The Nuremberg Interviews (12 page)

“Soon we made a coalition with German nationalist parties, and in a meeting at Harzburg in 1931, we took a stand against the Dawes Plan. A little later we came out against the Young Plan. We also wanted to make a people’s election.”
³

From 1931 to 1933 Frick was “a most important leader” in the Reichstag. In July 1932 “we did away with Heinrich Bruening. I just wanted to mention how Hitler came to power.”

In 1933, after President Hindenburg took Hitler into the government, Frick became minister of interior, a post he held until the collapse in 1945.

Asked whether he knew Harold Ickes, the American secretary of the interior, Frick replied that he never met him because he had never been in America.
⁴
He had heard of him, and said that Ickes had refused helium to the German zeppelin in 1932–33. That was the only comment he offered on Ickes.

“It was my job to transform the parliamentary way into the authoritarian way. One point in the prosecution in these trials is that the
Federal Law Gazette
has 234 documents bearing my signature, that is, charging me with changing the laws.
⁵
The parliamentary system itself broke down between 1930 and 1932; the banks failed.

“The Bruening government had emergency laws. The Weimar Republic’s rules did not help, so we had to change to the authoritarian way.

“The basic law at that time was that not only the Reichstag but the Reich government itself could publish laws. Thus the whole parliamentary system was overthrown and in time all laws were taken out of the hands of the parliament and into the authoritarian control.”

Asked if he had any comment to offer on the Reichstag fire, Frick replied: “It can be argued both ways. At the trial some Communists were convicted. There is the rumor that Goering and the SA started it. But I don’t know.” What is your own opinion? “The only thing I can say is based on the viewpoint of who gained what. If the Communists had done it, they were stupid because they were prohibited thereafter. If Goering and the SA did it, I’m unable to say. So far it has not come up in this trial.” At the time, what was your opinion? “I had no reason to be suspicious, though rumors, of course, existed at that time, too.”
⁶

Among the duties of the minister of interior were “general powers over administrative processes; also ministerial counsel for defense of the Reich.” On August 20, 1943, Frick became protector of Bohemia and Moravia in addition to his other duties. He maintained offices in Berlin and in Prague. “But I was in Prague for only about one week out of each month. It was merely a representative position. The real German statesman for Bohemia and Moravia was Karl Hermann Frank. The latter was directly under Hitler and held a rank equivalent to mine:
Reichsminister
.” Frick was
Reichsprotektor
of Bohemia and Moravia, whereas Frank was
Reichsminister
for Bohemia and Moravia.

What is your opinion of Karl Hermann Frank in view of some of the atrocity charges against him? “He had his good side. For instance, after Reinhard Heydrich was murdered, Hitler ordered that fifty thousand
Czechs be murdered in reprisal.
⁷
But Frank said that these people had families, and suggested lesser measures.” Isn’t Frank accused of Lidice?
⁸
“Yes. But Hitler wanted more than that.”

What is your opinion of Hitler? “He was too rash. Not enough self-control.” Do you think another Führer might have been better? “Hitler was undoubtedly a genius but he lacked self-control. He recognized no limits. Otherwise the thousand-year Reich would have lasted more than twelve years.” If you were Führer, would it have been different? “It all depends. Hitler had bad advisers, particularly Himmler, Bormann, and Goebbels. I lost Hitler’s confidence in 1934. I worked closely and confidentially with him only until the Roehm putsch. After that, I was not really in the inner circle of Hitler’s advisers. I’m convinced Roehm did not even want a putsch, but Himmler used it to gain power. From that time forth Himmler became more and more irreplaceable.” Frick states that Himmler was “against” him since 1933, but gives no reason for this other than Himmler’s “great desire for more power.”

“Hitler’s government, that is to say, the internal policy, worked well in 1933. It did away with unemployment. It worked smoothly as long as Hitler listened to his advisers. After the Roehm putsch in 1934, Hitler’s chief advisers became Goering and Himmler.” Were you ever friendly with Goering? “No.

“Hitler’s lack of moderation was a fault. He was so stubborn he listened only to Bormann and Himmler, both of whom were criminals of the worst kind. His own ministers wouldn’t be received anymore. I tried to resign because it was an impossible situation, but Hitler refused and said I had to remain. The last time I could see Hitler was in 1937. During the war I saw him only occasionally. I had a home next to Hitler’s in Berlin because the living quarters of the Ministry of the Interior were located in the Foreign Office, which was next door to the Chancellery. Formerly the Foreign Office had been the Ministry of Interior. We retained only our living quarters there. It was Wilhelmstrasse, 74.”

Family History:
Father died in 1918 at age eighty as a result of falling from a wagon. He was a schoolteacher. He was a “good” father, a nationalist politically, and an admirer of Bismarck. He was never a soldier. Mother died in 1893 of pneumonia. At the time Frick was sixteen years old. His father never remarried. The father’s name is the same as the subject’s, that is, Wilhelm. His grandparents on both sides were farmers who lived in the northern Palatinate. He has little comment to offer
regarding his mother’s or father’s personality. He believes that he resembles his father in personality.

Siblings:
He is the youngest of four children. (1) Brother, died at age thirty of tuberculosis, in the Canary Islands. His name was Hermann Frick, born 1870. He was a businessman. (2) Sister, died age seventy-two, in 1938 of a weak heart. She was single and kept house for Frick. (3) Sister, Emma, born in 1864, died in 1903 of tumor of the stomach. She was a teacher of English and Latin.

He did not see the sister who died in 1938 for the last five or six years of her life. She remained in Kaiserslautern, whereas he was in Berlin. He was on good terms with all members of his family, he says, but they were never very intimate.

Marital:
First marriage was to a woman ten years his junior. They were divorced in 1934. The marriage was “satisfactory,” but he wanted more children, “and she didn’t want any more so we were divorced.” They had three children. In the same year of his divorce, 1934, he remarried a woman nineteen years his junior. This marriage yielded two children.

Children:
(1) Hans, born 1911, was a district magistrate in upper Bavaria. He committed suicide on May 3, 1945, together with his wife and children. (2) Walter, born 1913, was killed in action on the Russian front in 1941, at which time he was a first lieutenant. “I saw him on the banks of the Dnieper, wounded as a result of shell fragments. He had an abdominal wound. I had permission from the Führer to visit him. I flew there and next day flew back to Berlin. Later that day I found he had died.” What was your emotional reaction? “It was sad. It’s war. Many others died, too. It’s war.”

We discussed the business of war. “I am skeptical about preventing wars. I doubt if they can be prevented. There will always be wars. Judging by past experiences, working for peace now would be as ineffective as ever. It’s a law of nature.” That’s a rather cynical, pessimistic philosophy. “No. I am just a realist. There’s no use having wishful dreams.”

Asked why his son committed suicide, he replied: “He had been a regional commander in Russia, and he was afraid that he would be handed over to the Russians. He was against that. He wrote his mother that he was going to commit suicide. I just heard about it in November.”

(3) Anneliese, daughter, born 1920, is living and well, single; she writes often. She worked for the medical department of the air force. These first three children are of his first wife.

(4) Renate, a daughter, aged ten, born in 1935, and (5) Dieter, a son, born in 1937. The last three children are living and well as far as he is aware. His wife lives near Starnberg Lake. He has heard that his first wife is depressed because of the loss of her two sons. Personally, he is not particularly depressed, because of the “nature of life, the laws of nature, the ways of war.”

Hans Fritzsche

Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953) was a senior official in Joseph Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda and head of the Radio Division from 1942. At Nuremberg, tried for war crimes, he was found not guilty.

This pale, thin man, Hans Fritzsche, was at the end of the defendants’ dock, and his defense would come last. He was forty-five years old, looked his age, but had a certain youthful, naïve, suggestively adolescent quality. I have had many interviews with him since January, when I came to Nuremberg. He appreciated the visits, and seemed to feel better after a talk. I pursued my usual attitude of asking him to say whatever came into his mind. Occasionally I directed a question, as today, when I asked him to give me an informal biographical sketch. He said he had written such an outline some time ago, and offered me a copy. I told him that I had access to that autobiographical account, but that I should prefer to have him talk to me personally about his life.

He said: “That is best. Those two written pages are at best a lifeless outline.

“I was born in Bochum, Westphalia, on April
21, 1900
. Of course, I had the everyday childhood illnesses. From the age of twelve to fourteen, however, I suffered from a weak heart because I grew too fast. This necessitated my staying out of school for a year. It also prevented me from indulging in sports until I was almost twenty years old. The weak heart did not affect me after the age of twenty.

“In sports, I liked mountain climbing. In my middle twenties I was injured skiing, fracturing both my feet, a spinal process, and several ribs. But I was in bed only four weeks after the accident and recovered fully.

“I had one other serious illness, in 1936–37, when I required two operations for the removal of my appendix, which had ruptured. The first operation was an incision and drainage, the second was to actually remove the appendix.”

I asked him about his education. “I went to school at Halle on the Saale for about three years. Then I attended the gymnasium at Breslau for five years. I never liked the rigid Prussian atmosphere of these schools. I was not a good student because I disliked the mechanical methods of teaching. My last four years of gymnasium were in Leipzig. I did well there because the school was more like a university, and the teachers were more liberal and modern. I graduated at the top of my class. For a graduation thesis I wrote something entitled ‘Humanity, Our Eternal Desire,’ and it was highly praised.

“Curiously enough, some of my best friends in the Breslau school were Jewish. These were the sons of Jewish emigrants from the East. There was always anti-Semitic feeling in the school, but I never participated in it.

“One of my closest friends was Lewisohn, about my own age, who was Jewish but later converted to Protestantism. Another dear friend was Lohse, also Jewish, who together with his mother and sister became Protestants under my influence. Lewisohn was killed in the First World War, but Lohse and his family, I believe, are still alive in Silesia.”

Fritzsche said there were many things he learned aside from the actual studies in school. Among them was a great respect for individual rights. His schooling was interrupted for about a year or nine months in 1918 when he was drafted into the army and spent some time fighting in Flanders. In December 1919, after the war ended, he returned to gymnasium and finally graduated in 1920.

That same year he began his studies at the University of Greifswald, specializing in philosophy, but also taking courses in German literature, history, and economics. “Because of the difficulties of the times, the inflation, strikes, and conditions equivalent to civil war, I was naturally attracted to politics. I became president of the students’ union at the university in my second year there. Then I transferred to the University of Berlin and was active among the students there.”

He quit the university after three years, in 1923, for “financial reasons,” and became at first an assistant, or secretary, of a new School for Geopolitics. Shortly thereafter he became historical-political editor of the
Prussian Yearbook
until sometime in 1924. He next became a reporter and editor for the Telegraph Union (similar to the United Press service), in charge of foreign news. He remained with this agency from 1924 until 1932, at which time he was editor in chief.

I asked him about his family background. He said that his father was born in the vicinity of Leipzig and his forefathers before him for many generations came from that territory. Most of his father’s relatives were armorers or toolsmiths. His father was an “old postal official,” who because he was disliked by his superiors, though respected by his inferiors, never achieved more than the directorate of a city post office. “My father’s brother-in-law became a member of the Postal Ministry, but my father never achieved that because he was too independent. Father is now eighty-five. I last heard from him in April, when he was living in the Russian zone on an island near Pomerania, in the Baltic Sea. He retired from the postal service in 1925 or 1926. He rented rooms during the summer in his little home on the island.