KESSELRING: Naturally I must regard this “Glass Campaign” as an excess against the Jews.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You have stated, as I understand you, based on your experience with Hitler, that it was permissible for officers to differ with him in opinion so long as they obeyed his orders. Is that what you want understood?
KESSELRING: I have to apologize, but I did not quite understand the last half of that sentence.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I have understood from your testimony this morning that you felt perfectly free to disagree with Hitler and to make suggestions to him and give him information, but that, after his mind was made up and an order issued, it had to be obeyed. That is to say . . .
KESSELRING: Yes.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: That is to say, an officer was at all times at liberty to go to Hitler and give him technical information, such as the state of the preparedness of his branch of the service?
KESSELRING: Generally speaking, no. For that purpose the commanders-in-chief of the branches of the Armed Forces concerned were the only people admitted.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: So the only channel through which information as to the state of the Air Force would reach Hitler was through Hermann Göring, is that a fact?
KESSELRING: Hermann Göring and, from time to time, State Secretary Milch, deputy of the Reich Marshal.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: If Hitler was about to engage in a war for which the Luftwaffe was unprepared, based on your information of the situation, would it or would it not have been possible for the Luftwaffe officers to have advised Hitler of that fact?