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He observed, for example, how opposition journalists, a profession to which he had previously belonged, were either absorbed or eliminated. He continued to support the conspiracy. He learned from day to day the art of intrigue and quackery in the process of perverting the German nation, and he grew in prestige and influence as he practiced this art.

Fritzsche learned a lesson from his predecor, Berndt, who fell from the leadership of the German Press vision partly because he over-played his hand by blunt and excessive manipulation of the Sudetenland propaganda. Fritzsche stepped into the gap caused by the loss of confidence of both the editors and the German people, and did his job with more skill and subtlety. His shrewdness and ability to be more assuring and "to find," as Goebbels said, "willing ears of the whole nation," these things made him the more useful accomplice of the conspirators.

Nazi Germany and its press went into war with Fritzsche in control of all German news, whether by press or radio. In 1942, when Fritzsche transferred from the field of the press to radio, he was not removed for bungling, but because Goebbels then needed his talents most in the field of radio. Fritzsche is not in the dock as a free journalist but as a propagandist who helped substantially to tighten the Nazi stranglehold over the German people, who made the excesses of the conspirators palatable to the German people, who goaded the German nation to fury and crime against people they were told by him were sub-human.

Without the propaganda apparatus of the Nazi State, the world would not have suffered the catastrophe of these years, and it is because of Fritzsche's role in behalf of the Nazi conspirators, and their deceitful and barbarous practices, that he is called to account before the International Military Tribunal.

(See also Section 9 of Chapter VII on Propaganda, Censorship, and Supervision of Cultural Activities.)

LEGAL REFERENCES AND LIST OF DOCUMENTS
RELATING TO HANS FRITZSCHE

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Church Affairs

Economics

Education

Finance

Food and Agriculture

Foreign Affairs

Interior

FRANZ von PAPEN (until 1934)

HANS LAMMERS

HERMANN GOERING

ALBERT SPEER (predeces

sor, Todt,
Todt, Minister

Minister for

Armaments and Munitionsuntil 1942)

HERMAN MUHS, Acting

(predecessor, Hans Kerrl) WALTER FUNK (predecessors, Schacht, Schmitt, Hugenberg)

BERNARD RUST

LUTZ GRAF SCHWERIN von KROSIGK

HERBERT BACKE, Acting

(predecessor, Walter Darre)

JOACHIM von RIBBENTROP

(predecessor, Constantin von Neurath)

HEINRICH HIMMLER (predecessor, Wilhelm Frick)

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State Ministers acting as Reich Ministers:

Head of the Presidential

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