Forty-First Day:
Wednesday, 23rd January, 1946
[Page 87]
I would like to read another excerpt from the broadcast of 9
October, 1941, translated at Page 2101 of the BBC
translation:
[Page 88]
Fritzsche also incited and encouraged ruthless measures
against the peoples of the USSR. In his regular broadcasts
Fritzsche's incitements against the peoples of the USSR 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
USSR, concerning atrocities, actually described some of the
many atrocities committed, as we now well know, by the
German invaders. The following quotations are again taken
from the BBC intercepted broadcasts and their translations,
beginning shortly after the invasion of the USSR in June
1941. The first one is taken again from Page 16 of our
document book and I will read only the last half of item 7,
beginning with the 3rd
paragraph:
[Page 89]
And then quoting again, the last paragraph:
Although we cannot say that Fritzsche directed that ten
thousand or one hundred thousand persons should 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)
CAPTAIN SPRECHER: Fritzsche encouraged and 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 9 October 1941, found at Pages
2102 and 2103, of the BBC translation. I would like to
shorten it, but it is one of those long German sentences
that just cannot be broken down:
[Page 90]
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 Organisation of the Greater German Radio, a
position which Fritzsche was the first and the last to hold.
In paragraph thirty-six, document 3469-PS - the Fritzsche
affidavit - Fritzsche narrates how the entire German Radio
and Television System was organised under his supervision.
That is at Page 29 of your document book. He states:
Goebbels customarily held an eleven o'clock conference with
his closest collaborators within the Propaganda Ministry.
When both he and his undersecretary, Dr. Naumann, were
absent, Goebbels after 1943, entrusted Fritzsche with the
holding of this eleven o'clock Press conference.
In document 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 USA 724, from the Rundfunk Archiv, at Page 18 of
your Honours' document book. This is Goebbels speaking:
The rumour spread 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
[Page 91]
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
moreover, 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 Fuehrer, 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 earth - 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 practised this art.
The Tribunal will also recall that Fritzsche had said that
his predecessor Berndt lost the leadership of the German
Press Division, partly because he over-played 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 his 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. 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
[Page 92]
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: 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.
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(Part 3 of 9)
[CAPTAIN SPRECHER continues] "But the crown of all wrong-applied Rooseveltian logics
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
itself to have inherited the Crown of secret world
domination."
In passing, I would merely like to note that it seems to us
that this is not only applause for persecution of Jews in
the past, but an announcement that more was coming, and an
encouragement of it.
"We know very well that these German victories have not
yet stopped the source of hatred, which, for a long
time, has fed the war-mongers
Another broadcast of 8 January 1944. Your Honours, I have
tried to pick out illustrative broadcasts from different
periods here.
"It is revealed clearly once more that not a system of
government, not a young nationalism, 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 should bring this to
light so clearly, we welcome it as a contribution for
such discussions, and also as a contribution to the
fight we are waging now, for we refuse to believe that
world history will confide its future developments to
those powers which have brought about this war. This
clique of Jews and plutocrats had invested their money
in armaments, and they had to see to it that they got
their interest and sinking funds; hence they unleashed
this war."
Concerning the Jews, I had one last quotation from the year
1945. It is from a broadcast of 13 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 omitting a few lines in that quotation:
"Not the least result of German resistance in the field,
so unexpected to the enemy, is the fruition of a
development which began in the pre-war years, the
subordination of British policy to far-reaching Jewish
points of view. It began long before this, when Jewish
emigrants from Germany started their warmongering
against us from British and American soil."
And then omitting several sentences and going to the last
sentence on that page.
"This whole attempt, aiming at the establishment of
Jewish world domination, now increasingly recognisable,
has come to a head at the very moment when the peoples'
understanding of their racial origins has been far too
much awakened to promise success to the undertaking."
Your Honours, we suggest that that is an invitation to
further persecution of the Jews and, indeed, to their
elimination.
"The evidence of letters reaching us from the front, of
P. K. reporters and may I interrupt my quotation there
to say that "P.K" stands for
And then another quotation in the next paragraph
"It was only the Fuehrer's decision to strike in time
that saved our homeland from the fate of being overrun
by those sub-human creatures, and our men, women and
children from the unspeakable horror of being their
prey."
In the next broadcast I want to quote from, 10 July, 1941,
in the first paragraph, Fritzsche speaks of the inhuman
deeds committed in areas controlled by the Soviet Union, and
he states that, on seeing the evidence of their commission,
one is compelled - and here I quote "... at last to make the
holy resolve to assist in the final destruction of those who
are capable of such dastardly acts."
"The Bolshevist agitators make no effort to deny that in
towns, thousands, and in villages, hundreds, of corpses
have been found of men, women and children who had been
either killed or tortured to death. Yet the Bolshevik
agitators allege that this was not done by Soviet
Commissars but by German soldiers. Now we Germans know
our soldiers. No German woman or parent requires proof
that her husband or son 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 make him
an accomplice in these crimes because his labelling 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.
"Today we can only say: Blitzkrieg or no - this German
thunderstorm has cleansed the atmosphere of Europe. 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 their
weakness, but a proof of the strength and superiority of
the Fuehrer's gift as a statesman and military leader; a
proof of the German peoples' strength; we saw the proof
that no opponent
Concerning the exploitation of foreign countries, Fritzsche
states himself, at paragraph thirty-nine of his affidavit
"The utilisation of the productive capacity of the
occupied countries for the strengthening of the war
potential, I have openly and gloriously praised, chiefly
because 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.
"My office practically represented the highest post of
German radio."
As special Plenipotentiary for the Political Organisation 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.
"Nobody knows better that I how much work is involved in
those broadcasts, how many times they were dictated at
the last minute, to find, some minutes later, the
willing ear of 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.