What other influential persons, apart from Dr. Goebbels, were there in the Ministry of Propaganda?
VON SCHIRMEISTER: After State Secretary Hahnke’s departure there was only one man in the Ministry of Propaganda who had any real influence on the Minister, only one man with whom Dr. Goebbels had some personal relations, and that was his first personal adviser, Dr. Naumann, who later became his state secretary.
DR. FRITZ: Did Fritzsche come to you frequently to learn more about the Minister’s views because the Minister did not inform Defendant Fritzsche?
VON SCHIRMEISTER: Very often, because Herr Fritzsche knew that I also had many private conversations with the Minister and he always complained that he was left in suspense and all at sea, and he asked me if I could not tell him the Minister’s view about this or that matter. I did succeed in helping him by occasionally arranging for him to be invited by Dr. Goebbels to private meetings in which I spoke openly about Herr Fritzsche’s needs.
DR. FRITZ: Did Goebbels keep the radio strictly under his own control?
VON SCHIRMEISTER: During the war the radio was for Dr. Goebbels the most important instrument of propaganda. He did not keep such a strict watch on any department as he did on the radio department. At meetings over which he presided he personally decided the most minute details of the artistic program...
DR. FRITZ: That is enough, Witness. Was Fritzsche really the leading man of German broadcasting, as he appeared to the outside world?
VON SCHIRMEISTER: By no means. The leading man was Dr. Goebbels himself. Apart from that, Fritzsche here again was between two stools, because on the other side demands came in from the Foreign Office with reference to foreign broadcasts.
DR. FRITZ: Was Fritzsche in his radio speeches perhaps too halfhearted for Dr. Goebbels?
VON SCHIRMEISTER: I myself, by order of the Minister, repeatedly had to reprimand Fritzsche, because the former claimed that his broadcasts were much too weak.