Background
Hans Fritzsche was born on 21 April 1900 in Bochum, Westphalia, the son of a civil servant.
Head of Radio Broadcasting Nazi official
Hans Fritzsche was born on 21 April 1900 in Bochum, Westphalia, the son of a civil servant.
Post-war he studied briefly at a number of universities before becoming a journalist for the Hugenberg Press and then involved in the new mass media of the radio, working for the German government. In September 1932 he was made head of the Drahtloser Dienst (the wireless news service).
Following war service as a private. In 1923 he joined the German National People's Party and a year later he became editor of the Telegraphen Union news agency controlled by Alfred Hugenberg and of the International News Service, a division of the latter's huge press combine.
In 1932 Fritzsche was appointed head of the German radio news service. A conservative nationalist rather than a Nazi, Fritzsche changed his spots when Goebbels chose him to head the news service in the Press Section of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda on 1 May 1933.
On the same day Fritzsche joined the NSDAP. As head of the German Press Section, Fritzsche was responsible for the ‘co-ordination' of all news outlets in Nazi Germany, regularly instructing German editors on what could be printed, controlling information released to the outside world and ensuring that the official Nazi version of the news was faithfully presented. From 1940 he was Ministerial Director and head of the Home Press Division in Goebbels's Ministry and the parallel office with the Government Press Chief.
In November 1942 Fritzsche left the Press Section and became head of the Radio Division in the Ministry of Propaganda. Already known as one of the leading political commentators on the German wireless since 1937, Fritzsche had built up a mass audience for his broadcasts by relying on reasoned argument rather than the familiar Nazi-style bombast and demagogy. At the same time he faithfully reflected the basic themes of National Socialist propaganda and helped create the image of Hitler as an irresistible political and military genius who had raised the German nation to the pinnacle of its power and prestige. As Bevollmachtiger fur die Pohtische Gestaltung des Grossdeutschen Rundfunks (Plenipotentiary for the Political Supervision of Broadcasting in Greater Germany) after 1942, Fritzsche, like his master, Joseph Goebbels, concentrated on maintaining German morale in the face of growing military setbacks.
At his trial in Nuremberg, Fritzsche was one of the very few Nazis - apart from Albert Spee - who appeared to regret his wartime role and revised his earlier estimate of Hitler and National Socialism.
On 1 October 1946 he was acquitted by the Nuremberg court of participation in war crimes. In 1947 a German de-Nazification court re-examined his role in inciting anti-semitism and deceiving the German people about their real situation in the later part of the war.
On 29 September 1950 he was released from detention.
He died in Cologne on 27 September 1953.
On 1 May 1933 he joined the NSDAP (Nazi Party).