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The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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was responsible for broadcasts, international radio relations, licensing of broadcasting stations, and technical matters connected with them. In March 1942, he also took over coordination of broadcasts to the East.

Consequently Kiesinger became the moving force of the whole huge, complex, and powerful organization for broadcasting Nazi propaganda. He was the only one who could negotiate the political and bureaucratic complications of this extraordinary spider web. He was behind all programs, owing to his authority to issue explicit directives for adapting propaganda to different geographical regions. Once the programs had been adjusted to the circumstances, their text had to be sent to Kiesinger for his approval.

Kiesinger also held the extremely powerful position of deputy to S.S.-Standartenführer Gerhard Rühle, whose Party card was No. 694. Kiesinger was close to the new chief of the department of cultural policy, S.S.-Brigadeführer Dr. Franz Six after Six returned from Russia, where, in his capacity as chief of Hitler's Einsatzgruppen, he had supervised the liquidation of commissars as well as thousands of Jews.

Kiesinger devoted particular attention to the pivotal point of Hitlerism, namely, the Jewish problem, and apparently he never questioned the Nazi oppression of Jews or the "final solution" – extermination.

Kiesinger's radio propaganda aimed at arousing anti-Semitism throughout the world, a goal that had to be attained without the introduction of manifestly inaccurate statements.

When, in September 1941, the broadcasting department began to develop the twelve topics of the propaganda – especially No. 5: That Jew Roosevelt aspires to worldwide Jewish supremacy – the German Ambassador to Washington, Hans Dieckhoff, commented: "That is a sure way of seriously compromising our other statements, which happen to be accurate, on the domination of the United States by Jews."

Dieckhoff's memorandum outlined how to deal with the matter:
In our counterattack we should avoid calling Americans Jews unless we are completely certain that they are. If we state that an American public figure like Roosevelt is a Jew when every American knows that he is not, we will make our other claims suspect . . . . I recommend taking the following line: Isn't the President continually surrounded by advisers and close friends who are Jews? Isn't Felix Frankfurter, Whom the President appointed to the Supreme Court, one of his most
     
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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