COL. AMEN: Well, I am not interested in that. I am interested only in ascertaining if it is not a fact, and if you did not swear under oath, that on that occasion you swore to Hitler that you would never express or press any divergent views to anything which he desired. Is that not correct?
VON RIBBENTROP: No, no! That is absolutely untrue, the interpretation is false. I told the Führer that I would never create any difficulties for him. After 1941 I had many divergencies with him, and even at that time I always voiced my own opinions.
COL. AMEN: Well, Ribbentrop, whatever divergent views you had you were never able to put any of them into effect after 1941, were you? “Yes” or “no?”
VON RIBBENTROP: I did not understand the question. Please repeat it.
COL. AMEN: I say, no matter how divergent your views were, or what views you expressed to the Führer on any of these questions after 1941, your suggestions being contrary to the Führer’s were never put into effect. Isn’t that correct? You always eventually did what the Führer told you to do and what he wished, regardless of your own views.
VON RIBBENTROP: You are putting two questions to me. To the first I must reply that it is not correct that Hitler never accepted suggestions from me. Question Number 2, however, is correct. I can answer it by saying that if Hitler at any time expressed an opinion to me and issued an order, I carried the order through as was natural in our country.
COL. AMEN: In other words, eventually you always said “yes”, isn’t that correct?
VON RIBBENTROP: I carried out his order, yes.
COL. AMEN: Now, I am going to read you some more of your testimony:
“He”—referring to the Führer—“considered me his closest collaborator. We had a very serious conversation then, and when I wanted to go away, I promised it to him and I have kept it to the last moment. It was sometimes very difficult, I can assure you, to keep this promise, and today I am sorry that I gave it. Perhaps it would have been better if I had not given it. It put me from then on in the position that I could not talk to Hitler, in very serious and important moments of this war, in the way in which I would have liked to, and in which, perhaps, I might have been able to talk to him after this conversation in 1941.