“On the occasion of a luncheon on the Führer’s birthday in 1942, the people around the Führer turned the conversation to the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears how Göring broke into the conversation and shouted: ‘The only one who really knows the Reichstag is I, for I set fire to it.’ And saying this he slapped his thigh.”
GÖRING: This conversation did not take place and I request that I be confronted with Herr Halder. First of all I want to emphasize that what is written here is utter nonsense. It says, “The only one who really knows the Reichstag is I.” The Reichstag was known to every representative in the Reichstag. The fire took place only in the general assembly room, and many hundreds or thousands of people knew this room as well as I did. A statement of this type is utter nonsense. How Herr Halder came to make that statement I do not know. Apparently that bad memory, which also let him down in military matters, is the only explanation.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You know who Halder is?
GÖRING: Only too well.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Can you tell us what position he held in the German Army?
GÖRING: He was Chief of the General Staff of the Army, and I repeatedly pointed out to the Führer, after the war started, that he would at least have to find a chief who knew something about such matters.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Now, the Röhm purge you have left a little indefinite. What was it that Röhm did that he was shot? What acts did he commit?
GÖRING: Röhm planned to overthrow the Government, and it was intended to kill the Führer also. He wanted to follow it up by a revolution, directed in the first place against the Army, the officers’ corps—those groups which he considered to be reactionary.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And you had evidence of that fact?
GÖRING: We had sufficient evidence of that fact.