Hans Fritzsche

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Fritzsche on the way to the courtroom in Nuremberg (1945/46)

August Franz Anton Hans Fritzsche (born April 21, 1900 in Bochum ; † September 27, 1953 in Cologne - Merheim ) was a German journalist and held various positions in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP). Fritzsche was known to many listeners of the Reichsrundfunk through his weekly program “Here speaks Hans Fritzsche” .

Fritzsche was one of the 24 defendants in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Court . He was acquitted on October 1, 1946, on all charges.

Life

Hans Fritzsche was the second child of a senior civil servant family. Due to his father's position as post director, he spent his school days in Dresden and Leipzig. After completing his school career, he took part in World War I and served in the 6th Cavalry Rifle Division between April and October 1918. After the end of the war, he began studying philology, history and philosophy at the universities of Greifswald and Berlin, which he did not finished. Fritzsche, a member of the DNVP since 1923 , was editor of the Prussian yearbooks from 1923 and editor of Alfred Hugenberg's intelligence service Telegraphen-Union from 1924 to 1932 . From September 1932 Fritzsche was head of the " wireless service ", an agency of the Reich government under Franz von Papen .

After the " seizure of power " he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 and in the same year became head of news in the press department of Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda . There he was promoted several times up to 1945: in 1938 he was first appointed deputy and later head of the "German Press" department, and from 1942 he headed the broadcasting department. In the final phase of the war he spread slogans to hold out . In October 1942 Fritzsche was promoted to ministerial director. After a short period of service on the Eastern Front in a propaganda company, in November 1942 he became head of the broadcasting department of the Propaganda Ministry and plenipotentiary for the political organization of Großdeutscher Rundfunk .

After the Battle of Berlin , Fritzsche signed the unconditional declaration of surrender for Berlin on May 2, 1945, presumably the oldest government official remaining in the city . He helped Red Army soldiers identify the bodies of the Goebbels family. Then he was sent to Moscow spent there in solitary confinement in the Lubyanka prisoner held and finally to Nuremberg transferred.

In the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals, Fritzsche was also indicted at the instigation of the Soviet Union, because the latter was anxious to try war criminals who had been arrested by it in Nuremberg. Of their original six candidates, Erich Raeder and Fritzsche were left after consulting the other prosecuting authorities . Fritzsche was a "substitute for Joseph Goebbels," which in the war, killed himself accused had. Fritzsche was indicted in court on three of the four Nuremberg charges. "Before the International Military Tribunal, he seemed to regret his former role and described himself as a victim who had always been deceived about the true situation." The opposite could not be proven in Nuremberg. For example, he was able to assert irrefutably that he only became aware of the Lidice massacre and the Ležáky massacre during the Nuremberg Trial. The fact that there was one report on the German radio station in Prague and at least two reports in the German occupation newspapers in the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia could not be proven in the trial of 1945/1946. On September 30, 1946, Fritzsche was acquitted, which he had not expected.

Shortly after his release by the Allies, the German authorities brought Fritzsche to trial again in Nuremberg . The authorities - above all the Attorney General Thomas Dehler - tried to obtain incriminating material; they even asked the population via newspaper ads to provide incriminating evidence and witnesses. There was an initial trial and an appeal process. In the latter, Fritzsche was condemned on the one hand for his role as a “leading propagandist” who, because of his semi-official demeanor, had a strong influence on the will of the German people. Secondly, it was said that although he had "not called directly for the persecution of the Jews and their extermination, through his propaganda he had made a major contribution to creating a favorable mood among the people for this". Thirdly, for the sake of his career, he had hidden the criminal sides of the Nazi regime and thus contributed to lying to the German population. He was also burdened by the fact that he was involved in a complaint against the Nuremberg fire chief Johann Wild with the Gestapo . Wild was then sentenced to death by a special court. Another stressful moment was that Fritzsche had read an article by Goebbels on the radio in 1943, which called for the lynching of shot down Allied airmen . The court sentenced him to nine years in a labor camp , along with a life ban from ever again publishing or working as a teacher or educator.

After an amnesty , Fritzsche was released at the end of September 1950 and worked, among other things, as an advertising manager in the Rhenish-Westphalian industry and most recently for a French cosmetics company. He published two books under the name of his wife Hildegard Springer ("Es sprach Hans Fritzsche" and "Das Schwert auf der Waage"). His wife had worked in the Ministry of Propaganda herself. They had only married in 1951.

In the early 1950s, Fritzsche belonged to the Naumann Circle , a group of exposed National Socialists who had the goal of Nazi infiltration of the FDP . Although he was not a member of the FDP himself, he was involved in the preparations for the so-called German program that Wolfgang Diewerge had designed for Friedrich Middelhauve .

Seriously ill with lung cancer , Hans Fritzsche died on September 27, 1953 in Cologne as a result of an operation.

Publications

  • Experiences of a long-range reconnaissance squadron in Poland . Bischof & Klein, Lengerich 1942.
  • Witnesses against England from Alexander to Woolton . Völkischer Verlag , Düsseldorf 1941.
  • War on the warmongers: 8 weeks of political newspaper and Radio show . With a foreword by Hans Fritzsche. Brunnen Verlag Bischoff, Berlin 1940.
  • A German borderland struggle at the end of the Middle Ages - the defensive movement of German nationality against Burgundy . Verlag Baruth / Mark, Berlin 1937. University thesis: Heidelberg, Phil. Diss., 1938.
  • Hans Fritzsche spoke: after letters, conversations and documents . From Hildegard Springer. Thiele, 1949.
  • The sword on the scales: Hans Fritzsche on Nuremberg . According to his reports, ed. by Hildegard Springer. Vowinckel-Verlag , 1953.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Registry Office Cologne-Deutz, Deaths 1953, No. 872/1953.
  2. ^ W. Kosch, CL Lang, K. Feilchenfeldt: German Literature Lexicon : Volume X: Fries - Gellert. KG Sauer Verlag, Zurich and Munich, 10th edition 2007, p. 135.
  3. ↑ Reichsrundfunk 1944–45, Issue 13/14 Oct. 1944 ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Fritzsche: Broadcasting in total war. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lmz-bw.de
  4. ^ The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Court of Justice in Nuremberg. Nuremberg 1947, vol. 1, p. 380.
  5. ↑ Max Bonacker: Goebbels' husband on the radio. The Nazi propagandist Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58193-5 , p. 151 (footnote 58)
  6. ^ Klaus W. Tofahrn: The Third Reich and the Holocaust. Peter Lang, 2008, ISBN 3-631-57702-8 , p. 119
  7. ↑ Max Bonacker: Goebbels' husband on the radio. The Nazi propagandist Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58193-5 , p. 216.
  8. ↑ Marc Zirlewagen:  Hans Fritzsche. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 29, Bautz, Nordhausen 2008, ISBN 978-3-88309-452-6 , Sp. 665-669.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive  on 2007-09-26)
  9. ↑ Max Bonacker: Goebbels' husband on the radio. The Nazi propagandist Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58193-5 , pp. 223f.
  10. ↑ Thomas Darnstädt: The process . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , October 1, 2016, ISSN  0038-7452 .
  11. ↑ Max Bonacker: Goebbels' husband on the radio. The Nazi propagandist Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953). Munich 2007, p. 242.
  12. ↑ Marc Zirlewagen:  Hans Fritzsche. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 29, Bautz, Nordhausen 2008, ISBN 978-3-88309-452-6 , Sp. 665-669.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive  on 2007-09-26)
  13. ^ Christof Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953: Start as a bourgeois left party. M-Press Meidenbauer, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89975-569-5 , p. 631.
  14. ↑ Fritzsche tested advertising force. In: The world . 7th February 1953.
personal data
SURNAME Fritzsche, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fritzsche, August Franz Anton Hans (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and Nazi functionary
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Bochum
DATE OF DEATH September 27, 1953
Place of death Cologne - Merheim