DR. FRITZ: Mr. President, the two radio speeches which the Defendant Fritzsche has mentioned dealing with the Athenia case are in the Document Number Fritzsche-1, which I submitted yesterday. I refer only to the contents of these radio speeches.
[Turning to the defendant.] Please give examples of untruths which you knew and which you did not consider lies.
FRITZSCHE: One example is the so-called “V” drive. Colonel Britton, a British colonel, proclaimed this “V” drive, this “Victory” drive on the British radio. On the same evening I stood before a German microphone and said, apparently harmlessly, “We will have a ‘V’ drive; the ‘V’ stands for ‘Victoria.’ ”
Then Colonel Britton said that I had stolen the “V” from him. I said that was not the case, that I thought of it first.
DR. FRITZ: If you thought you were operating only with the truth, why your sharp language, why the prohibition against listening on the radio to foreign stations?
FRITZSCHE: I have already emphasized in my affidavit that in my opinion the sharpness of my language was always less than that of my opponents. The prohibition against listening to foreign radio stations was issued decidedly against my will. This prohibition was only a hindrance for me in my discussions with my foreign opponents in the various countries. Due to this prohibition my enemy was, so to speak, half in shadow; I could not speak to him officially, but, on the other hand, I knew that many of my listeners had heard him.
May I mention here that I always advocated a mild judgment on the violators of this prohibition against listening to foreign radio stations. Legal authorities often consulted me as an expert. I may emphasize that, particularly after Stalingrad, I established my own listening service for the Russian radio in order to learn the names of German soldiers captured at Stalingrad which were mentioned on the Russian radio and report them to the relatives, because it seemed cruel to me to deprive the relatives of such a source of information about the fate of their people.
Moreover, there was only one alternative with regard to the prohibition of listening to the radio. That was either to confiscate all radios and stop the whole German radio system—the Party often demanded this—or the prohibition against listening to foreign stations, which seemed to me the lesser of the two evils.
Finally, we were in a war, and the enemy was not too particular in his methods. I should like to give an example. That was the station Gustav Siegfried 2, which at the beginning of its work gained listeners in Germany with stories that I do not want to characterize more precisely but which caused me to prohibit my own listening station from receiving this broadcast.
DR. FRITZ: You have been charged with urging a policy of ruthless exploitation of the occupied territories. Do you acknowledge such a policy?