Hans Fritzsche | Biography

Hans Fritzsche was a German journalist and propaganda ministry official who was well-known for his nightly radio broadcasts during World War II defending the policies of Adolph Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) government. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) for war crimes indicted Fritzsche, who worked for Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda. However, Fritzsche was one of the few defendants to be acquitted of all charges. Despite this victory, the new postwar German government successfully prosecuted him for his actions during the Hitler era.

Fritzsche was born in 1899 in Dresden, Germany. He served in the German army during World War I and attended the universities of Wurzberg and Leipzig. Following graduation, he started a law practice. After Germany's defeat in World War I, Fritzsche became attracted to conservative, nationalistic political ideas. He first joined the Young Conservative movement, which was anti-British and fervently nationalistic. In 1929, he left that movement to join the Nazi Party, which by that time had grown from a small group of Hitler's followers into a powerful political force in Germany. However, Fritzsche was not content to merely join the party. In 1930, he also enlisted in the party's SA (Sturmabteilung), popularly known as the Storm Troopers. The SA was a paramilitary organization that sought to intimidate the party's political opponents. As an SA member, Fritzsche served primarily in the provinces of Saxony and Thuringia.

In September of 1932, Fritzsche began a new venture as a radio commentator. He had nightly commentaries on the events of the day called "Hans Fritzsche Speaks." In these broadcasts, Fritzsche extolled Hitler and the Nazi ideology, while attacking foreigners, Jews, and German political opponents. Within a short time, he used his popularity to secure an appointment as head of the Wireless News services, a government agency.

Fritzsche's autonomy was short lived. In May of 1933, the agency was incorporated into the ministry of propaganda, which was headed by Joseph Goebbels. Fritzsche continued his radio broadcasts and, in 1938, was rewarded for his work by becoming head of the propaganda ministry's press division. After World War II started in September of 1939, Fritzsche used his nightly radio broadcasts to report on the war's progress. This program became a fixture for both German citizens and Allied intelligence agents. In 1942, he became chief of the ministry's radio division.

Fritzsche announced the news at the end of April of 1945 that Hitler had committed suicide. He was captured in May of 1945 by Soviet troops in Berlin and turned over to the IMT for prosecution as a war criminal. Though he had no hand in making policy at the propaganda ministry, the Russians insisted that he be tried with other alleged war criminals at Nuremberg in the fall of 1945. Fritzsche had never even met Hitler and argued in his defense that Goebbels told him what to say on his broadcasts. In October of 1946, the IMT acquitted Fritzsche of all the charges. However, he was tried by the German government and sentenced to nine years in prison. Fritzsche only served three years of his sentence. He was released in 1950 and died three years later on September 27, 1953, in Cologne, Germany.