dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Do you remember a Czech Fascist organization, Vlayka? I do not know whether I pronounce the name correctly.
VOLKERS: Yes, I do, but I know very little about it. I only know that we received in the office a number of pledges of loyalty sent to us by members of the movement, and I also know that we had been informed by Czech sources that these people were partly criminal and generally not worth much. Herr Von Neurath adopted quite generally the view that this was an internal affair of the Czechs and that, after all, these were people who wanted to work together with us. But he, on his part, refused any collaboration; and such letters and pledges were never answered, I believe, by our office. But I know.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Herr Von Neurath was also, besides being Reich Protector, president of the Secret Cabinet Council. Did you, since you partly handled his correspondence of a more personal nature, notice anything indicating that Herr Von Neurath became active in this capacity as president of the Secret Cabinet Council?
VOLKERS: No. As long as I was in Prague, Herr Von Neurath was never active. On the contrary, on one occasion he told me that Hitler, when he appointed him, had told him that he should not think that he would ever call a meeting of the Cabinet Council.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Herr Von Neurath was also a member of the so-called Defense Council. Did he ever have anything to do in this capacity in Prague?
VOLKERS: No, I did not know that he was a member of the Defense Council. The fundamental decrees from Berlin concerning the Protectorate were frequently signed by the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich-I believe that eras the name-but Neurath had never signed or countersigned them.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Herr Von Neurath was appointed, as is well known, an honorary Gruppenfuehrer of the SS and later, honorary Obergruppenfuehrer of the SS. Did Herr Von Neurath at that time, when he was in Prague, ever wear that uniform?
VOLKERS: As a rule, he wore his Reich Minister uniform. A portrait was also once made of him in that uniform. He used to wear civilian clothes a great deal. It may be that he once wore the black uniform of the SS, on the occasion of a parade of the SS; but I do not know for certain now. Otherwise, he never wore it.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Do you know anything about the circumstances and reasons concerning Herr Von Neurath's departure from Prague in September 1941?
VOLKERS: When Herr Von Neurath was ordered to come to headquarters that September, he was accompanied by his military adjutant. I met him at the airfield; and in the car he told me that Hitler had been furious because of the acts of sabotage in the Protectorate and wanted to send Heydrich to do some exemplary punishing. He, Neurath, had stated that he did not want to have anything to do with that and had asked for his release. Hitler then had ordered that he should first of all go on leave, and so he did. He departed on one of the following days.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Mr. President, I have no further questions. Mr. President, may I make one request at the end of my case. I have not yet been able to submit all documents because I have not yet received all the translations. May I reserve myself the right to submit the few remaining documents, perhaps at the end of the case of my colleague, Dr. Fritz?
THE PRESIDENT: You need not wait for the translation. You can offer the documents in evidence now. Put in a list with the numbers.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Mr. President, I have not got them with me, I am afraid. Perhaps, if I may, I could do so tomorrow or the day after when Dr. Fritz is finished.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, certainly. Do any of the defendants' counsel want to ask any questions? [There was no response.] Does the Prosecution wish to cross-examine?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord', the Prosecution do not wish to cross-examine, on the same basis. My Lord, may I refer to one collection of documents that are in our Document Book lob, the collection of the anti-Jewish decrees in the Protectorate. They are all from the Verordnungsblatt for the Protectorate, and the Prosecution ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of them as being an official publication. The collection is merely for convenience and access of the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: Then the witness can retire. Then that closes your case for the present, Dr. Ludinghausen. The Tribunal will now adjourn. [A recess was taken.]
THE PRESIDENT: I call on counsel for the Defendant Fritzsche.
DR. HEINZ FRITZ (Counsel for Defendant Fritzsche): Mr. President, I intend to present the case of the Defendant Fritzsche as follows: First, I should like to call the Defendant Fritzsche to the witness stand and then the witness Von Schirmeister. In the course of these two examinations I intend to present to the Tribunal a few affidavits and to refer to these and to the rest of the contents of my two document books. In its decision of 8 March 1946 the Tribunal granted as witnesses for my case: First, Herr Von Schirmeister, second Dr. Krieg; and as documents: The text of all radio speeches of the Defendant Fritzsche from 1932 to 1945 and the archives of Deutscher Schnelldienst (fast official news service) of the Propaganda Ministry. Of all the evidence, in spite of the efforts of the General Secretary,. unfortunately only the witness Von Schirmeister could be brought here. Therefore, I had to rearrange my case and ask for the indulgence of the Tribunal if I go into a somewhat greater detail than originally intended in examining the Defendant Fritzsche and the witness Von Schirmeister. With the approval of the Tribunal I shall now call the Defendant Fritzsche to the witness stand. [The Defendant Fritzsche took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your full name, please?
HANS FRITZSCHE (Defendant): Hans Fritzsche.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: I swear by God-the Almighty and Omniscient-that I will speak the pure truth-and will withhold and add nothing. [The defendant repeated the oath.]
THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.
DR. FRITZ: Herr Fritzsche, will you please describe briefly your career up to the year 1933?
FRITZSCHE: As to that, may I refer to my affidavit, Document 3469-PS, Points 1 and 3 to 8? In addition I can limit myself now to a broad outline.
DR. FRITZ: Mr. President, I should like to remark at the beginning of the examination that my document books, of which I have two, have not yet been completely translated. This affidavit, which the defendant has just mentioned, is also contained in the document book for the Prosecution. I do not know whether the Tribunal now has this document book.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you can go on.
FRITZSCHE: I was born on 21 April 1900. My father was a civil servant. I attended the gymnasium to study classics. Then I was a soldier in the first World War, returned to school, and afterward studied philosophy, history, and national economics at, various universities. After the first World War my life and my work were determined by the distress of my people. We called this distress "Versailles.'' Enough has been said here as to the Versailles Treaty. I need add nothing to what has already been said.
DR. FRITZ: You were striving then in your journalistic work before 1933 for a change of the Versailles Treaty?
FRITZSCHE: Yes, of course.
DR. FRITZ: Did you seek this change through war?
FRITZSCHE: No, I sought it through the means of law, of politics, and economic common sense, which were at that time all on the German side. Along with this, certain restoration of the power of the German Reich would have been desirable because I saw in the weakness of the Reich a potential danger of war. But to change the Treaty of Versailles by means of war did not seem to me to be possible, expedient, nor desirable. The same sentiment prevailed later under the Hitler Government. Adolf Hitler gave two assurances on just this point which, for me and for millions of other Germans, were especially impressive. The first was the assurance: "I myself was a simple soldier and therefore know what war means." The second was the statement: "In all the bloody wars of the last thousand years not even the victors gained as much as they had sacrificed in the war." These two assurances sounded to German ears like holy and binding oaths. Whatever in Hitler's policy should have violated these two assurances was a betrayal of the German people.
DR. FRITZ: When, how, and why did you come to the NSDAP?
FRITZSCHE: After my entry into the Propaganda Ministry I joined the Party. I refer again to my affidavit, 3469-PS, to Points 9 to 13. I did not join the NSDAP on account of the Party program, nor through Hitler's book Mein Kampf; nor did I join because of the personality of Hitler, whose suggestive power, which has frequently been mentioned here, escaped me entirely. I rejected the harsh radicalism of the methods of the Party. This harsh radicalism was contrary to the habits of my whole life and my personal principles. Due to this coarse practice I even came into a conflict with the Party in 1932. I joined the Party when it had without doubt, won over the majority of the German people. This Party had overcome, at the time, the disunion of the German people and brought it unity after Bruning's great attempt at recovery on a democratic basis had failed on account of the foreign political opposition, not because of the resistance of the German people. After the cabinets also had failed to find a footing among the people, the appointment of Hitler, as Reich Chancellor, meant a return to democratic principles. Much has been said here about these matters. I ask for permission to cite one circumstance which, to my knowledge, has not yet been mentioned here and which does have a certain significance. When I joined the NSDAP I did not believe I was really joining a party in the true sense of the word, for the NSDAP did not have a party theory similar to those of the Marxist parties which had a developed and mature theory; all theorists of the Party were disputed. The theoretical writings of Gottfried Feder had been prohibited. The theorist Rosenberg was disputed in the Party to the very end. The lack of a theory for the Party was so great that even the printing of the bare Party program was forbidden for the German papers. The German papers were even forbidden a few years after 1933 to quote arbitrarily any part of Hitler's Mein Kampf .
FRITZSCHE: At that time, then, I did not believe that I was joining a narrowly defined party but I thought I was joining a movement, a movement which united in itself contrasts such as those between Ley and Funk, between Rosenberg and the Reich bishop; a movement which was variable in its choice of methods; which at one time prohibited the labor of women and at some other time solicited this same labor of women. I believed I WAS joining such a movement because one group within the NSDAP saw in the swastika flag nothing but a new combination, a new form for the colors black, white, and red, while another group saw in this banner the red flag with a swastika. It is a fact that there were whole groups of the former German Nationalist Party in the NSDAP or of former Communists in the NSDAP. Thus, I hoped to find in this wide-flung Movement a forum for intellectual discussions which would no longer be carried on with the murderous animosity which had previously ruled in Germany but which could be carried on with a certain discipline dominated by nationalist and socialist conceptions. For this reason and by making constant compromises, I put aside my own ravishes, my own misgivings, my own political beliefs. In many conversations I advised my friends to do the same when they complained that they and their interests were not given proper consideration during the time of the Nazification. I came to the conviction that millions of Germans had joined the Party only for this reason and in this expectation. They thought they were serving a good cause. Out of pure idealism they were willing to sacrifice everything to this cause, everything except their honor. Meanwhile, I had to realize that the leader of this cause accepted the sacrifice of these idealists, that he squandered it, and that, besides, he stained their honor with a senseless and inhuman murder, unique in history-a murder which no war necessity could have justified, for which one could not even find any reason in any necessity of war.
DR. FRITZ: Now, the Prosecution accuses you of having-and I quote, ". . . sworn the customary oath of unconditional loyalty to Hitler" in 1933. For whatever reason you did this, the fact that you took this oath is true, is it not?
FRITZSCHE: Yes, I also swore, twice, an oath to the Weimar Constitution, in 1933 and 1938. Let me add something. It was always and it still is my conviction that no oath relieves a man of his general duties to humanity. No one is made an irresponsible tool by an oath. My oath would never have made me carry out an order if I had recognized it to be criminal. Never in my life did I obey anyone blindly. For that reason, I do not refer for any of my actions to my duty to obey.
DR. FRITZ: Did you keep the oath which you took?
FRITZSCHE: Yes. No actions were expected of me which I could have considered criminal or a violation of written or unwritten laws. Moreover, I kept the oath which I took, not to Hitler, but to the German people.
DR. FRITZ: How long did you keep the oath?
FRITZSCHE: I kept it to the end. Then, it is true, I remained in Berlin, in violation of the order which I was given. When Hitler and his entourage took the way of suicide or fled toward the West, I was, to my knowledge, the only higher official to remain in Berlin. At that time I gathered together the employees of the highest Reich authorities, who had been left to their fate, in the ruins of my office. Hitler had left behind an order to fight on. The commander of Berlin could not be found. Therefore, as a civilian, I felt obliged to offer to the Russian Marshal Zhukov the capitulation. As I was sending off the emissaries who were to go across the battleline, the last military adjutant of Hitler appeared-General Burgdorff-and was going to shoot me in compliance with Hitler's order. Nevertheless, we capitulated, even though it was signed by the commander, who had been found in the meantime. Thus, I believe I kept my oath, the oath which I had taken to the German people in the person of Hitler.
DR. FRITZ: Did you hold an office in the Party?
FRITZSCHE: No.
DR. FRITZ: Were you a political leader?
FRITZSCHE: No.
DR. FRITZ: Were you in the SA or the SS or any one of the other organizations which are accused here?
FRITZSCHE: No.
DR. FRITZ: Did you ever take part in a Party rally?
FRITZSCHE: No.
DR. FRITZ: In one of the celebrations of 9 November in Munich?
FRITZSCHE: No.
DR. FRITZ: Then, please describe briefly your position and your work from 1933 to 1945.
FRITZSCHE: Here, again, I may refer to my affidavit, 3469-PS, that is, to the rest of the affidavit. Thus I may again limit myself to a very brief presentation to supplement what is said in the affidavit. At the seizure of power by National Socialism, I remained what I had been previously, Chief Editor of Drahtloser Dienst. That was the name of the German radio news service. I held that position for 5 more years. In May 1933 this wireless service, which had been a part of the Reich Radio Company, was incorporated into the press section of the Propaganda Ministry. As I was a specialist in journalistic news service, I soon was entrusted with the news agencies, first the smaller ones such as Transozean or Europapress or Eildienst. Later I was entrusted with the big Deutsches Nachrichtenburo (German news service). At that time, I had no power to issue orders to the agencies, for I was still an employee of the Ministry and not yet an official. I also had no right to determine the contents of the news. I had only the organizational supervision, but I believe that my advice was respected at the time. In those days I also gave other advice of a journalistic nature. Then in December 1938 I became head of the German Press Section. I became Ministerial Director. As an official I still felt like the journalist I had been for decades previously. I continued to direct the German Press Section until the spring of 1942. At that time I did not agree, among other things, with the colored press reports of my superior, Reich Press Chief Dr. Dietrich. For that reason, I became a soldier and went to the Eastern Front. In the fall of 1942 I was called back by Dr. Goebbels. Dr. Goebbels approved my previous criticism, of which he knew. He offered me the direction of the Radio Section of his Ministry. I answered that I could return to the Propaganda Ministry only if I had the certainty that a termination of the war by political means would be sought and that total military victory would not be striven after, which from the first day of the war I had considered impossible. I told Dr.
FRITZSCHE: Goebbels at that time literally, "I am not going to participate as a propagandist in a fight of self-destruction such as was fought by the Goths at Mount Vesuvius." Dr. Goebbels answered that Hitler and he, also, were seeking a termination of the war by diplomatic means on the basis of reaching some sort of understanding. He promised me that he would inform me in time if he noticed that the Fuehrer was changing these intentions. Dr. Goebbels repeated this promise at intervals of a few months, up to the end of the war; and each time that he repeated it; he always gave me substantiated indications about the political efforts in progress at the moment. Today I have the feeling that he broke his promise. Well, at that time I took over the Radio Section of the Propaganda Ministry, and I became Ministerial Director.
DR. FRITZ: Those were your official positions. But they were less known to the public. Better known were your radio speeches. What about them?
FRITZSCHE: Since 1932 I spoke once a week, for 10 to 15 minutes, on some German stations and on the Deutschlandsender (radio station for foreign broadcasts). At the beginning of the war I spoke daily on all the stations, I believe for 3 or 4 months. Then I spoke three times a week, then twice a week, and finally once a week again. At first these radio speeches were just reviews of newspaper articles, that is, a collection of quotations from domestic and foreign newspapers. After the beginning of the war, however, these speeches, of course, became a polemic on the basis of quotations mostly from foreign papers and foreign radio stations.
DR. FRITZ: Did your speeches have an official character? The Prosecution says that they were, of course, under the control of the Propaganda Ministry.
FRITZSCHE: That is not correct in that form. The speeches were not official. At the beginning they were purely personal elaborations. Of course, I could not prevent, as time went on, the private speeches of a man holding a position in the Propaganda Ministry being no longer considered as personal, but semi-official.
DR. FRITZ: You just said "personal elaborations," which was later considered "semi-official." For clarification I ask, could one criticize these speeches, or was one arrested for so doing?
FRITZSCHE: Criticism was not only allowed, but actually it was done. I had an extensive correspondence with my critics, although only with those who signed their names. There were of course also anonymous critics, but I may add that the anonymous critics had only general complaints. After the outbreak of the war a South German office of public prosecution and later the Ministry of Justice, offered me a certain protection for my publications, apparently on the assumption that they were official or semi-official. It was suggested to me to appear as co-plaintiff in possible libel actions. I categorically refused this, stating, as I have often done both privately and publicly, that people must be allowed to grumble about something. If they are forbidden to criticize the State and the Government, then they must be allowed at least to criticize the press, the radio, and me.
DR. FRITZ: How did you prepare these speeches? Were they put down in writing and censored beforehand?
FRITZSCHE: I always refused to let them be censored beforehand. The material was gathered very carefully. It was kept in the so-called "Archiv-Schnelldienst" which had been applied for and approved by the Tribunal to be brought here but which could not be found. The material consisted of clippings from papers, reports of news agencies, and reports from foreign broadcasts. The investigation of doubtful matters was done by a special official. A rough draft of the speech was then dictated and then delivered freely. Therefore, this procedure was different to that of writing an article; not every sentence had to be polished, because in a written matter every word counts, whereas in a speech it is more the total impression which is decisive.
DR. FRITZ: Now, you worked in the Propaganda Ministry; Dr. Goebbels was the Minister. His name has been mentioned here frequently in connection with his various positions as Reich Minister for Propaganda, Reich Propaganda Director of the NSDAP, Delegate for Total War Effort, and Gauleiter of Berlin. In which of these capacities did you deal with Dr. Goebbels?
FRITZSCHE: Exclusively in his capacity as Propaganda Minister.
DR. FRITZ: Were you his representative there?
FRITZSCHE: No. In the last 21/2 years I was his commissioner for radio broadcasting and, in addition, head of one of the 12 departments of his Ministry. Dr. Goebbels' representatives were his state secretaries. The last one was Dr. Naumann who was his successor for one day. DR. FRITZ Was Dr. Goebbels your only and direct superior?
FRITZSCHE: No. There were many offices between him and me at first, and still a few later on. This is the first times here in the dock, that I am without official superiors.
DR. FRITZ: By the way, whom of the defendants did you know or with whom did you have official or personal relations?
FRITZSCHE: I had two or three official conversations, shortly after 1933, with Funk, who was then State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, mainly dealing with economic and organizational matters. I discussed with him the financial plans for the reorganization of the news service. Then, I once had a talk with Grossadmiral Doenitz on a technical matter. I called on Seyss-Inquart in The Hague, and on Papen in Istanbul. I knew all the others only by sight and' first made their personal acquaintance during the Trial.
DR. FRITZ: How about Hitler?
FRITZSCHE: I never had a conversation with him. In the course of 12 years, however, I saw him, of course, several times at the Reichstag on big occasions or receptions. Once I was at his headquarters and was invited to dinner with a large number of other people. Otherwise, I received. instructions from Hitler only through Dr. Dietrich or his representative or through Dr. Goebbels and his various representatives.
DR. FRITZ: What were your relations with Dr. Goebbels? Were you on friendly terms with him? Did you meet with him frequently?