THE PRESIDENT: All right, you may ask the question.
[Turning to the defendant.] Did you understand the question?
FRITZSCHE: I believe a confusion has arisen, inasmuch as I do not wish to quote Dr. Goebbels on this subject but rather in relation to our last series of questions which seem to me more important than the question you have just put to me now.
DR. FRITZ: In any event, I should like you to give me a brief answer to my question. Shall I repeat the question?
FRITZSCHE: Thank you, no. In this connection I should like to refer briefly to the statements which I already made about the murders; that there were many rumors but those rumors were denied. Undoubtedly an iron ring of silence surrounded these terrible events and the only thing I observed in the course of my work, and which appears to me to be important, is that in the RSHA and some of its branches there must have existed groups who worked systematically with the view of concealing these atrocities by issuing reassuring statements and denials to the offices which represented the public.
DR. FRITZ: Now I should like to put a last comprehensive question. In the course of your examination by me, you made statements about Hitler and his policies which were entirely different from those you made long ago in your radio broadcasts, et cetera. Can you tell us briefly the date and the reason for your change of opinion?
FRITZSCHE: I would like to answer this question very precisely. The first milestone on the road to this realization was not due to the German defeat, for right or wrong is independent of victory or defeat. The fact was that Hitler tried to use this defeat for the extermination of the German people, as Speer has now horribly confirmed and as I was able to observe during the last phase of the conflict in Berlin when, through deceit by raising false hopes, boys of 15, 14, 13, and 12 years of age were equipped with small arms to fight against tanks and called into battle, boys who otherwise might have been the hope for future reconstruction. Hitler found escape in death, leaving behind him the order to keep on fighting. He also left behind him the official report that he had died in battle.
I learned that he had committed suicide; and thus my last public statement, on 2 May 1945, was to let everybody know of this suicide, for I wanted to kill a Hitler legend in the bud.
Then, while in prison, I heard from a fellow prisoner, a German major named Sforner, that he had been arrested by the Gestapo, that he had been tortured in order to make him confess, and that in his presence, his wife had been beaten. That was the second milestone.
The third stage concerned another coprisoner, the world-famous geographer, General Niedermeier, who proved to me that the reasons given by Hitler for the attack on Russia were false, at least on one important point. After he had talked with the interpreter, he could tell me that in the decisive discussion between Molotov and Ribbentrop in 1941, Molotov had not put forth any new demands but that, rather, he demanded that the assurances which had been given in 1939 should be effective. Therefore, a part of the reasons given—and I stress this point—that our attack on Russia was to anticipate a Russian attack, was no longer valid.