MILCH: It was just not possible. Hitler was so powerful that he just turned down other people’s objections or else refused to listen to them at all.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And Hitler had the SS, didn’t he, and Himmler and Kaltenbrunner?
MILCH: Yes, he had them as well. In addition he had the entire Wehrmacht who had sworn an oath of allegiance to him.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I think you said in your interrogation that after the 5th of March 1943, Hitler was no longer normal. Did you make that statement?
MILCH: I said that, in my opinion, the Hitler of the later years was not the Hitler of the early period from 1933 until the outbreak of war, and that after the campaign against France a change came over him. I formed this opinion, which was a purely private one, because what he did afterwards was diametrically opposed to what he had previously taught; and that I could not consider normal.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And you want us to understand that Göring continued to act as second man in the Reich and to take the orders from an abnormal man from that period on? Is that your story?
MILCH: The abnormality was not such that one could say, “this man is out of his senses,” or, “this man is insane”; it would not have to reach that stage. It often happens that abnormalities are such that they escape both the public and the nearest associates. I believe that a doctor would be better able to give information on that subject. I talked to medical men about it at the time.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And it was their opinion that he was abnormal?
MILCH: That there was a possibility of abnormality was admitted by a doctor whom I knew well, personally.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: A doctor of repute in Germany?