It is by now well known to the world that the Nazi conspirators attempted to be, and often were, very adept in psychological warfare. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on the strategy of expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the impending Nazi madness. They used the press after their earlier conquests as a means for further influencing foreign politics and in maneuvering for the next following aggression.
By the time of the occupation of the Sudetenland on the 1st of October 1938, Fritzsche had become deputy head of the entire German Press Division. Fritzsche states that the role of German propaganda before the Munich Agreement on the Sudetenland was directed by his immediate chief, Berndt, then head of the German Press Division. In Paragraph 27 of the Fritzsche affidavit, Page 26 of your document book, Fritzsche describes this propaganda which was directed by Berndt. Speaking of Berndt, Fritzsche states:
“He exaggerated minor events very strongly, sometimes used old episodes as new—and there even came complaints from the Sudetenland itself that some of the news reported by the German press was untrustworthy. As a matter of fact, after the great foreign political success at Munich in September 1938, there arose a noticeable crisis in the confidence of the German people in the trustworthiness of its press. This was one reason for the recalling of Berndt, in December 1938 after the conclusion of the Sudeten action, and for my appointment as head of the German Press Division. Beyond this, Berndt, by his admittedly successful but still primitive military-like orders to the German press, had lost the confidence of the German editors.”
Now, what happened at this time? Fritzsche was made head of the German Press Division in place of Berndt. Between December 1938 and 1942, Fritzsche, as head of the German Press Division, personally gave to the representatives of the principal German newspapers the “daily parole of the Reich Press Chief.” During this history-making period he was the principal conspirator directly concerned with the manipulations of the press. The first important foreign aggression after Fritzsche became head of the German Press Division was the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia. In Paragraph 28 of the affidavit, your document book, Page 26, Fritzsche gives his account of the propaganda action surrounding the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia as follows:
“The action for the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia, which took place on 15 March 1939, while I was head of the German Press Division, was not prepared for such a long period as the Sudeten action. According to my memory it was in February that I received the order from the Reich Press Chief, Dr. Dietrich, and repeated requests by the envoy Paul Schmidt of the Foreign Office, to draw the attention of the press to the aspirations of Slovakia for independence and to the continued anti-German coalition politics of the Prague Government. I did this. The daily paroles of the Reich Press Chief and the press conference minutes at that time show the wording of the pertinent instructions. The following were the typical headlines of leading newspapers and the conspicuous leading articles of the German daily press at that time: (1) The terrorizing of Germans within the Czech territory by arrest, shooting at Germans by the state police, destruction and damaging of German homes by Czech mobs; (2) the concentration of Czech forces on the Sudeten frontier; (3) the kidnapping, deportation, and persecution of Slovakian minorities by the Czechs, (4) the Czechs must get out of Slovakia; (5) secret meetings of Red functionaries in Prague.
“Some few days before the visit of Hacha, I received the instruction to publish in the press very conspicuously the incoming news on the unrest in Czechoslovakia. Such information I received only partly from the German News Agency DNB but mostly from the Press Division of the Foreign Office and some from big newspapers with their own news services. Among the newspapers offering information was, above all, the Völkischer Beobachter which, as I learned later on, received its information from the SS Standartenführer Gunter D’Alquen, who was at that time at Bratislava. I had forbidden all news agencies and newspapers to issue news on unrest in Czechoslovakia until I had seen it. I wanted to avoid a repetition of the very annoying accompaniments of the Sudeten action propaganda, and I did not want to suffer a loss of prestige caused by untrue news. Thus, all news checked by me was admittedly full of tendency but not invented. Following the visit of Hacha in Berlin and after the beginning of the invasion of the German Army, which took place on 15 March 1939, the German press had enough material for describing these events. Historically and politically the event was justified with the indication that the declaration of independence of Slovakia had required an interference and that Hacha with his signature had avoided a war and had reinstated a thousand-year-old union between Bohemia and the Reich.”
The propaganda campaign of the press preceding the invasion of Poland on the 1st of September 1939—and thus the propaganda action just preceding the precipitation of World War II—bears again the handiwork of Fritzsche and his German Press Division. In Paragraph 30 of Fritzsche’s affidavit, document book Page 27, Fritzsche speaks of the conspirators’ treatment of this episode as follows:
“Very complicated and varying was the press and propagandists treatment in the case of Poland. Under the influence of the German-Polish Agreement, the German press was for many years forbidden, on principle, to publish anything on the situation of the German minority in Poland. This was still the case when in the spring of 1939 the German press was asked to become somewhat more active as to the problem of Danzig. Also when the first Polish-English conversations took place and the German press was advised to use a sharper tone against Poland, the question of the German minority still remained in the background. At first during the summer this problem was picked up again and created immediately a noticeable sharpening of the situation. Each larger German newspaper had for some time quite an abundance of material on complaints and grievances of the Germans in Poland without the editors having had a chance to use this material. The German papers, from the time of the minority discussions at Geneva, still had correspondents or free collaborators in Katowice, Bydgoszcz, Posen, Toruń, et cetera. Their material now came forth with a bound. Concerning this, the leading German newspapers brought but in accordance with directions given for the so-called daily paroles the following articles, in conspicuous setting: (1) Cruelty and terror against racial Germans and the extermination of racial Germans in Poland; (2) Construction of field works by thousands of racial German men and women in Poland; (3) Poland, land of servitude and disorder; the desertion of Polish soldiers; the increased inflation in Poland; (4) provocation of frontier clashes upon direction of the Polish Government; the Polish aspirations for conquest; (5) persecution of Czechs and Ukrainians by Poland. The Polish press retorted hotly.”
The press campaign preceding the invasion of Yugoslavia followed the conventional pattern. You will find the customary defamations, the lies, the incitement and the threats, and the usual attempt to divide and to weaken the victim. Paragraph 32 of the Fritzsche affidavit, your document book Page 28, outlines this propaganda action as follows: