The Nuremberg Interviews (14 page)

“I must have used up ten telegrams and thirty letters — it was a big fight, and finally I got the release after the man had already been in a concentration camp. I never met him personally and, having my own difficulties, had lost all track of him until last May. I was happy to hear from him. The letter was addressed to my lawyer. I also received a letter from my wife in which she said she too had received a letter from Karneka.”

Was this family that you helped Jewish? “According to the law they were Jewish. He was part Jewish in his ancestry; he was the grandchild of Gaus, the founder of the IG Farben industry in Frankfurt. This man and his wife were about forty years of age.”

Did you do things like that very often? Fritzsche smiles benignly, and says, “Frequently. I received many letters because I was a well-known man. I can’t recall a single case where I refused help. It was only natural. I didn’t think much about it.”

Fritzsche asked me if I was familiar with what he had written while in this prison regarding himself and Goebbels. I told him that I had read that. He said, “What I wrote only goes up to the year 1925. If you write
two autobiographies, they turn out differently. If I should tell you a few things today — I can tell you only the basic characteristics of my being — but do you know, I might tell you something else.”

I suppose that is true of all of us to a certain extent, but do you feel that this susceptibility to change is more characteristic, is stronger in you than in others? Fritzsche reflects and more or less assents. “I will tell you something but only on one condition — that you don’t make me blush, because what I want to say now I want that you should believe. My whole desire in life was not political or warlike — I wanted to be a gardener. On my father’s side for 350 years his family were always blacksmiths or such workers, until my grandfather founded a small arms factory. On my mother’s side for 250 years her family were gardeners who grew Dutch tulips. Originally they were from Holland, but then many generations ago they immigrated to Westphalia.

“As a boy of fourteen, we had no garden but lived in a big apartment building. I had a large collection of cacti in 1914. As a matter of fact, I was offered 250 gold marks for that collection. I also had an orchid collection. But I never had a garden until 1934, when I bought one. It was located fifty kilometers outside of Berlin, was three thousand square meters in size, and I worked it myself. On this homestead I made my own garden with my own hands and I loved to work in it. My fundamental desire in life was always gardening — to lead a contemplative existence, not one of activity.

“I was also an editor, but even then more of the feature editor. I edited fiction, novels, and human interest stories. I felt that by writing these things I had more impact and influence on others. I entered politics only because of the misery of 1918, but even as a politician I cherished the purely human side of my work. Because of this I had such tremendous influence.

“Goebbels could make a speech and could bring a few thousand people to a tremendous crescendo of applause. When I spoke at times there was no applause at all. I was not sensational, but I had developed a regular community of followers who were devoted to me. This community of adherents was perhaps not as large as the group Dr. Goebbels commanded, but it was more lasting. The same is true in my work itself. My official position was not as large or important as that of Goebbels, but my human influence was greater.

“To be a coworker of mine — and I say this blushingly — was considered
in our office to be a bigger honor than to be a coworker of Goebbels.” Fritzsche smiles and blushes appropriately. “And if I should send a representative to some conference or other, that representative was far more respected and important than if Goebbels sent a representative. For example, it has been said often here at the trials that people were afraid of Himmler and of the Gestapo. I never had such fear and I didn’t have to have such fear. Himmler once offered me a big position if I joined the SS. I declined and told him that I didn’t fit into his organization, and nothing ever happened.

“In 1937, I made some kind of demand on Himmler — I don’t remember what this demand was, but it was not fulfilled despite many reminders. Then I wrote him a letter and told him that if I received no satisfaction by, let us say, April 1, I would broadcast no more news of the SS and its meanings over the radio. Two days after I sent this note to Himmler, I was called into Goebbels’s office. Goebbels was excited and said that Himmler had demanded my dismissal. Upon which I replied, ‘I used to write friendly letters to small people because small people can’t stand roughness, but to great people I have written tough letters because they don’t react to friendliness.’ I told Goebbels that if it is not the system within the state to do things in the opposite way, I would gladly accept dismissal. When he heard that, Goebbels excused himself, and a few days later I received a letter from Himmler in which he excused himself and fulfilled completely whatever demands I made on him.” Can you recall what the demands were? “No, I really can’t recall what it was all about.

“A third example of my independence is the following: I fired several of my employees after I found out that they were agents of the Gestapo. As a reason, I gave a written explanation that these employees had become members of the Gestapo without my knowledge. After that incident I was visited by the Gestapo, whose agents told me they had the right to investigate all state organizations. I replied that if they wanted to know anything, they could ask me, but I insisted that under no circumstances would I tolerate any illegal procedures. People that were dismissed by me are still alive, and I am sure they can testify to the veracity of these statements.”

We went on to a discussion of Goebbels, which can be found elsewhere among my notes. There is a tract written by Fritzsche on the subject of Goebbels and propaganda, which is still at large. Fritzsche said
that he had many fights with Max Amann, who was chief of newspaper publishers. Fritzsche called Amann a brutal businessman who persecuted many people and destroyed many existences. Fritzsche said that he often brought into his own department people who had been persecuted by Amann.

Fritzsche was very glad to see Mr. Triest and myself again this week. He said that he had been feeling depressed because of a lack of news from his wife and child, and that his wife was still living in a garret room earning about a mark a day doing some knitting or sewing, and unable to practice dentistry because she had the misfortune to be married to him. He smiled as he said this, as if awaiting some reassurance that he wasn’t such a bad fellow after all.

He said that he had been thinking over his future defense, which he figured would come in early June, and that he was torn between two conflicting ideas. First, he wanted to reveal to the court clearly that he was a tool of the Nazis, that he had been deceived by Hitler and Goebbels, and that he personally had no conscious part in the evils of the Nazi regime and the “terrible racial madness” which ensued. Second, he wanted to point out to the court clearly in his defense that the guilt lay not only with the Germans, but also with the Allies. He said that none of the defendants thus far had stressed this point sufficiently, because they had been so preoccupied with proving their own innocence. He said that in most cases the defendants, unlike himself, were not innocent but, like Kaltenbrunner, were creating a fiction in the courtroom. He felt that he alone was most notably an unconscious tool of the Nazis and that therefore he could devote less time to his personal proclamation of innocence and more time to showing how Allied propaganda should share, to an extent, in the guilt of the horrors of war. “I see the defendants justify themselves, but they cannot justify the Nazi movement. I have the feeling during this year of internment and half a year of trial that I have endured a spiritual suffering and depression more terrible than any death could be.

“I became guilty of the death of 5 million people — innocently; in any event, I participated in the guilt of this tragedy coming over the world. The role I played doesn’t matter — but I did play a part in it. I have spoken with Dr. Gilbert about my suffering, but although he is personally
very humane and nice, on the whole his attitude is one of hatred — I am very open with you, and he cannot understand or do anything because one must be objective in understanding me or the part I play in the Nazi movement. I feel that you are objective. I can talk to you and feel that you understand. Without being objective, my words would not serve the Germans or the Allies or the world.

“What I would like to express and which I cannot express in court is the following: I worked for ten years on German propaganda. I was not the only leader but I was one of the most important leaders. However, even ten years ago I made the remark that to make propaganda is the first step to hell. Propaganda is always done by bringing the attention of the people to one side and taking the attention from the other side. Thus, propaganda is always one-sided, be it for good or for bad. Now during the past year and a half I have been thinking of the propaganda I broadcasted. I can say that I did not try to bring the attention of people to something bad, but to something one-sided — and I did that during all those ten years of my activity. I painted only in black-and-white — no in-between colors. Your country and the other Allies did the same thing.”

At this point, Fritzsche showed me a folder of matches on which was inscribed the slogan “Crush the Axis,” with caricature drawings of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito. Fritzsche smiled and said, “This, for example, is a tiny instance of the propaganda of hatred such as we never even dared to do in Germany. Now I can see, to my great disappointment, that in this trial, also, only a black-and-white painting is taking place. It may be necessary from a legal standpoint so that the trials should not take too long. A verdict of guilty does not matter. But I should like to see that this trial would advance humanity. Humanity must be advanced after the death of 5 million innocent people.

“And if this should be the case, Justice Jackson should not step up after Streicher said he was mistreated in Oberursel, and say emotionally that the Allies have tried to conduct the war within the limits of humanity. Those were exactly the feelings I had during the war. So the history of the world tends to repeat itself.”

I told Fritzsche that I was in England consulting with some British psychiatrists at the time Streicher made the statement in court about having to kiss the feet of Negroes and other instances of his maltreatment when he was first taken prisoner. Just what was Fritzsche’s reaction
to Streicher’s testimony? “Justice Jackson said that this should be removed from the official court record because it was not part of the trial. But I could give much larger examples of maltreatment and atrocities by the Russians. But I don’t want to make propaganda here in prison and I shall desist. In short, I can see everything being painted in black-and-white all over again. This is just another step to hell. I can say honestly the following: After what I know today, the German people and myself were lied to and betrayed by Hitler, and Hitler did it in such a fashion that the German people believed it with an assurance stronger than any oath.

“During the last thousand years in Europe, many wars were fought for which the victors paid by sacrificing their own blood. That was the strongest assurance which Hitler could give to the people that he was against war, because the German people themselves were not for war. Every normal man is against war as much as he is opposed to tuberculosis. A few individual exceptions don’t change that generalization.

“So if despite that, Hitler prepared war, he perpetrated the greatest lie and betrayal in the world. This trial clearly shows that Hitler did just that. I have no hesitation to state very clearly that Hitler was a liar and a betrayer on a mammoth scale. Even without the death of the 5 million extermination camp victims, Hitler would still go down in history as the greatest villain that ever lived.” But the great decisive question here at this trial is how Hitler could keep up a betrayal like that. How could he manage to delude the people when hundreds of Allied radio stations were saying the truth or pretty close to the truth?

“Speaking for myself, I did not believe what the Allies said, though I had opportunity to always listen to Allied stations. The reasons for my not believing it was that it had been drummed into us that the Allies were telling lies in the form of propaganda. The tragedy of it all is that what these Allied broadcasting stations said was literally true. I must have said at least a hundred times during the war, whenever the Allied broadcasting stations talked about cruelties and atrocities, that the same type of Allied propaganda went on in the last war. I would say to my friends that in the last war the Allies talked about Germans chopping off the hands of Belgian children and that after the First World War it was admitted by the Allies that such allegations were false and merely propagandistic. I will say even today, that at the beginning of this war, hundreds of lies about Nazism were spread over the Allied stations. They
even broadcast things about me personally — things that could be proven false. Therefore, that is what I mean by saying that the guilt lies on both sides, because propaganda, whether it be evil or good, tends to make one doubt it. If one refers to the many false statements made by Allied broadcasters at the beginning of the war, then one’s belief in foreign broadcasts would necessarily be minimized.

“If you then refer to the Versailles Treaty,
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to the theory of the necessity for living space, to the false propaganda that the Nazis spread about the persecution of Germans in the Sudetenland, and the border incidents which were supposed to have taken place before the attack on Poland or on Russia — then one can understand how we Germans, even we who were doing the propaganda, became affected and began to believe these things ourselves. You can see, too, how the effect of a sensational news broadcast from England or America, though it might have been true, would be as nothing. This is the satanic triumph of propaganda. It simply closes one’s ears to what is right or what is wrong.