On 23 January 1946, US prosecutor Drexel Sprecher presented the court with evidence of the individual responsibility of defendant Fritzsche, a former head of the Radio Division of the Third Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

The prosecution's arsenal included an affidavit signed by Fritzsche on 7 January 1946 and 32 pages of evidence. “The Tribunal will note the relative shortness of this document book”, Sprecher noted.

The reason Hans Fritzsche ended up in the dock of the Nuremberg Tribunal was that the suicide of Joseph Goebbels left the Allies with no defendant representing the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. As one of the leading employees of “the most fabulous lie factory of all time”, Fritzsche was a frequent speaker on German radio.

According to the prosecution, the mere fact that Fritzsche covered the Reich's foreign policy on wars of aggression in the West and East in a positive light made him complicit in the war crimes outlined in the indictment. For example, in a June 1941 broadcast, Fritzsche announced to the entire country that the German attack on the USSR was preventive in character, thus misleading millions of his compatriots:

“It was only the Fuhrer's decision to strike in time that saved our homeland from the fate of being overrun by those subhuman creatures, and our men, women, and children from the unspeakable horror of becoming their prey”.

During the session, Sprecher said there was no evidence that Fritzsche was guilty of mass murder of civilians, but remarked:

“It is enough to pause on this question: Without these incitements of Fritzsche, how much harder it would have been for these conspirators to have created the conditions which made possible the extermination of millions of people in the East”.

In his closing speech, Hans Fritzsche would say: “He, who after Auschwitz still supports racial policies, has made himself guilty”. On 1 October 1946, defendant Fritzsche was acquitted of the charges in the indictments served to him at the Nuremberg Trial.

Four months later, in February 1947, Fritzsche was brought before the Nuremberg denazification court and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment in a labour camp for promoting anti-Semitism. His sentence was later reduced and he was released in 1950.

Sources:

The Nuremberg Trials: The Complete Proceedings, 8 Vols. Vol. 6. On Personal Responsibility of the Leading Nazi War Criminals

The Holocaust Encyclopedia: Assessing Guilt