[There was no response.]
GEN. RUDENKO: I say that you, I hope, remember the testimony of Hoess, the commander of the concentration camp in Auschwitz, concerning the extermination of millions of people.
FRITZSCHE: I did not forget this testimony, and not for a minute did it escape my memory.
GEN. RUDENKO: Very well. I merely wanted to remind you. I do not intend questioning you on this matter. I am passing on to questions connected with the propaganda regarding the preparation for aggressive war by Hitler Germany. In order to shorten the cross-examination, I shall quote a few of your own statements, dated 12 September 1945, which have already been submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit USSR-474. Please look at the second excerpt. It is underlined.
FRITZSCHE: I object to the reading of this quotation in the same way as I objected to the submission of the entire minutes of the interrogation, and I refer you to what I testified a few hours ago as to the origin of this record.
GEN. RUDENKO: You already gave an explanation to the Tribunal, and the Tribunal will consider your explanation. This document is submitted, and I intend to cite this part of the testimony. Please follow me—Excerpt Number 2:
“In order to justify this aggressive action, Goebbels summoned me to him and gave me instructions to conduct a hostile campaign against Austria. Among other things he instructed me to dig out old documents in the archives which in any way incriminated the Austrian Government and to publish them in the press. Goebbels stressed that the documents to be published must first of all show that the Austrian people wished to unite themselves with the German nation and that the Austrians adhering to these ideas were being persecuted by the Austrian Government. Furthermore, Goebbels said that the German press had to show that the Germans living in Austria were being systematically persecuted by the Austrian Government which even went to the length of carrying out mass reprisals against them.”
And further on:
“When Germany occupied Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, Norway, and the Balkan countries, acting on the instructions of Goebbels, I organized a similar calumnious propaganda.”
THE PRESIDENT: General Rudenko, surely it would be better to ask him with reference to one of these paragraphs: Did he say that?—rather than to put to him the whole document at once.