GEN. RUDENKO: Let us go on. The directives regarding the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war must have been executed also by the units of the Luftwaffe?
GÖRING: If ordered by the Führer, yes; or if ordered by me, also.
GEN. RUDENKO: Do you remember your own directives with regard to the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war?
GÖRING: No.
GEN. RUDENKO: You do not remember them?
GÖRING: The Air Force had no camps with Soviet prisoners of war.
GEN. RUDENKO: Tell me, the majority of these criminal orders and directives of the OKW, were they not issued even before the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union and as part of the preparations for that war? Does this not show that the German Government and the OKW already had a prepared plan for exterminating the Soviet population?
GÖRING: No. It does not prove it at all. It only shows that we considered a struggle with the Soviet Union would be an extremely bitter one, and that it would be conducted according to other rules as there were no conventions.
GEN. RUDENKO: These rules of warfare are well known to us. Please tell me, do you know about Himmler’s directives given in 1941 about the extermination of 30 million Slavs? You heard about it from the witness Von dem Bach-Zelewski here in court. Do you remember that?
GÖRING: Yes. First of all it was not an order but a speech. Secondly, it was an assertion by Zelewski. And thirdly, in all speeches that Himmler made to subordinate leaders, he insisted on the strictest secrecy. In other words, this is a statement from a witness about what he had heard, and not an order. Consequently, I have no knowledge of this nonsense.