Archive/File: imt/nca/nca-02/nca-02-16-responsibility-21-04
Last-Modified: 1997/06/19

   Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume Two, Chapter XIV


                                                 [Page 1035]

C. FRITZSCHE'S USE OF PROPAGANDA TO FURTHER THE CONSPIRACY
TO COMMIT ATROCITIES AND EXPLOIT OCCUPIED TERRITORIES.

Fritzsche incited atrocities and encouraged a ruthless
occupation policy. The results of propaganda as a weapon of
the Nazi conspirators reaches into every aspect of this
conspiracy, including the atrocities and ruthless
exploitation in occupied countries. It is likely that many
ordinary Germans would never have participated in or
tolerated the atrocities committed throughout Europe, had
they not been conditioned and goaded by the constant Nazi
propaganda. The callousness and zeal of the people who
actually committed the atrocities was in large part due to
the constant and corrosive propaganda of Fritzsche and his
official associates.

(1) Persecution of the Jews. 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 Mueller, entitled
"The Propaganda Ministry." (2434-PS)

In his radio broadcasts Fritzsche took a particularly active
part in this "enlightenment" concerning the Jewish question.
These broadcasts were full of provocative libels against
Jews, the result of which was to inflame Germans to further
atrocities against Jews. Even Streicher, the master Jew-
baiter of all time, could scarcely outdo Fritzsche in some
of his anti-Jewish incitements. Broadcasts by Fritzsche
which were monitored and translated by the British
Broadcasting Corporation are quite revealing (3064-PS).
These radio speeches of Fritzsche were broadcast during the
period 1941-1945, which was a period of intensified anti-
Jewish measures.

                                                [Page  1047]
                                                            
For instance, in a broadcast on 18 December 1941, Fritzsche
declared:

     "The fate of Jewry in Europe has turned out as
     unpleasant as the Fuehrer predicted in the case 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 the misery
     of which the nations of the Old World did not absolve
     them." (3064-PS)

On 18 March 1941 Fritzsche broadcast as follows:

     "But the crown of all wrongly-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. Precisely because there exists no race which
     can be the master. of the rest of mankind, we Germans
     have taken the liberty to break the domination of Jewry
     and of its capital in Germany, of Jewry which believed
     to have inherited the Crown of secret world
     domination." (3064-PS)

On 9 October 1941 Fritzsche declared over the radio:

     "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
     war mongers 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 war mongers
     only doubled their senseless and impotent fury." (3064-
     PS)

And on 8 January 1944 Fritzsche broadcast the following:

     "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 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 confide its future developments 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 (3064-PS)

                                                [Page  1048]
                                                            
Finally, in a broadcast on 13 January 1945, Fritzsche
stated:

     "If Jewry provided a link between 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."
     
     "Not the last result of German resistance on the
     fronts, so unexpected to the enemy, is the fruition of
     a development which began in the pre-war years, the
     process of subordinating British policy to far-reaching
     Jewish points of view. It began long before this when
     Jewish emigrants from Germany started their war-
     mongering against us from British and American soil."
     
     "This whole attempt aiming at the establishment of
     Jewish world domination, now increasingly recognizable,
     has come to a head at the very moment when the people's
     understanding of their racial origins has been far too
     much awakened to promise success to the undertaking."
     (3064-PS)

All this was designed not only as a justification of prior
anti-Jewish actions, but also as an invitation to further
persecution of the

(2) Ruthless treatment of peoples of the USSR. Fritzsche
also incited and encouraged ruthless measures against the
peoples of the USSR.

In his regular broadcasts Fritzsche's incitement against the
peoples of the USSR were often linked to, and were certainly
as inflammatory as, his rantings against the Jews. It is
ironic that his propaganda ascribing atrocities to the
peoples of the USSR are accurate descriptions of some of the
many atrocities committed by the German invaders. Shortly
after the invasion of the USSR in June 1941 Fritzsche
broadcast as follows:

     "The evidence of letters reaching us from the front, of
     P. K. [Propaganda Kompanie]- reporters and soldiers on
     leave demonstrates that, in this struggle in the East,
     not one political system is pitted against another, not
     one view of life is fighting another, but that culture,
     civilization, and human decency make a stand against
     the diabolical principle of a sub-human world."
     
                                                [Page  1049]
                                                            
     "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." (3064-PS) In his broadcast on 10 July 1941
     Fritzsche spoke of the alleged inhuman deeds committed
     in various areas by the Soviet Union, and he states
     that upon seeing the evidence of those deeds one is "
     *** finally to make the holy resolve to give his aid in
     he final destruction of those who are capable of such
     dastardly acts."
     
                           *******
     
     "The Bolshevist agitators make no effort to deny that
     in towns, thousands, in the villages, hundreds, of
     corpses of men, women and children have been found, 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, father, or
     mother requires proof that their husband or their son
     cannot have committed such atrocious acts." (3064-PS)

Evidence to be offered by the Soviet prosecuting staff will
prove that representatives of the Nazi conspirators did not
hesitate to exterminate Soviet soldiers and civilians by
scientific mass methods. The incitements by Fritzsche make
him an accomplice in these crimes. His labeling of the
Soviet peoples as members of a "sub-human world" seeking to
"exterminate" the German people, and similar talk, helped
fashion the psychological atmosphere of unreason and hatred
which not only made possible these atrocities in the East,
but made them appear a holy duty.

(3 Exploitation of occupied territories. Fritzsche
encouraged and glorified the policy of the Nazi conspirators
in ruthlessly exploiting the occupied countries. In his
radio broadcast of 9 October 1941 he stated:

     "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 the
     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' force; we saw
     the proof that no opponent can stand up to the courage,
     discipline, and readiness for sacrifice displayed
     
                                                [Page  1050]
                                                            
     by the German soldier; and we are particularly grateful
     for these lightning, unmatched victories, because as
     the Fuehrer emphasized last Friday -- they give us the
     possibility of embarking on the organization of Europe
     and of lifting of the treasures of this old continent,
     already now in the middle of war, without it 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 for any need of
     peace or war." (3064-PS)

In his affidavit, Fritzsche admits having encouraged the
exploitation of foreign countries:

     "The utilization 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." (3469-PS)

(4) Control of German radio. In addition to continuing as
the head of the German Press Division until after the
conspirators had begun the last of their aggression,
Fritzsche was also the high commander of the entire German
radio system. 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 his
affidavit, Fritzsche narrates how the entire German Radio
and Television System was organized under his supervision:

     "My office practically represented the high command of
     German radio." (3469-PS)

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 in
conforming the entire radio apparatus of Germany to the
desires of the conspirators.

Goebbels customarily held an eleven 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 eleven o'clock press conference.

In Goebbels' introduction to a book by Fritzsche, called
"War to the War Mongers," he took occasion to praise
Fritzsche's broadcasts in this fashion:

     "Nobody knows better than I how much work is involved
     in those broadcasts, how many times they were dictated
     within
     
                                                [Page  1051]
                                                            
     the last minutes to find some minutes later a willing
     ear by the whole nation."

It is clear 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 Herren). This is borne out by Fritzsche's
functions. When Fritzsche spoke on the radio it was plain to
the German people that they were listening to the high
command of the conspirators in this field.

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