dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. FRITZ: Dittmar writes that the possibility of retaining the critical attitude in his radio commentary is due primarily to the silent approval and the protection of Hans Fritzsche, the director of the political radio. He believes that Fritzsche was a secret opponent of the regime and that he was glad of the opportunity to have found a commentator who discreetly expressed ideas which resembled his own and which insidiously would tend to reduce confidence in the regime. Following this quotation, there is another quotation from the affidavit of Dr. Scharping, which I have already submitted as Document Number Fritzsche-2. It is on Page 11 of this affidavit. I quote: "The radio men and the journalists knew Fritzsche's tolerance quite well. It repeatedly happened that, for example, Fritzsche at his conference had a copy of the Volkischer Beobachter in his hand and commented ironically on an anti-Jewish article. I recall that once he expressed his criticism in about the following words: " 'A Berlin paper'-then he held up the Volkischer Beobachter so that everyone could see it-'has once more, in an editorial, made more than two blunders. Perhaps the publisher may yet succeed in hitting the right tune.' "With such ironical remarks, Fritzsche always had the approval of his listeners, but there was some danger for him, for Goebbels daily read the records of these press conferences." Helm Fritzsche, following the statement of Lieutenant General Dittmar, one question: Did you feel yourself to be an enemy of the system, or how does General Dittmar come to this statement?
FRITZSCHE: I was not an enemy of the system. It would be ridiculous and unworthy to try to assert that today. But I was definitely an opponent of all misuse of the system. The obvious one which I noticed the most, because it was in my field of work, was whitewashing of news during the war. The aim of all my news policy was realism, and apparently that is what General Dittmar means in the part of his statement which has been read here. I met General Dittmar in December 1942 or January 1943 at the moment when the German 6th Army at Stalingrad was already surrounded, but when this fact was still being kept secret from the German people. Together with General Dittmar, in face of the prohibition, I publicly announced the fact that the 6th Army was surrounded at Stalingrad. This caused a great sensation at the time. In the following months and years I always defended General Dittmar and his realistic presentation of the military situation against all attacks, especially against the attacks of the Party, but also against the attacks of the Foreign Office, which repeatedly pointed out that these sober presentations of Dittmar had a bad effect on Germany's allies. In connection with this struggle for realistic news service, later- and I ask permission to mention this briefly-I waged a desperate battle against the-irresponsible propaganda of miracle weapons. Only 1 year after Dr. Goebbels had mentioned the future miracle weapons did I mention a new type of weapon for the first time. Speer has mentioned SS Standartenfuehrer Berg, who is said to have carried on secret propaganda for the miracle weapon in connection with the Propaganda Ministry. He wrote an article in Das Reich which attracted much attention, with the sensational and very promising heading, "We, the Bearers of Secrets." I had to fight against things like that.
FRITZSCHE: Another especially striking example was this: Another member of the SS, Hernau, wrote, at the moment when the invasion had succeeded, an article in which he presented the situation as if the evacuation of France had been a very secret trick of the German Command, which offered the possibility for a particularly strong counterblow. I prohibited this article in my field, and I repeatedly had to oppose the irresponsible rumors which were spread in secret about mysterious weapons. I did so publicly, and I plainly stated my point of view on the radio against this propaganda. On the other hand I may point out that at every moment of the war my superiors always made well-founded promises to me, first, of some military offensive which was just being prepared; for instance, a thrust from East Prussia toward the south, a thrust from Upper Silesia to the Vistula, a thrust from Alsace toward the north, and so forth. Hand in hand with these promises, which were thoroughly detailed, were the political promises which were mentioned briefly yesterday, that is, the descriptions given by Dr. Goebbels that foreign political negotiations were in progress with the enemy on one or the other side.
DR. FRITZ-: Another question: Who was in charge of press policy?
FRITZSCHE: Reich Press Chief Dr. Dietrich. He gave very specialized instructions, mostly in a precise wording, the so-called "slogan of the day of the Reich Press Chief." Generally he even gave the wording of the commentaries which were to be added in the press conference. For the most part, Dr. Dietrich was at the Fuehrer's headquarters and received his instructions directly from Hitler. Dr. Dietrich's representatives were Sundermann and Lorenz. The second factor decisive for German press policy was Reichsleiter Amann who was at the head of the organization of publishers. The third factor was Dr. Goebbels as Reich Propaganda Minister. Dietrich and Amann were nominally subordinate to him; actually, both had the same authority as he had and I always had to adjust differences or coordinate among these three authorities.
DR. FRITZ: Did you create the organization of the journalistic news service?
FRITZSCHE: Yes, I did create this organization. In principle, it originated with me. I may refer to my affidavit, 3469-PS, Point 17. I was in charge of the journalistic news service from about 1934 to 1938. I was proud of the fact that at the beginning of the war even the enemy recognized the good functioning of this news machine. However, at that time I was no longer the head of the socalled news service department. As an expert I created this organization in peacetime without thinking of the possibility of using it during war. The conclusion of the Prosecution that I also determined the contents of the news service is not correct.
DR. FRITZ: The Prosecution has said that the Propaganda Ministry was the most fabulous lie factory of all times. What do you have to say about this?
FRITZSCHE: First, for myself personally, I should like to make the following quite clear. I state under oath: On really serious questions of policy and the conduct of war I did not commit a single falsification and did not consciously use a single lie. How often I myself became the victim of a falsehood or a lie I cannot say after the revelations of this Trial. The same is true, as far as I know, of all my fellow workers, but I do not by any means want to deny that I and my fellow workers selected news and quotations following a certain tendency. It is the curse of propaganda during war that one works only with black and white. Only a few great minds remain independent. I believe that this painting in black and white is a luxury which also cannot be afforded any longer. As to the Propaganda Ministry itself, as such, I must say that I can only judge of the one-twelfth, that is the one section of which I was in charge at any time. But to my knowledge it is a mistake to believe that in the Propaganda Ministry thousands of little lies were hatched out. In details we worked quite cleanly and honestly, technically even perfectly. If we had lied on a thousand small things, the enemy would have been able to deal with us more easily than was the case. But decisive for such a news machine is not the detail but the final fundamental basis on which propaganda is built. Decisive is the belief in the incorruptibility of the leaders of the state, on which every journalist must rely and this basis is shaken by what has become known today of mass murders, of senseless atrocities, and it is shaken by the doubt in the honesty of Hitler's protestations for peace, the factual details of which I am not in a position to judge.
DR. FRITZ: In this Trial it has been pointed out that there are no regulations in international law on the methods of propaganda in war and peace.
FRITZSCHE: I know very well that international law places no restrictions on propaganda, especially propaganda during war. I also know very well that only in a very few individual treaties between states are there regulations about the use of propaganda; for example in the German-Polish treaty and in the German-Soviet Union treaty. But in all my life as a journalist I have emphasized that the lack of international regulations as to propaganda is no excuse for lies. I always emphasized the moral responsibility of the journalist and newsman. I did so long before the war in an international discussion with Radio Luxembourg but it would lead too far afield to go into that here. If last May I did not seek death, one of the reasons for this was my wish-I wanted to render an account of where, in that system, there were the pure idealism and the heroic sacrifices of millions, and where there were lies and the brutality which did not shrink from committing crimes.
DR. FRITZ: Please give us examples of cases wherein you felt you were deceived.
FRITZSCHE: During this Trial the news was discussed which circulated at the beginning of the Polish war about the attack on the Gleiwitz radio station. At that time I firmly believed in the truth of the official German news. I need say nothing about this case. Then, in December of last year, here in the prison in Nuremberg, I realized from a talk with Grand Admiral Raeder that it was actually a German submarine which sank the Athenia . Up to that time I had firmly believed in the truth of the official German report that there had been no German submarine in the neighborhood. I have asked my lawyer to pick out the most caustic statements I made in my radio speeches about the Athenia case and include them in my document book. They are utterances which would really speak against me but which, on the other hand, show that I worked not alone on the basis of the official German news, but that I also collected the news which supported the official German version; for example, the fact which was not at first made public and therefore was suspicious, that the wreck of the Athenia , one day after the catastrophe, was sunk by being shelled by British destroyers, which is a matter of Course in the interest of shipping but which at the time seemed to me to be an occasion for suspicion. I also used American news on the same subject. But the most impressive false news of which I was a victim was given out in the last few days of the war. I must describe it for the sake of clearing up matters. In the days when Berlin was surrounded by the Russian Army the people of Berlin were told that a relief army, the army of General Wenk, was marching on Berlin; that there was no more fighting on the Western Front. The news was given out that Ribbentrop had gone to the Western Front and had concluded a treaty there, and handbills were printed in Berlin which contained approximately this text: "Soldiers of the Wenk army, we Berliners know that you are as far as Potsdam.
FRITZSCHE: Hurry, come quickly, help us." These handbills were printed at a time when the Wenk army no longer existed and had already been captured. These handbills were apparently dropped over Berlin inadvertently and were to give the inhabitants of Berlin new courage. That happened in the days when Hitler, according to Speer's testimony, had already told his entourage that there was no use trying to do anything for the rest of the German people.
DR. FRITZ: Mr. President, the two radio speeches which the Defendant Fritzsche has mentioned dealing with the Athenia case are in the Document Number Fritzsche-1, which I submitted yesterday. I refer only to the contents of these radio speeches. [Turning to the defendant.] Please give examples of untruths which you knew and which you did not consider lies. 27 June q6
FRITZSCHE: One example is the so-called "V" drive. Colonel Britton, a British colonel, proclaimed this "V" drive, this "Victory" drive on the British radio. On the same evening I stood before a German microphone and said, apparently harmlessly, "We will have a 'V' drive; the 'V' stands for 'Victoria."' Then Colonel Britton said that I had stolen the "V" from him. I said that was not the case, that I thought of it first.
DR. FRITZ: If you thought you were operating only with the truth, why your sharp language, why the prohibition against listening on the radio to foreign stations?
FRITZSCHE: I have already emphasized in my affidavit that in my opinion the sharpness of my language was always less than that of my opponents. The prohibition against listening to foreign radio stations was issued decidedly against my win. This prohibition was only a hindrance for me in my discussions with my foreign opponents in the various countries. Due to this prohibition my enemy was, so to speak, half in shadow; I could not speak to him officially, but, on the other hand, I knew that many of my listeners had heard him. May I mention here that I always advocated a mild judgment on the violators of this prohibition against listening to foreign radio stations. Legal authorities often consulted me as an expert. I may emphasize that, particularly after Stalingrad, I established my own listening service for the Russian radio in order to learn the names of German soldiers captured at Stalingrad which were mentioned on the Russian radio and report them to the relatives, because it seemed cruel to me to deprive the relatives of such a source of information about the fate of their people. Moreover, there was only one alternative with regard to the prohibition of listening to the radio. That was either to confiscate all radios and stop the whole German radio system-the Party often demanded this-or the prohibition against listening to foreign stations, which seemed to me the lesser of the two evils. Finally, we were in a war, and the enemy was not too particular in his methods. I should like to give an example. that was the station Gustav Siegfried 2, which at the beginning of its work gained listeners in Germany with stories that I do not want to characterize more precisely but which caused me to prohibit my own listening station from receiving this broadcast.
DR. FRITZ: You have been charged with urging a policy of ruthless exploitation of the occupied territories. Do you acknowledge such a policy?
FRITZSCHE: No. me aim of all my propaganda work in Europe was, and had to be, to win over the peoples of Europe to the German cause. Anything else would have been illogical. All the radio broadcasts in all European languages, which were made under my direction, had for years only one aim: That was to win the voluntary co-operation, especially of the occupied territories, for the fight of the Reich.
DR. FRITZ: Were you of the opinion that the German administration in the occupied territories recruited voluntary cooperation?
FRITZSCHE: At the beginning, certainly, with one single exception. That was Koch in the Ukraine. Otherwise, as far as I could see, all administrations of occupied territories sought this collaboration more or less skillfully. I saw the gigantic efforts which the Allies made to interfere with this German collaboration policy, which was very dangerous for them. I saw that in these efforts the Allies were at first using their means of propaganda. This alone would not have worked. Then I saw that they used other means in these efforts, that is, outrages and sabotage. These latter efforts had great success. Outrages always called for reprisals and reprisals always called forth new outrages. I hope I will not be misunderstood, and this is not meant cynically, if I say the following: I, as a propagandist, considered for example the murder of Heydrich a minor success. The destruction of Lidice, carried out by the Germans, however, was a tremendous success for the Allies. In other words, I always was and had to be an opponent of reprisals of all kinds.
DR. FRITZ: Did you know of the reprisals? How did you deal with them in your propaganda?
FRITZSCHE: I learned of Lidice, which I just mentioned, only after months, because at that time I was at the Eastern Front. I learned-and this is significant-only of the destruction of the houses of Lidice and the driving out of the inhabitants. I learned only here in the courtroom of the killing of a part of the inhabitants. I learned that hostages were taken, but not that they were killed. The killing of hostages was made public only in the occupied territories. If shootings occurred anywhere, I was told that they had been of persons condemned to death on account of outrages or conspiracy. The Night and Fog Decree was also unknown to me. On the other hand, I frequently learned of fines which had been imposed on towns or districts. In our propaganda, we always referred to the causes of such reprisals.
DR. FRITZ: And how did you describe the work of the German administrations in your propaganda?
FRITZSCHE: I always referred to the constructive work which, in spite of all difficulties and all resistance, was being done in the various occupied territories, especially and far ahead, the work for the intensification of agriculture; then that to increase industrial production. I had references made to the supplying of the occupied territories with food, often, as I should like to emphasize, from scant German stocks. I had reports made of the creation of schools, and I received at times very impressive reports and had them worked on, for example, on the supplying of cities such as Paris, in spite of sabotage by the enemy against railroad lines or other supply channels. I had such reports collected in permanent files and had speeches and whole series of speeches made on them. There were many such reports. I must emphasize that, as far as I know, in not a single German-occupied territory was there an infant mortality of 80 percent, and in none were there fields lying fallow, and it is simply not true, as the Prosecution said here once, although Inca moment of excitement, that Germany and the Germans were well fed and happy during the war while the occupied territories starved. That is not true.
DR. FRITZ: What did you know about bad conditions in the occupied territories?
FRITZSCHE: Above all, the failure to call on the population for their own administration and the lack of decisive political concessions to the countries which administered themselves. Immediately after the French campaign, I had repeatedly demanded the establishment of a Magna Charta for Europe, laying down the basic rights of the European peoples. I prepared many memoranda on this subject which were accepted by Dr. Goebbels and taken to Hitler; and when in the autumn of 1942 I decided to return to the Propaganda Ministry, one of the promises which Dr. Goebbels gave me was that now finally that Magna Charta for Europe would be proclaimed.
DR. FRITZ: Mr. President, on this occasion I should like to quote a passage from the Scharping affidavit, Document Number Fritzsche-2, Page 13 of the affidavit: "After the occupation of various European countries, Fritzsche issued directives for news releases to the effect that the peoples of Europe were to form a league of states on the basis of equality with Germany. He told me to work out a series of speeches to this effect in which this point of view was to play the decisive role and which at the same time should give the authorities hints for a healthy reconstruction in the occupied territories." [Turning to the defendant.] Did you know what has been said here by the Prosecution about the activity of the Police in the occupied territories?
FRITZSCHE: No.
DR. FRITZ: At this point I should like to interpolate a question: I have already asked the witness Paulus about your conduct after you learned of the Commissar Order. How about that?
FRITZSCHE: I learned of the order to shoot captured Soviet commissars at the beginning of May 1942 when I came to the 6th Army. I immediately opposed it. Whether it was carried out or not, I do not know. Field Marshal Paulus, no doubt, is correct when he said that he had already prevented in his army the execution of this order. At any rate, I made it my business to have the order as such rescinded, and I achieved this. The 6th Army, at my advice, gave certain information to the High Command of the Wehrmacht or to the Armed Forces Operations Staff. I am convinced, moreover, that many army leaders acted in the same way as the leader of the 6th Army and simply did not carry out the order. At any rate, it was expressly rescinded afterward.
DR. FRITZ: The Prosecution quotes two paragraphs from your radio speech of 5 July 1941. Mr. President, that is in the English record of Captain Sprecher, Pages 32 and 33. [Turning to the defendant.] The Prosecution concludes from this presentation that you had agitated for ruthless measures against the population of the Soviet Union. You are said to have vilified the people of the Soviet Union.
TO PRESIDENT: We cannot find it here. What is the PS number?
DR. FRITZ: It is in the transcript, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: We have not got the transcript here. We have the document book. The document book does not contain 32 and 33 pages. It contains only 32 or 31 and a little bit...
DR. FRITZ: I can give the document number which is 3064-PS, Exhibit USA-723 and...
THE PRESIDENT: It is Page 14 in our book. Well, did you say 5 July?
DR. FRITZ: 5 July 1941.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I have got the 7th and 10th of July but not the 5th. What page in the shorthand notes was it? You know it?
DR. FRITZ: On Page 32, Page 33 in the English transcript. I have the English transcript here.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you had better read it then. 16Q
DR. FRITZ: This quotation from Captain Sprecher's speech for the Prosecution reads: "Letters from the front, film reporters, propaganda companies attached to the German Army wherever it advanced, P.K. reporters and soldiers on leave confirm: In this battle in the East it is not one ideology fighting against another, not one political system against another, but culture, civilization, and human dignity have revolted against devilish principles of an underworld."
FRITZSCHE: I should like to state the following: With this statement I was neither calling for ruthless measures against the population of the Soviet Union, nor did I want to vilify the people of the Soviet Union. I refer to the full text of the speech of 5 July. I do not wish to read this speech, but I should like permission to sum it up briefly.
DR. FRITZ: Mr. President, in my Document Book 1-I do not know whether the Tribunal already has it-I have all the radio speeches . . .
THE PRESIDENT: No, we haven't got it.
DR. FRITZ: I have all these radio speeches of the Defendant Fritzsche from which the Prosecution quoted passages against him in my document book in their full text.
THE PRESIDENT: It has just been handed up to me. What page is it?
DR. FRITZ: Pages 8 to 13, the radio speech of 5 July 1941. [Turning to the defendant.] Will you continue?
FRITZSCHE: I ask for permission to sum up the contents very briefly. I spoke of the reports which the German public received about what German soldiers had seen in their advance in the Soviet Union, especially in connection with prisoners in the prisons in various cities. I did not describe these things once more; I only recalled them from the reports which had been given out at the time. From them I drew the conclusion that now one saw how necessary the fight was against a system under which such atrocities were possible. For the peoples of the Soviet Union I expressly used words of compassion and sympathy.
DR. FRITZ: In the same connection, and with the same tendency, the Prosecution then quotes a sentence from a paragraph of your radio speech of 10 July 1941. Mr. President, that is in Document Book 1-the speech of 10 July 1941-also in its full text, on Pages 14 to 19. [Turning to the defendant.] What do you have to say to this charge?