Colonel Thomas S. Hinkel of the Judge Advocate-General’s office was one of four American lawyers who interrogated defendants before the trial. During the interrogation that Vyshinsky mentioned, the defendant Frank tried to persuade Hinkel that he was innocent of the charges: ‘I want to point out that I am a believing Christian.’38 But Hinkel did not buy Frank’s sudden transformation and Frank was outraged.
Defendant Hans Fritzsche
Although Fritzsche did not belong to the highest Nazi elite, he was the highest-ranking bureaucrat captured by the Soviets. Born in 1900 in Bochum, he studied history, languages, and philosophy.39 In 1923, he joined the nationalistic party Deutschnationale Volkspartei, and in 1933, the Nazi Party. From 1932, Fritzsche headed the Wireless News Service, incorporated in 1933 into Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry. In 1938, Fritzsche was appointed deputy head, and then head of the German Press Division. After this he headed the Radio Division of the Propaganda Ministry.
SMERSH operatives arrested Fritzsche in Berlin on May 2, 1945. That day he came to General Vasilii Chuikov’s headquarters, where he proposed a radio broadcast calling upon the German troops to give up all resistance. He was allowed to do so. ‘And then,’ as Fritzsche wrote later, ‘the first of many interrogations that took place in Berlin, in Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, and in Nuremberg began.’40 The next day he was taken to Hitler’s Chancellery, where he saw about fifteen burned corpses, and on May 4, he was brought in to identify the corpse of his boss, Goebbels.
Until July 29, 1945, Fritzsche was held along with the dental technician Fritz Echtmann (who identified Hitler’s dentures) in Friedrichshagen Prison in Berlin.41 Finally, on July 29, 1945, Fritzsche and a group of other prisoners, including Vice Admiral Hans Voss, were flown to Moscow.
In Nuremberg, Fritzsche confronted Likhachev in the presence of members of the Western prosecution teams, telling of his treatment at Likhachev’s hands in Moscow during the investigation:
‘You know that in Moscow, you submitted me to twenty-two depositions against my present fellow-prisoners at a time when I knew nothing of an impending trial and you know that I declined to put my signature to those statements—statements which I never made. You know, too, that after three days and three nights I signed [the] twenty-third deposition, one against myself and you will remember that I did so only after some twenty alterations had been made on so-called points of honor. Curiously enough, these alterations are now missing. In addition, you know that I made the following declaration:
“I declare that no question was put to me and no answer given by me in the form in which it is set down here. I confirm the incorrectness of the wording of this deposition throughout its length. I sign solely in order that the three-man tribunal, which twice a month pronounces sentence without examining the accused… may write ‘Sentence of Death’ under my name by way of discharge…”
In the present circumstances, Colonel [Likhachev], I can only reaffirm the declaration which I made to you then.’
Both Li[kh]achev’s hands were now fidgeting. Courteously he pressed Russian cigarettes upon everyone else present: he did not offer me any.42
The hearing of Fritzsche’s personal responsibility for ‘Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity’ began at the morning session on January 23, 1946. A member of the American Prosecution team, Captain Drexel Sprecher, ended his presentation with the following conclusion:
Without the propaganda apparatus of the Nazi State it is clear that the world, including Germany, would not have suffered the catastrophe of these years; and it is because of Fritzsche’s able role on behalf of the Nazi conspirators and their deceitful and barbarous practices in connection with the conspiracy that he is called to account before this International Tribunal.43
Soon after that, on February 21, 1946, Fritzsche had a breakdown after watching a Soviet documentary on the destruction of Soviet cities and cultural monuments. Fritzsche explained to the American psychiatrist Dr. G. M. Gilbert, who visited Fritzsche in his celclass="underline" ‘I have had the feeling—of getting buried in a growing pile of filth—piling up week after week—up to my neck in it—and now—I am choking in it.’44
On June 28, 1946 Fritzsche denied all accusations. An intense dispute arose between Fritzsche and Soviet Chief Prosecutor Rudenko, whose questions consisted mostly of general accusations that had nothing to do with establishing Fritzsche’s personal guilt. Fritzsche’s answers revealed the sloppy work of Likhachev and other SMERSH investigators.
Rudenko stated that Fritzsche’s own testimony given in September 1945 in Moscow demonstrated his guilt. To Rudenko’s embarrassment, Fritzsche responded that he had been forced to sign this statement:
I signed this report but at the very moment when I signed it in Moscow I stated: ‘You can do what you like with that record. If you publish it, then nobody in Germany will believe it and no intelligent person in other countries either because this is not my language…’
Not a single one of the answers in that record was given by me in that form and I signed it for reasons which I will explain to you in detail if you want me to…
Only the signature is true.45
After squabbling with Rudenko, Fritzsche added: ‘I gave that signature after very severe solitary confinement which had lasted for several months; and… I hoped that in this manner I would at least achieve being sentenced and thus terminate my confinement.’46
Fritzsche continued: ‘I wished to make 20 or 30 alterations [in the protocol]. Some of them were granted but passages were missing wherein I said in Nuremberg that some of the answers in that protocol contained a certain amount of truth but that none of them actually do represent my own answers.’ In vain Rudenko insisted on Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner’s testimony in Moscow about Fritzsche:
Fritzsche’s political activity in his function as official radio commentator… was subordinated to the main aim of National Socialism, the unleashing of the war against democratic countries, and the contributing by all possible means to the victory of German arms. Fritzsche’s principal method… consisted of… the deliberate deception of the German people… The main guilt of people such as Fritzsche is that they did know the actual state of things, but despite this… fed people with lies.47
Obviously, a German marshal would not use such phrases as ‘the unleashing of the war against democratic countries and the contributing by all possible means to the victory of German arms’; this was a typical Soviet propaganda phrase apparently written by SMERSH investigators. Fritzsche answered Rudenko: ‘That is utter nonsense… I have never seen Herr Schörner… I do not know whether Schörner actually made this statement but I think it would be worthwhile to call General Field Marshal Schörner here as a witness, in order to ask him on what he based his judgment.’48
Rudenko did not succeed in further presenting similar excerpts from the testimonies of Vice Admiral Voss and General Reiner Stahel. Fritzsche’s counsel, Dr. Heinz Fritz, made it absolutely clear that the testimonies sounded suspiciously similar: