DR. FRITZ: And you just believed these answers?
FRITZSCHE: Yes, I did believe them, for after all this was information which was given to me by official sources and furthermore I had experienced on numerous occasions that the authenticity of such reports from these sources had been proved very drastically.
DR. FRITZ: What do you mean by that?
FRITZSCHE: Perhaps I might give you an example. The first propaganda action of the war was the report given out by Warsaw about the destruction of the picture of the “Black Madonna” of Czestochowa. This report was transmitted around the world. We took German and foreign journalists to Czestochowa, who could assure themselves that this report was not true.
But I must be quite honest here and say that I really wanted to cite another example in reply to this question put by my counsel, another report which really had its surprising after-effects for me in this courtroom some 2 or 3 days ago. The British newspaper News Chronicle, on 24 September 1939, printed the report that the German...
THE PRESIDENT: What is the evidential value of the News Chronicle in 1939?
DR. FRITZ: The defendant wants to prove to the High Tribunal that he found that many reports from abroad, dealing with German atrocities, actually were false, so that...
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we do not need details about that. No doubt there were frequent reports which were not accurate. We do not want you to go into details.
FRITZSCHE: I wanted to prove with just one news item how at that time something which the world believed could be denied and then, in the shadow of this denial, quite unnoticed by the German public, something did take place, such as a larger wave of arrests or a similar matter.
THE PRESIDENT: He can state the facts, but he need not go into detail about a particular issue of the newspaper.