GÖRING: He was not a minister. He had only the assimilated rank of a minister.
DR. NELTE: Was he entitled to participate in Cabinet meetings?
GÖRING: Not by virtue of his positions; but, concerning questions of interest to him which pertained to his work, he could be invited by the Führer to attend Cabinet meetings.
DR. NELTE: Keitel was a member of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich. Did that make him a minister?
GÖRING: No, he remained the same. He had only the rank of a minister. Field Marshal Keitel could not attend Cabinet meetings of the Reich Cabinet because he became Chief of the High Command only in 1938, and from that time on no Cabinet meetings took place.
DR. NELTE: The Prosecution have also asserted that there was a triumvirate, consisting of the Plenipotentiary General for Economy, the Plenipotentiary General for Administration, and the Chief of the OKW. Can you tell us something about that?
GÖRING: I know nothing about that.
DR. NELTE: The Prosecution have accused Field Marshal Keitel of having been a political general. Do you know anything about that?
GÖRING: The generals in the Third Reich had no right whatsoever to participate in any political activity. The only exception in this respect was myself—and that was due to the peculiar nature of my position, for I was at the same time a soldier, a general, and on the other hand, in politics, a politician. The other generals, as the Führer always very clearly pointed out, had nothing to do with politics.
The general who always most interested himself in politics was the late Field Marshal Von Reichenau. That was the reason the Führer, in spite of his personal sympathies and the strongly positive attitude of Reichenau toward the Nazi Party, refused to make him Commander-in-Chief of the Army after the resignation of Fritsch; the Führer did not want any political generals.