MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You were ordered on the 15th of August to get the Luftwaffe in readiness for an attack on Poland?
KESSELRING: This order as such is not known to me in detail, but I must admit that for months before we had made air preparations and erected bases in a general defensive direction, always thinking of a defensive situation.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You expected Poland to attack Germany in the air? Is that your point?
KESSELRING: At any rate, we took this possibility into consideration on our side. The whole political situation was too unknown for us to be able to form a pertinent, incontestable judgment on it.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You have said that you never held conferences with Party leaders or talked politics or had any contacts with politicians, in substance, have you not?
KESSELRING: Essentially, yes.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Was not your immediate superior the Number 2 politician of Germany? Did you not know that?
KESSELRING: I did, but I must emphasize that the conversations which I had with the Reich Marshal were 99 percent concerned with military and organizational problems.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: But you knew that he, at all times, was one of the leading men in Nazi politics?
KESSELRING: Certainly.