Jews who came within its physical power. Document Number
3064-PS contains a number of complete broadcasts by Fritzsche which were
monitored by the British Broadcasting Corporation and translated by BBC
officials. For the convenience of the Tribunal, I have had those
excerpts upon which the Prosecution relies to show illustrative types of
Fritzsche’s broadcasts mimeographed and made into one document, which I
offer in evidence as Exhibit USA-723. Even the Defendant Streicher, the
master Jew-baiter of all time, could scarcely outdo Fritzsche in some of
his slanders against the Jews. All the excerpts in Document Number
3064-PS are from speeches by Fritzsche given on the radio between 1941
and 1945, which we have already proven was a period of intensified
anti-Jewish measures. With the permission of the Tribunal, I would like
to read some of these excerpts.
Page 14 of our document book, Item 1, from a broadcast of 18 December
1941—it is found on Page 2122 of the translations from BBC:
“The fate of Jewry in Europe has turned out to be as unpleasant
as the Führer predicted it would be in the event of a European
war. After the extension of the war instigated by Jews, this
fate may also spread to the New World, for it can hardly be
assumed that the nations of this New World will pardon the Jews
for the misery of which the nations of the Old World did not
absolve them.”
From a radio broadcast of 18 March 1941, found at Page 2032 of the BBC
translations:
“But the crown of all wrongly-applied Rooseveltian logic is the
sentence: ‘There never was a race and there never will be a race
which can serve the rest of mankind as a master.’ Here, too, we
can only applaud Mr. Roosevelt. It is precisely because there
exists no race which can be the master of the rest of mankind,
that we Germans have taken the liberty to break the domination
of Jewry and of its capital in Germany, of Jewry which believed
it had inherited the crown of secret world domination.”
In passing, I would merely like to note that it seems to us that that is
not only applause for past acts concerning persecution of Jews but an
announcement that more is coming and an encouragement of what was
coming.
I would like to read another excerpt from the 9th of October 1941
broadcast, translated at Page 2101 of the BBC translation:
“We know very well that these German victories, unparalleled in
history, have not yet stopped the source of hatred which for a
long time has fed the warmongers and from which this war
originated. The international Jewish-Democratic-Bolshevistic
campaign of incitement against Germany still finds cover in this
or that fox’s lair or rat hole. We have seen only too frequently
how the defeats suffered by the warmongers only doubled their
senseless and impotent fury.”
Another broadcast of the 8th January 1944—Your Honors, I have tried to
pick out illustrative broadcasts from different periods here:
“It is revealed clearly once more that not a new system of
government, not a young nationalism, and not a new and
well-applied socialism brought about this war. The guilty ones
are exclusively the Jews and the plutocrats. If discussion on
the post-war problems brings this to light so clearly, we
welcome it as a contribution for later discussions and also as a
contribution to the fight we are waging now, for we refuse to
believe that world history will entrust its future development
to those powers which have brought about this war. This clique
of Jews and plutocrats have invested their money in armaments
and they had to see to it that they would get their interests
and sinking funds; hence they unleashed this war.”
Concerning Jews, I had one last quotation from the year 1945. It is from
a broadcast of the 13th of January 1945, found on Pages 2258 and 2259 of
the BBC translations:
“If Jewry provided a link between such divergent elements as
plutocracy and Bolshevism and if Jewry was first able to work
successfully in the democratic countries in preparing this war
against Germany, it has by now placed itself unreservedly on the
side of Bolshevism which, with its entirely mistaken slogans of
racial freedom against racial hatred, has created the very
conditions the Jewish race requires in its struggle for
domination, over other races.”
And then skipping a few lines in that quotation:
“Not the last result of German resistance on all the fronts, so
unexpected to the enemy, is the fruition of a development which
began in the pre-war years, that is, the process of
subordinating British policy to far-reaching Jewish points of
view. This development started long before this when Jewish
emigrants from Germany commenced their warmongering against us
from British and American soil.”
And then skipping several sentences and going to the last sentence on
that page.
“This whole attempt, aiming at the establishment of Jewish world
domination, was obviously made at a time when the
national-racial consciousness had been too far awakened to
promise such an aim success.”
Your Honors, we suggest that that is an invitation to further
persecution of the Jews and, indeed, to their elimination.
Fritzsche also incited and encouraged ruthless measures against the
peoples of the U.S.S.R. In his regular broadcasts Fritzsche’s
incitements against the peoples of the U.S.S.R. were often linked to,
and were certainly as inflammatory as, his slanders against the Jews. If
these slanders were not so tragic in their relation to the murder of
millions of people, they would be comical, indeed ludicrous. It is
ironic that the propaganda libels against the peoples of the U.S.S.R.
concerning atrocities actually described some of the many atrocities
committed by the German invaders, as we now well know. The following
quotations are again taken from the BBC intercepted broadcasts and their
translations, beginning shortly after the invasion of the U.S.S.R. in
June 1941. The first one is taken again from Page 16 of our document
book. I will read only the last half of Item 7, beginning with the third
paragraph:
“As can be sufficiently seen by letters reaching us from the
front, from P.K. reporters”—and may I interrupt my quotation
there to say that “P.K.” stands for “Propaganda Kompanie,”
propaganda companies which were attached to the German Army
wherever it went—“P.K. reporters and soldiers on leave, in this
struggle in the East not one political system is pitted against
another, not one philosophy is fighting another, but culture,
civilization, and human dignity have stood up against the
diabolical principle of a subhuman world.”
And then another quote in the next paragraph:
“It was only the Führer’s decision to strike in time that saved
our homeland from the fate of being overrun by those subhuman
creatures, and our men, women, and children from the unspeakable
horror of becoming their prey.”
In the next broadcast I want to quote from, 10th of July 1941, in the
first paragraph Fritzsche speaks of the inhuman deeds committed in areas
controlled by the Soviet Union, and he states that one, upon seeing the
evidence of those deeds committed, comes—and here I quote:
“. . . finally to make the holy resolve to lend one’s assistance
in the final destruction of those who are capable of such
dastardly acts.”
And then quoting again, the last paragraph:
“The Bolshevist agitators made no effort to deny that in towns,
thousands, and in the villages, hundreds of corpses of men,
women, and children have been found, who had been either killed
or tortured to death. In spite of this Bolshevik agitators
assert that this was not done by Soviet commissars but by German
soldiers. But we know our German soldiers. No German women,
fathers, or mothers require proofs that their husbands or their
sons cannot have committed such atrocious acts.”
Evidence already in the Record, or shortly to be offered in this case by
our Soviet colleagues, will prove that representatives of these Nazi
conspirators did not hesitate to exterminate Soviet soldiers and
civilians by scientific mass methods. These inciting remarks by
Fritzsche made him an accomplice in these crimes because his labeling of
the Soviet peoples as members of a “subhuman world” seeking to
“exterminate” the German people and similar desperate talk helped, by
these propaganda diatribes, to fashion the psychological atmosphere of
utter and complete unreason and the hatred which instigated and made
possible these atrocities in the East.
Although we cannot say that Fritzsche directed that 10,000 or 100,000
persons be exterminated, it is enough to pause on this question: Without
these incitements of Fritzsche, how much harder it would have been for
these conspirators to have effected the conditions which made possible
the extermination of millions of people in the East.
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a convenient time to break off?
[_A recess was taken._]
CAPT. SPRECHER: Fritzsche encouraged, affirmed, and glorified the policy
of the Nazi conspirators in ruthlessly exploiting the occupied
countries. Again I read an excerpt from his radio broadcast of the 9th
of October 1941, found at Pages 2102 and 2103 of the BBC translation. I
would like to cut it down, but it is one of those long German sentences
that just cannot be broken down:
“Today we can only say: Blitzkrieg or not, this German
thunderstorm has cleansed the atmosphere of Europe. Certainly it
is quite true that the dangers threatening us were eliminated
one after the other with lightning speed but in these lightning
blows which shattered England’s allies on the continent, we saw
not a proof of the weakness, but a proof of the strength and
superiority of the Führer’s gift as a statesman and military
leader; a proof of the German peoples’ might; we saw the proof
that no opponent can rival the courage, discipline, and
readiness for sacrifice displayed by the German soldier, and we
are particularly grateful for these lightning, incomparable
victories, because—as the Führer emphasized last Friday—they
give us the possibility of embarking on the organization of
Europe and on the lifting of the treasures”—I would like to
repeat that—“lifting of the treasures of this old continent,
already now in the middle of war, without its being necessary
for millions and millions of German soldiers to be on guard,
fighting day and night along this or that threatened frontier;
and the possibilities of this continent are so rich that they
suffice to supply all needs in peace or war.”
Concerning the exploitation of foreign countries, Fritzsche states
himself, at Paragraph 39 of his affidavit:
“The utilization of the productive capacity of the occupied
countries for the strengthening of the German war potential, I
have openly and with praise pointed out, all the more so as the
competent authorities put at my disposal much material,
especially on the voluntary placement of manpower.”
Fritzsche was a credulous propagandist indeed if he gloriously praised
the exploitation policy of the German Reich, chiefly or especially
because the competent authorities gave him a sales talk on the voluntary
placement of manpower.
I come now to Fritzsche as the high commander of the entire German radio
system. Fritzsche continued as the head of the German Press Division
until after the conspirators had begun the last of their aggressions. In
November 1942, Goebbels created a new position, that of Plenipotentiary
for the Political Organization of the Greater German Radio, a position
which Fritzsche was the first and the last to hold. In Paragraph 36,
Document Number 3469-PS, the Fritzsche affidavit, Fritzsche narrates how
the entire German radio and television system was organized under his
supervision. That is at Page 29 of your document book. He states:
“My office practically represented the high command of German
radio.”
As special Plenipotentiary for the Political Organization of the Greater
German Radio, Fritzsche issued orders to all the Reich propaganda
offices by teletype. These were used first in conforming the entire
radio apparatus of Germany to the desires of the conspirators.
Goebbels customarily held an 11 o’clock conference with his closest
collaborators within the Propaganda Ministry. When both Goebbels and his
undersecretary, Dr. Naumann, were absent, Goebbels, after 1943,
entrusted Fritzsche with the holding of this 11 o’clock press
conference.
In Document Number 3255-PS the Court will find Goebbels’ praise of
Fritzsche’s broadcasts. This praise was given in Goebbels’ introduction
to a book by Fritzsche called, _War to the War Mongers_. I would like to
offer the quotation in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-724, from the
_Rundfunk Archiv_, at Page 18 of Your Honors’ document book. This is
Goebbels speaking:
“Nobody knows better than I how much work is involved in those
broadcasts, how many times they were dictated within the last
minutes to find some minutes later a willing ear by the whole
nation.”
So we have it from Goebbels himself that the entire German nation was
prepared to lend willing ears to Fritzsche, after he had made his
reputation on the radio.
The rumor passed that Fritzsche was “His Master’s Voice” (Die Stimme
seines Herrn). This is certainly borne out by Fritzsche’s functions.
When Fritzsche spoke on the radio it was indeed plain to the German
people that they were listening to the high command of the conspirators
in this field.
Fritzsche is not being presented by the Prosecution as the type of
conspirator who signed decrees or as the type of conspirator who sat in
the inner councils planning all of the over-all grand strategy of these
conspirators. The function of propaganda is, for the most part, apart
from the field of such planning. The function of a propaganda agency is
somewhat more analogous to an advertising agency or public relations
department, the job of which is to sell the product and to win the
market for the enterprise in question. Here the enterprise, we submit,
was the Nazi conspiracy. In a conspiracy to commit fraud, the gifted
salesman of the conspiratorial group is quite as essential and quite as
culpable as the master planners, even though he may not have contributed
substantially to the formulation of all the basic strategy, but rather
contributed to the artful execution of this strategy.
In this case the Prosecution most emphatically contends that propaganda
was a weapon of tremendous importance to this conspiracy. We further
contend that the leading propagandists were major accomplices in this
conspiracy, and further, that Fritzsche was a major propagandist.
When Fritzsche entered the Propaganda Ministry, the most fabulous “lie
factory” of all time, and thus attached himself to this conspiracy, he
did this with a more open mind than most of these conspirators who had
committed themselves at an earlier date, before the seizure of power. He
was in a particularly strategic position to observe the frauds committed
upon the German people and upon the world by these conspirators.
The Tribunal will recall that in 1933, before Fritzsche took his party
oath of unconditional obedience and subservience to the Führer and thus
abdicated his moral responsibility to these conspirators, he had
observed at first-hand the operations of the storm troopers and the Nazi
race pattern in action. When, notwithstanding this, Fritzsche undertook
to bring the German news agencies in their entirety within fascist
control, he learned from the inside, from Goebbels’ own lips, much of
the cynical intrigue and many of the bold lies against opposition groups
within and without Germany. He observed, for example, the opposition
journalists, a profession to which he had previously been attached,
being forced out of existence, crushed to the ground, either absorbed or
eliminated. He continued to support the conspiracy. He learned from day
to day the art of intrigue and quackery in the process of perverting the
German nation, and he grew in prestige and influence as he practiced
this art.
The Tribunal will also recall that Fritzsche had said that his
predecessor Berndt fell from the leadership of the German Press Division
partly because he overplayed his hand by the successful but blunt and
overdone manipulation of the Sudetenland propaganda. Fritzsche stepped
into the gap which had been caused by the loss of confidence of both the
editors and the German people, and Fritzsche did his job well.
No doubt Fritzsche was not as blunt as the man he succeeded; but
Fritzsche’s relative shrewdness and subtlety, his very ability to be
more assuring and “to find,” as Goebbels said, “the willing ears of the
whole nation,” these things made him the more useful accomplice of these
conspirators.
Nazi Germany and its press went into the actual phase of war operations
with Fritzsche at the head of the particular propaganda instrument
controlling the German press and German news, whether by the press or by
radio. In 1942 when Fritzsche transferred from the field of the press to
the field of radio, he was not removed for bungling but only because
Goebbels then needed him most in the field of radio. Fritzsche is not in
the dock as a free journalist, but as an efficient, controlled Nazi
propagandist, a propagandist who helped substantially to tighten the
Nazi stranglehold over the German people, a propagandist who made the
excesses of these conspirators more palatable to the consciences of the
German people themselves, a propagandist who cynically proclaimed the
barbarous racialism which is at the very heart of this conspiracy, a
propagandist who coldly goaded humble Germans to blind fury against
people they were told by him were subhuman and guilty of all the
suffering of Germany, suffering which indeed these Nazis themselves, had
invited.
In conclusion, I wish to say only this. Without the propaganda apparatus
of the Nazi State it is clear that the world, including Germany, would
not have suffered the catastrophe of these years; and it is because of
Fritzsche’s able role on behalf of the Nazi conspirators and their
deceitful and barbarous practices in connection with the conspiracy that
he is called to account before this International Tribunal.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom):
May it please the Tribunal, it was intended that the next presentation
would be by Colonel Griffith-Jones in the case of the Defendant Hess. I
understand that the Tribunal has in mind that it might be better if that
were left for the moment; if so, Major Harcourt Barrington is prepared
to make the presentation with regard to the Defendant Von Papen.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. We understood that the Defendant Hess’s counsel
could not be present today, and therefore it was better to go on with
one of the others.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If your Lordship pleases, then Major Harcourt
Barrington will deal with the presentation against the Defendant Von
Papen.
MAJOR J. HARCOURT BARRINGTON (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): My
Lord, I understand that the court interpreters have not got the proper
papers and document books up here yet, but they can get them in a very
few minutes. Would your Lordship prefer that I should go on or wait
until they have got them?
THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Go on then.
MAJOR BARRINGTON: May it please the Tribunal, it is my duty to present
the case against the Defendant Von Papen. Before I begin I would like to
say that the documents in the document books are arranged numerically
and not in the order of presentation, and that the English document
books are paged in red chalk at the bottom of the page.
THE PRESIDENT: Does that mean that the French and the Soviet are not?
MAJOR BARRINGTON: My Lord, we did not prepare French and Soviet document
books.
THE PRESIDENT: Major Barrington, the French members of the Tribunal have
no document books at all.