The Nuremberg Trials (Vol.6). International Military Tribunal

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СКАЧАТЬ has created the very conditions the Jewish race requires in its struggle for domination, over other races.”

      And then skipping a few lines in that quotation:

      “Not the last result of German resistance on all the fronts, so unexpected to the enemy, is the fruition of a development which began in the pre-war years, that is, the process of subordinating British policy to far-reaching Jewish points of view. This development started long before this when Jewish emigrants from Germany commenced their warmongering against us from British and American soil.”

      And then skipping several sentences and going to the last sentence on that page.

      “This whole attempt, aiming at the establishment of Jewish world domination, was obviously made at a time when the national-racial consciousness had been too far awakened to promise such an aim success.”

      Your Honors, we suggest that that is an invitation to further persecution of the Jews and, indeed, to their elimination.

      Fritzsche also incited and encouraged ruthless measures against the peoples of the U.S.S.R. In his regular broadcasts Fritzsche’s incitements against the peoples of the U.S.S.R. 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 U.S.S.R. concerning atrocities actually described some of the many atrocities committed by the German invaders, as we now well know. The following quotations are again taken from the BBC intercepted broadcasts and their translations, beginning shortly after the invasion of the U.S.S.R. in June 1941. The first one is taken again from Page 16 of our document book. I will read only the last half of Item 7, beginning with the third paragraph:

      “As can be sufficiently seen by letters reaching us from the front, from P.K. reporters”—and may I interrupt my quotation there to say that “P.K.” stands for “Propaganda Kompanie,” propaganda companies which were attached to the German Army wherever it went—“P.K. reporters and soldiers on leave, in this struggle in the East not one political system is pitted against another, not one philosophy is fighting another, but culture, civilization, and human dignity have stood up against the diabolical principle of a subhuman world.”

      And then another quote in the next paragraph:

      “It was only the Führer’s decision to strike in time that saved our homeland from the fate of being overrun by those subhuman creatures, and our men, women, and children from the unspeakable horror of becoming their prey.”

      In the next broadcast I want to quote from, 10th of July 1941, in the first paragraph Fritzsche speaks of the inhuman deeds committed in areas controlled by the Soviet Union, and he states that one, upon seeing the evidence of those deeds committed, comes—and here I quote:

      “. . . finally to make the holy resolve to lend one’s assistance in the final destruction of those who are capable of such dastardly acts.”

      And then quoting again, the last paragraph:

      “The Bolshevist agitators made no effort to deny that in towns, thousands, and in the villages, hundreds of corpses of men, women, and children have been found, who had been either killed or tortured to death. In spite of this Bolshevik agitators assert that this was not done by Soviet commissars but by German soldiers. But we know our German soldiers. No German women, fathers, or mothers require proofs that their husbands or their sons 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 made him an accomplice in these crimes because his labeling 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.

      Although we cannot say that Fritzsche directed that 10,000 or 100,000 persons 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.]

      CAPT. SPRECHER: Fritzsche encouraged, 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 the 9th of October 1941, found at Pages 2102 and 2103 of the BBC translation. I would like to cut it down, but it is one of those long German sentences that just cannot be broken down:

      “Today we can only say: Blitzkrieg or not, this German thunderstorm has cleansed the atmosphere of Europe. Certainly 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 Führer’s gift as a statesman and military leader; a proof of the German peoples’ might; we saw the proof that no opponent can rival the courage, discipline, and readiness for sacrifice displayed by the German soldier, and we are particularly grateful for these lightning, incomparable victories, because—as the Führer emphasized last Friday—they give us the possibility of embarking on the organization of Europe and on the lifting of the treasures”—I would like to repeat that—“lifting of the treasures of this old continent, already now in the middle of war, without its 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 to supply all needs in peace or war.”

      Concerning the exploitation of foreign countries, Fritzsche states himself, at Paragraph 39 of his affidavit:

      “The utilization of the productive capacity of the occupied countries for the strengthening of the German war potential, I have openly and with praise pointed out, all the more so as 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.

      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 Organization of the Greater German Radio, a position which Fritzsche was the first and the last to hold. In Paragraph 36, Document Number 3469-PS, the Fritzsche affidavit, Fritzsche narrates how the entire German radio and television system was organized under his supervision. That is at Page 29 of your document book. He states:

      “My office practically represented the high command of German radio.”

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

      Goebbels СКАЧАТЬ