This point is numerous oral and written statements which come to us."
Frick's ears were deaf to pleas for jutice and ethics such as that. A year later, in August 1941, the Bishop of Limbourg wrote to the Reich Ministries of the Interior, of Justice, and Church Affairs:
"About 8 km. from Limbourg in the little town of Hadamar, used as an nursing home.
This institution was renovated and for months, approximately since February 1941.
The fact Wiesbaden.
..Several times a week buses arrive in Hadamar with a considerable number of such victims.
School children of the vicinity know this vehicle and say:
'There comes the murder box again.
' After the arrival of the vehicle citizens pecially when repulsive odours annoy them.
The effect of names and say:
'You're crazy, you will be sent to the baking ovens in Hadamar.
' Those who do not want to marry or find no opportunity say:
'Marry, never' Bring children into the world so that they can be put into the bottling machine.
' You hear old folks say:
'Don't send me to a State Hospital:
less eaters whose turn it will be are the old people'.....
severe threats. In the interests of public peace this may be well intended, but the knowledge and the conviction it.
The conviction will be increased with the realisation Facta loquantur."
relatively insignificant murders, when the Ministries of Justice, of the Interior and of Church Affairs were receiving protests from the Bishops of two districts far removed from each ether, on what was common knowledge in their dioceses, how much greater were the security problems of the Einsatz Commandos in the East. In May 1942 an SS leader reporting to Berlin on a tour of inspection of the progress of the extermination drive wrote of the gas vans:
"By having small windows introduced, one on each side of as one sees often on peasant's houses in the country, I have living in.
The cars are so well known that not only the as the "Death Car" as soon as one of these vehicles appear.
for any length of time."
Can these defendants have remained in ignorance? What peculiar dispensation of providence was there thatprotected them from knowledge of these matters, matters which were their concern? out Germany and of articles in the world press - must have been known to every one of these men. How much more then must they have known of the concentration camps which, during those years, covered like a rash the whole of Germany and the occupied territories. If only they could acquiesce in the mercy killings, with what favour they must have regarded the extermination of the Jews. hausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenburg and Ravensbruck. Frick's budget for the Ministry of the Interior for that year includes a sum of RMS.
21,155,000 for armed SS and concentration camps - no less than a fifth of the total budget. By April 1942 there had been added to those six camps nine more, and more were to follow afterwards.
But these were only the core of the system. Like planets, each of them had its attendant satellites. Ziereis has given you some idea of the extent of this system. He describes the subsidiary camps that were based on Mauthausen alone. 33 of them he mentioned by name, giving the numbers of prisoners at each - a total of over 102,000. Besides those 33, there were another 45, also all under the authority of the Mauthausen Commandant. these mainsubsidiary concentration, camps as are known. Over 300 of them are marked on that map.
prisoners, which included 90,000 from Hungary, 60,000 from the police prison and ghetto of Litzmannstadt, 15,000 Poles from the Government General, 10,000 convicts from eastern territories, 17,000 former Polish officers, 400,000 Poles from Warsaw and between 15,000 - 20,000 continually arriving from France. capacity was no longer worth the nuisance that their continued existence mean Then they took their place in the daily detail for the as chambers. stench over the countryside. When the Bishop of Limbourg could write to Frock of the repulsive odours from the comparatively insignificant evens at Hadamar, can we doubt the evidence of Hoess that I mentioned ?
"the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz." Whole Reich on their way to the extermination centers or their own slavery. Many arrived dying and even dead through the appallin concitions under which they journeyed. An official at the railway station at Essen has described the arrival of workers from Poland Galicia and the Ukraine :
"They cae in goods wagons in which potatoes, building materials and also cattle had been transported. The trucks were jammed full with people. My personal view was that it was inhuman to transport people in such a manner. The people were squashed closely together and they had no room for free movement. It was enraging to every decent German to see how the people were beaten and kicked and generally maltreated in a brutal manner. In the very beginning, as the first transports arrived, we could see how inhumanly these people were treated. Every wagon was so overfull that it was incredible that such a number could be jammed into one wagon ... The clothing of prisoners of war an civilian workers was catastrophic. It was ragged and ripped and the footwear was the same. In some cases they had to go to work with rags round their feet.
"even in the worst weather and bitterest cold I have never seen that any of the wagons were heated. Those men were not destined for concentration camps that was certain. How much worse the conditions of these who were. Great columns, too, trekked one foot olong the highways of the Reich. They walked until they could walk no more; then they died by the side of the road Ziereis, Commandant of Mauthausen, in his dying confession said :
"In the presence of Baldur von Schirach and others I received the following order from Himmler :
"All Jews of localities in the south east, working on the socalled fortification-commands, are to be sent on foot to Mauthausen."
"In consequence of this order we were expecting to receive 60,000 Jews at Mauthausen, but in fact only a samll fraction of this number arrived. I remember that cut of one convoy of 4,500 Jews which started out from somewhere in the country, only 180 arrived. The women and children had been without shoes and clothes and were very verminous. In that convoy complete families had started out to ether but an immense number hat died on the way from exposure, weakness, etc." Now whatever may have been hidden from view behind the stockades of the concnetration camps, these things were open for all to see. Every one of these defendants must have seen them and the thousands of concentration camp prisoners working in the fields and factories adorned in their striped pyjamasa uniform that was as familiar as any other in Germany. of human pity, have continued to take active part in support of a system that was responsible for such suffering ? But they had no pity - and by their ideology and teaching they had deprived the German people of pity. the concentration camps and their inmates when the advancing Allied Armies brought with them the danger of capturing these camps and of disclosing the guilt of the Nazi Government :
"Prisoners were to be led into thetunnels of the of the prisoners was to be effected in this manner."
Even Ziereis, murderer of Mauthausen's 65,000 dead, shied and refused that order. issued by the Commandant of theSipo and SD in the Government General, which has been put in as evidence:
"Should the situation at the front necessitate it, of prisoners.
Should the situation develop suddenly, in disposed of as far aspossible, (burning, blowing up the building, etc.)
. If necessary, Jews still employed in the in the same way.
The liberation of prisoners of Jews by must be avoided under all circumstances.
Nor may they fall into their hands alive."
out. With this evidence before us, there can be only one meaning to that teleprint message which was found amongst his papers on his arrest:
"Please inform the Reichsfuehrer SS and report to sonally today."
either a Minister or a leading executive in a State which, within the space of six years, transported in horrible conditions some 7,000,000 men, women and children for labor, exterminated 275,000 of its own aged and mentally infirm and annihilated in the gas chambers or by shooting what must at the lowest computation be 12,000,000 people, remained ignorant of or irresponsible for these crimes.
You are asked to accept that the horrors of the transports of the conditions of this slave labour, deployed as it was in labour camps throughout the country, the smell of the burring bodies, all of which were known to the world, were not known to these 21 men by whose orders such things were done. When they spoke or wrote in support of this horrible policy or genocide you are asked to accept that their utterances were made in ignorance of the facts, as part of their general duty to support the policy of their Government, or finally, should be regarded merely as tactical - that is to say, thatonly by talking or writing in such a way could they divert Hitler from cruelty or aggression. It is for you to decide.
Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Funk, Schacht, Doenitz, Raeder, Schirach, Sauckel, Jodl, VonPapen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Von Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann - these are the guilty men. upon those whose close complicity in themost sordid crimes of all, the bestial murders, has possibly been less manifest.
Goering's responsibility in all these matters is scarcely to be denied. Behind his spurious air of bon homme, he was as great an architect as any in this satanic system. Who, apart from Hitler, had more knowledge of what went on, or greater influence to affect its course? The conduct of government in the Nazi State, the gradual build-up of the organization for war, the calculated aggression, the atrocities - these things do not occur spontaneously or without the closest cooperation between the holders of the various offices of State, Men do not advance into foreign territory, pull the trigger, drop their bombs, build the gas chambers, collect the victims, unless they are organized and ordered to do it. Crimes on thenational and systematic scale which occurred here must involve anyone who forms a part of the necessary chain, since without that participation, plans for aggresssion here, mass murder there, would become quite impossible. The Fuehrer principle by which the Nazis placed their bodies and their very souls at the disposal of their leader was the creation of the Nazi Party, and of these men. When I addressed you at the opening of this trial, I remarked that there comes a time when a man must choose between his conscience and his loader. No one who chose, as these men did, to abdicate their consciences in favour of this monster of their own creation can complain now if they are held responsible for complicity in what their monster did.
And least of all, Hess. The role Hess played in the Nazi Party is well established. But not content with creating the Monster, he aided it in every aspect of its monstrous work.
I mention only one instance. You will recall, in connection with the extermination of the Eastern peoples, his direction to Party Officials to support recruitment for the Waffen SS. He said, "it consists of National Socialists who are more ality."
Ribbentrop's part, also, is clear. No one in history has so debauched diplomacy: no one been guilty of meaner treachery. But he, like the rest of them, is just a common murderer. Ribbentrop it was who, since 1940, had been directing the minions in his embassy and legations throughout Europe to accelerate the execution of such "political measures" that is, measures of racial extermination. It was not Himmler, but the Reich Foreign Minister who proudly reported to the Duce in February, 1943, that, "All Jews had been transported from Germany and in the East."
the conference called by Steengracht, his permanent Under Secretary of State, betray the meaning of these ghastly euphemisms. than Ribbentrop. You will remember his advice to the Italians on how to deal with strikes:
"In such a case only merciless action is any good.
In the occupied territories we would endeavour to reach an agreement."
the successes of "brutal measures" in Norway, "brutal action" in Greece, and in France and Poland the success of "Draconian" measures.
Were Keitel and Jodl less involved in murder than their confederates? They cannot deny knowledge or responsibility for the operations of the Einsatz Commandos with whom their own Commanders were working in close and cordial cooperation. The attitude of the High Command to the whole question is typified by Jodl's remark about the evacuation of Danish Jews:
"I know nothing of this. If a political Office."
Kaltenbrunner, as chief of the RSHA, must be guilty. The Reports of the Einsatz Commandos were sent to him monthly. You will remember the words of Gisevius, a witness for the defence:
"We asked ourselves whether it was possible that such a monster as Heydrich .... Kaltenbrunner came.
... and things got worse every day.... We Gestapo."
at which Kaltenbrunner discussed every detail of the gas chambers and of the technique of mass murder.
Rosenberg's guilt as the philosopher and theorist who made the ground fertile for the seeds of Nazi policy is not in doubt, and it is beyond belief that he, as Reich Minister for Eastern Occupied Territories, did not know of and support the destruction of the ghettos and the operations of the Einsatz Commandos. In October, 1941, when the operations of those Commandos were at their height, one of Rosenberg's ministerial departmental chiefs was writing to the Reich Commissioner for the East in Riga informing him that, the Reich Security Main Office had complained that he had forbidden the executions of the Jews inLibau and asking for a report upon the matter. On 15th November, the report comes back addressed to the Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories:
"I have forbidden the wild execution of Jews in manner in which they were carried out.
I should date all Jews in the East?
Shall this take place without regard to age and sex and economic interests?
is a necessary task; its solution, however, must be harmonized with the necessities of war production."
Frank - if it is not sufficient to convict him that he was responsible for the administration of the Government General and for one of the bloodiest and most brutal chapters in Nazi history - has himself stated:
"One cannot kill all lice and all Jews in one Year."
It is no coincidence that that was exactly Hitler's language.
And again:
"As far as the Jews are concerned, I want to tell in one way or another .... Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity.
which will lead to their annihilation." policy to exterminate the Jews? In 1941 one of his subordinates, Heydrich, was writing to another - the Minister of Justice:
"It may safely be as aimed that in the future there territories."
for the deportations of thousands of Jews from his territory to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, only a few miles across the frontier?
Of Streicher one need say nothing. Here is a man more responsible, perhaps, than any, for the most frightful crime the world has ever known. For 25 years the extermination of the Jews had been his terrible ambition. For 25 years he had educated the German people in the philosophy of hate, of brutality, of murder. He hadincited and prepared them to support the Nazi policy, to accept and participate in the brutal persecution and slaugh of millions of his fellow men. Without him these things could, not have been. It is long since he forfeited, all right to live. economics ought not blind the Tribunal to their important part in the general plan. Schacht says that he had clean hands in this matter. It is for you to say. Schacht played his part in bringing Hitler to power. He says he thought that Hitler was "a manwith whom one could co-operate", and assured Hitler that he could always count on him "as your reliable assistant" He helped to consolidate the Nazi position and he was the main figure in collecting election funds from the industrialists.
It then became his task to provide the economic plan and machinery necessary to launch and maintain aggression. He knew the policy about the Jews, he knew the methods Hitler was using to build up his power, he knew the ultimate aim was aggression. But he continued to play his part. Messersmith has summed up his work:
"Yet by Schacht's resourcefulness, his complete financial maintain and to establish the situation for the Nazis.
Un war."
The fact that that was in Schacht's mind was shown at a very early date most clearly in a secret report issued by his ministry of Economics on 30th September 1934. I have already referred to his Deputy's report showing the amazing detail in which plans and preparations for the management of German economy in time of war had been worked out before Schacht resigned in 1937.
It is not surprising that on Schacht's 60th birthday the then German Minister of War, von Blomberg, said to him:
"Without your help, my dear Schacht, none of this armament could have taken place."
and the first half of 1935 he found he was "wrong in thinking" that Hitler would bring the "revolutionary forces" of Nazism into the regular atmosphere and he discovered that Hitler did nothing to stop the excesses of individual Party Members or Party Groups. He was pursuing a "policy of terror".
That accords very closely with Schacht's statement to the American Ambassador in September 1934:
".....the Hitler Party is absolutely committed to war and the people too are ready and willing.
Only a few Government officials are aware of the danger and are opposed."
Schacht's further suggestions that his purpose in the Government was to be critical and was to act as a brake are as we submit, impossible to reconcile with his own actions. He need not have become Minister of Economics according to his own account, but he did soy nonetheless. In May 1935, the month in which he undertook his task as General Plenipotentiary for War Economy, "to put all economic forces in the service of carrying on the war and to secure the life of the German people economically", he wrote to Hitler:
"All expenditures which are not urgently needed in other to arm."
of financing armaments had meant "the commitment of the last reserve from the beginning". He said he would continue to work since he stood "with unswerving loyalty to the Fuehrer because he fully recognises the basic idea of National Socialism". appealed to all his colleagues:
"further to devote with all their hearts their entire strength to the Fuehrer and the Reich.
The German future lies in the hands of our Fuehrer."
The mercy killings; the persecution of the Jews. These things must have been known at that time. Were his hands so clean? Dodd, whom Schacht counted among his friends, recalling in his diary on 21.12.3 "Much as he dislikes Hitler's dictatorship he (Schacht) as most with war if the United States will keep hands off."
that Hitler's aim was war very much earlier than he himself admits. He does admit, however, that he knew that the plot to discredit General von Fritsch meant war. Despite that knowledge, on 9.3.38, he accepted the appointment as Reichsbank President for an additional four years. He joyously took part in the acquisition of the former Austrian National Bank on 21.3.38 and on 7.6.39 wrote to Hitler:
"From the beginning the Reichsbank has been aware of the fact the reconstruction of the German Armed Forces.
It therefore currency.
The justification thereof was the necessity - which policy possible."
Schacht's knowledge that, if the proposed victims resisted, Hitler was prepared and would be able to plunge into war conditions to achieve his aims.
Schacht intellect and international position only increased the cynical immorality of his crimes.
Moreover Schacht must fact these facts. The Tribunal has seen the evidence of the film which showed his sycophantic trotting beside Hitler and smarming over him in 1940. Long before 1943 he must have known of the treatment of the Jews and the reign of terror in occupied countries. Yet until 1943 Schacht remained a Minister without Portfolio and at all events lent his name and weight to this regime of horror. Should anyone be left to boast that he did this with impunity?
Funk carried on Schacht's work. He had already rendered invaluable service to the conspirators by his organization of the Ministry of Propaganda. From 1938 on he was Minister of Economics, President of the Reichsbank and Chief Plenipotentiary for Economics, mobilising economy for aggressive war well knowing the Nazi plans for aggression. We find him in every field; attending Goering's conference on 12 November 1938, the meeting of the Reich Defense Council in June 1939, advising on decrees to be issued against the Jews at the former and the employment of concentration camp and slave labor at the latter. The final proof of the welcome with which he viewed aggression is found in his letter to Hitler on the 25th August 1939, the day before the invasion of Poland had been said to begin; he said:
"How happy and how grateful we must be to you to be favored any serious reverberations."
minutes of the Central Planning Board and to his arrangement with Himmler for the exploitation of the S.S. loot which, as he knew, came in truckloads from Auschwitz and the other concentration camps to the vaults of the Reichsbank.
The Tribunal will also remember the document which shows that his Ministry of Economics received enormous quantities of civilian clothing from those unhappy victims. speech on the "spreading poison of Jewry"? Doenitz, who thought fit to circulate to the Naval War Staff Hitler's directive for dealing with the general strike at Copenhagen -- "terror should be met by terror" - and asked for 12,000 concentration camp workers for the shipyards, recommending collective reprisals for Scandinavian workers in view of the efficacy of similar methods in France.
Are Raeder's hands unstained with the blood of murder? As early as 1933, to use his own words:
"Hitler had made a clear political request to build up by the 1st instrument of political power."
from Hitler's foreign policy, he know very well that war was a certain risk if that policy went awry. Again and again he had this warning, first when Germany left the Disarmament Conference, again at the time of the negotiations for the Naval Agreement in 1935, at the time of the Rhineland and later when he attended the famous Hosbach conference. He has tried to persuade this Tribunal that he regarded Hitler's speeches at these meetings as mere talk, yet we know that they gave Nourath a heart attack. His old Service comrades, von Blomberg and von Fritsch, who were unwise enough to object at the Conference which scaled the fate of Austria and Czechoslovakia, were dealt with in a manner which, in his own words, shook his confidence not only in Goering but in Hitler as well. in the Baltic? You will remember the evidence that many were killed in the naval port and the facts reported by his naval officers at the Local Headquarters to Kiel. We now know from the report of the Commando which dealt with the Jews of Libau that at the end of January 1942 they had accounted for 11,860 in that district alone. Raeder who, on Heroes Day, 1939, spoke of the clear and inspiring summons to fight international Jewry. Do you r eally believe, when he was always helping individual Jews, he had never heard of the horrors of concentration camps or the murder of millions? Yet he still went on.
Von Schirach. What need one say of him? That it were better that a millstone had been placed round his neck.....? It was this wretched man who perverted millions of innocent German children so that they might grow up and become what they did become -- the blind instruments of that policy of murder and domination which these men carried out.
The infamous "Heu Aktion" by which between forty and fifty thousand Soviet children were kidnapped into slavery was a product of his work. You will remember the weekly S.S. reports on the extermination of the Jews found in his office. Buchenwald? Sauckel may now seek to put a gloss on his order to shanghai Frenchmen, to deny that he advocated the hanging of a Prefect or a mayor to crush opposition, to say that references to ruthless action referred to interdepartmental disputes and that reformatory labor camps were purely educational institutions. You who have seen the documents which attest the horrors perpetrated in what we are now told was the produce of an emergency -the urgent need for workers to feed the Nazi machine, you who have heard and read of the conditions in which 7 million men, women and children torn from their homes were dragged into slavery at his orders can need no further proof of guilt. are in like case with Raeder. Like him they professed old family and professional integrity, factors which carry with them a great responsibility from which men like Ribbontrop and Kaltenbrunner are free.
Within 18 months of putting Hitler in power Papen knew that Hitler's Government meant oppression of opponents, ill-treatment of the Jews and persecution of the Churches including his own. His recent political friends had been sent to concentration camps or killed, including men like von Schleicher and von Bredow. He has himself been arrested, two members of his staff killed and another compelledto witness killing. None of these things were hidden from von Neurath, yet he remained in office. afterwards we find him in Austria working for a man he knows to be a murderer undermining a regime for which he professed outward friendship. Even after the Anschluss he was still working for a regime which he know used murder as an insturment of policy and after losing yet another secretary by murder he was ready to accept a post in Turkey. The Concordat with his own Church which he had himself negotiated is treated as "a scrap of paper" to use his own words, and Catholics from Archbishops to simple believers were outraged. He has said "Hitler was the greatest crook that ever lived". The case for the Prosecution in a sentence is that, knowing this only too well, von Papen save Hitler his support and co-operation because his greed for power and office made it "better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven If he preferred to attain the objects of the conspiracy by the methods of assasination, bullying and blackmail rather than open war, the reason may be that provided by him in his own evidence, namely that he feared that : "If a World war were to break out, Germany's situation would be hopeless".As to Seyss-Inquart, you will remember Goering's instructions to him on the 26th March, 1938, to institute anti-semitic measures in Austria, fell wed by the Progress Report on 12th November by one of his officials.
As far as concerns the Jews in the Netherlands, he admits that he knewthey were being deported but says he was powerless to stop it as it was ordered from Berlin. He has further said that he knew they went to Auschwitz but he says he was sent there to enquire about them, was told they were well off and arranged for them to send mail from Auschwitz to Holland.
It is likely that Seyss-Inquart who admits knowledge of large-scale crimes against the Jews in the Netherlands, for example "a drive to force the Jews to be sterilised", who admits that many and grave excesses occurred in the Netherlands concentration camps and indeed that in wartime he "considered that almost inevitable", "it was perhaps not quite so bad in the Netherlands", people in Auschwitz were "comparatively well off" ? in this trial as experts.
Speer has admitted that his responsibility for conscription of labour helped to bring up the total number of workers under him to 14,000,000. He stated that when he took over office in February 1942 all the perpetrations or violations of International Law of which he could be accused had already been realised. Nevertheless he went on to say "the workers were brought into Germany against their will.
I had no objection to their being brought to Germany against their will. On the contrary during the first period until autumn of 1942 I certainly used my energ that as many workers as possible should be brought to Germany in this manner Further, workers were placed at this disposal by Sauckel and he was responsi for their allocation priorities. 1942. On 14-1-1414 he demanded 1,300,000 workers for the coming year. Speer produced no defence of this conscription of labour but he die assert that from 1943 he had supported the retention of French workers in France, which is a mere matter of mitigation. The moderation of Speer's manner ought not hide the fact that this policy, which he cheerfully adopted and applied was one that meant the most appalling misery and suffering for millions of Soviet and other familes.
It displays once again the complete disregard of the fate of other people which runs like a sordid thread through the evidence in this trial, and no moral avakening regarding the interest of the German people (I repeat "the German People") at the end of the war, can offset the participation in this horrible action.
with regard to the treatment of foreign workers Speer's general point was that the evidence for the Prosecution is simply that of individual bad instances and should not be taken as the general condition. If it were the general condition he would accept responsibility. The Prosecution submit that their evidence, viewed as a whole, is conclusive evidence of general bad conditions.
Neurath who has told the Tribunal that he joined Hitler's Government to keep it peace-lovin and respectable, know within a few weeks that the Jews were being persecuted, that reputable foreign papers and reputable German papers too for that matter were quoting official figures of ten to twenty thousand internees. He knew that the opposition, the Communists, the TradeUnionists and Social Democrats were being destroyed as political forces, The Blood Purge followed yet he went on and seconded Hitler in his breaches of the Treaty of Versailles. We have the evidence of Paul Schmidt that the murder of Dollfuss and the attempted Putsch in Austria seriously disturbed the career personnel of the Foreign Office whilst they regarded the Mutual Assistance Pact between France and the Soviet Union as a further very serious warning as to the potential consequences of German foreign policy.
"At this time the career officials at least expressed their reservation to the Foreign Minister Neurath. I do not know whether or not Neurath in term related these expressions of concern to Hitler." Yet when Raeder was issuing order about the danger of showing "enthusiasm for war", von Neurath would have you believe that he had failed to realise its growth. He, as much as Raeder, saw and took part in the events which followed, the secret meetings, the treatment of von Blomberg and von Fritsch, he it was at the time of the Anschluss who, though no longer Foreign Minister gave the support of a name, not yet notably tarnished, to Hitler's action by transmitting untruths in denial of the British Note and by reassuring the Czechs.
That reassurance ought never be forgotten -there can be few things more grimly cynical than von Neurath who had listened to the Hosbach speech solemnly telling M. Mastny that Hitler would stand by the Arbitration Treaty with Czechoslovakia. As soon as Hitler had marched into Prague, he it was who became protector of Bohemia and Moravia. You have heard his admission that he applied all decrees for the treatment of the Jews which had appeared in Germany between 1933 and 1939.
Fritzsche's work was to organise the entire German Press so that it be came " a permanent instrument of the Propaganda Ministry". Propaganda was most potent factor in all Nazi strategy. Here in turn that factor made all the press its most potent weapon. The fact that he knew and participation in the use of his organisation is shown by his attempt to whitewash the successive propaganda actions which led up to each of the various aggression mentioned in his affidavit. As he said:
"All news checked by me was full of tendency while not invented". It is incredible that when he was called upon time after time to conduct what was specifically referred to as actions and when each time he saw the practical results he did not realise the dishonesty with which the German policy was being conducted or that the aim of the Nazi Government was aggressive war.