Forty-First Day:
Wednesday, 23rd January, 1946
[Page 82]
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
[Page 83]
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 D.N.B. 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 D.N.B. Fritzsche held no position whatsoever with the
D.N.B. at any time. However, as head of the news section of
the German Press Division, Fritzsche's duties gave him
official jurisdiction over the D.N.B., which was the
official domestic news agency of the German Reich after
1934. In the last part of paragraph 17 of the affidavit,
Fritzsche states that he co-ordinated the work of the
various foreign news agencies "within Europe and overseas
with each other and in relationship to D.N.B."
The Wireless News Service was headed by Fritzsche from 1930
to 1937. After January, 1933, it was the official instrument
of the Nazi government in spreading news over the radio.
During the same time that Fritzsche headed it, 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 manoeuvring for the next
aggression.
By the time of the occupation of the Sudetenland on 1
October, 1938,
[Page 84] [Page 85] [Page 86]
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 to 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, had they not been conditioned and goaded
to barbarous convictions and misconceptions by the constant
grinding of the Nazi propaganda machine. Indeed, the
[Page 87]
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 Muller, entitled "The Propaganda
Ministry." It is found in Document 2434-A-PS, your document
book, Page 10, offered in evidence as Exhibit USA 722. It is
another excerpt from Ministerial Director Muller'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" of the Jewish question, in his radio
broadcasts. These broadcasts literally teemed with
provocative libels, the only logical result of which was to
inflame Germany to further atrocities against the helpless
Jews who came within her physical power. Document 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 into 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 3064-PS are from speeches of
Fritzsche given on the radio between 1941 and 1945, which we
have already proved to have been 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:
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(Part 2 of 9)
[CAPTAIN SPRECHER continues]Thereby, the entire German Press was subordinate to the
political aims of the Government. This was exemplified by
the timely measuring 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.
"At this time Dr. Goebbels suggested to me, as a
specialist on news technique, the establishment and
direction of a section "News," within the Press Division
of his Ministry, in order to organise fully and to
modernise the German news agencies. In executing this
assignment given to me by Dr. Goebbels I took for my
field the entire news field for the German Press and the
radio, in accordance with the directions given by the
propaganda Ministry, at first with the exception of the
D.N.B., German News Agency."
An obvious reason why the D.N.B. was excepted from
Fritzsche's field at this time is that the D.N.B. did not
come 4nto existence until the year 1934, as we shall see
presently. 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
ten-fold increase in their budget from the Reich, an
increase from 400,000 to 4,000,000 Mark. 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" . "increase of German
news copy abroad at any cost" ... "spreading of favourable
news on the internal construction and peaceful intentions of
the National Socialist System."
"He exaggerated minor events very strongly, sometimes
using old episodes as new - and there were complaints
even from the Sudetenland itself, that much 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 came a
noticeable loss of confidence among the German people in
the trustworthiness of their 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. In addition,
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 that 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, did not take so long
to plan as the Sudeten action. According to my memory it
was in February that I received the order from the Reich
Press Chief, Dr. Dietrich, which was repeated as a
request by the envoy Paul Schmidt of the Foreign Office,
to bring the attention of the Press to the efforts for
independence of Slovakia 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 corresponding instructions. Typical
headlines of leading newspapers and the emphatic leading
articles of the German daily Press at that time were as
follows: (1) the terrorising of Germans within the Czech
territory by arrest, shooting of Germans by the State
police, destruction and damaging of German homes by
Czech gangsters; (2) the concentration of Czech forces
on the Sudeten frontier; (3) the kidnapping, deporting
and persecuting of Slovakian minorities by the Czechs;
the Czechs must get out of Slovakia; (4) secret meetings
of Red functionaries in Prague. Some few days before the
visit to Hacha, I received the instruction to publish in
the Press very emphatically the incoming news on the
unrest in Czechoslovakia. Such information came only in
part from the German News Agency, D.N.B. Mostly it came
from the Press Division of the Foreign Office, and some
of it came from big newspapers with their own news
services. Among the newspapers offering information was
above all the Volkischer Beobachter which, as I learned
later on, received its information from the S.S.
Standartenfuehrer Gunter D'Alquen. He was at this time
in Pressburg. 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 results
The propaganda campaign of the Press preceding the invasion
of Poland on 1 of September, 1939, and thus 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 changing was the Press and
propaganda treatment in the case of Poland. Under the
influence of the German-Polish agreement, the German
Press had, for many years, been generally forbidden to
publish anything on the situation of the German minority
in Poland. This remained the case too when, in the
Spring of 1939, the German Press was asked to become
somewhat more active about the problem of Danzig. Also,
when the first Polish-English conversations took place,
and when the German Press was instructed to use a
sharper tone against Poland, the question of the German
minority still remained in the background. But during
the summer this problem was picked up again, and the
result was an immediate and noticeable sharpening of the
situation, for all the larger German newspapers had for
some time quite an abundance of material on complaints
of the Germans in Poland, without the editors having a
chance to use it. The German papers, from the time of
the minority discussion at Geneva, still had
correspondents or free collaborators in Kattowitz,
Bromberg, Posen, Thorn, etc. Their material now came
forth with a rush. Concerning this, the leading German
newspapers, as the result of directions given out in the
so-called "daily parole," brought out the following
headlines with great emphasis: (1) cruelty and terror
against Germans, and their extermination in Poland; (2)
forced labour of thousands of 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 lust to
conquer; (5) persecution of Czechs and Ukrainians by
Poles. The Polish Press replied particularly sharply."
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 attempts 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 16 of April 1941, the German Press
emphasised by headlines and leading articles the
following topics: (1) the planned persecution of Germans
in Yugoslavia, including the burning down of German
villages by Serbian soldiers; the confining of Germans
in concentration camps, and also the physical
mishandling of German-speaking persons; (2) the arming
of Serbian bandits by the Serbian Government; (3) the
incitement of Yugoslavia by the plutocrats against
Germany; (4) the increasing anti-Serbian feeling in
Croatia; (5) the chaotic economic and social conditions
in Yugoslavia."
"During the night of 21-22 June 1941, Ribbentrop called
me to a conference in the Foreign Office Building at
about 5 o'clock in the morning, 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
preventative war for the defence of the Fatherland, a
war which was forced upon us through the immediate
danger of an attack by the Soviet Union against Germany.
The claim that this was a preventative war was later
repeated by the newspapers, which received their
instructions from me during the usual daily parole of
the Reich Press Chief, and I have, myself, in my regular
broadcasts, given this presentation of the cause of the
war."
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 further on "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
elaborated on collecting materials which were put at the
disposal of the entire German Press. For instance, data
from the British Colonial policy, from political
statements of the British Prime Minister in former
times, descriptions of social distress in hostile
countries, etc. Almost al German newspapers used such
material as a basis for their polemics. Hereby was
achieved a great unification within the fighting front
of the German Press. The title 'Speed Service' was
chosen because materials for current comments were
supplied with unusual speed."
Throughout the 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.
"The fate of Jewry in Europe has turned out to be as
unpleasant as the Fuehrer predicted it would be in the
event of a European war. After the extension of the war
instigated by Jews, this unpleasant fate may also spread
to the New World, for you can hardly assume that the
nations of this New World will pardon the Jews for
causing this misery when the nations of the Old World
did not do so."