SCHACHT: D-203. That document closes with the following sentence:
“Göring then passed very cleverly to the necessity that other circles not taking part in this political battle should at least make the financial sacrifices required.”
Therefore from that report which was submitted by the Prosecution, it can be seen very clearly that not I but Göring pleaded for funds. I only administered these funds later, and, in the affidavit by Schnitzler, Document EC-439, Page 11, the Prosecution have carefully left out these decisive passages which do not accuse, but exonerate me. I quote the two sentences, therefore, as follows—I am sorry, I have to quote in English because I have only the English text in front of me:
“At the meeting Dr. Schacht proposed raising an election fund of as far as I remember three million Reichsmarks. The fund was to be distributed between the two ‘allies’ according to their relative strength at the time. Dr. Stein suggested that the Deutsche Volkspartei should be included, which suggestion, if I remember rightly, was accepted. The amounts which the individual firms were to contribute were not discussed.”
It can be seen from this that the election fund was not collected only for the Nazi Party, but for the Nazi Party and the national group which was its ally and to which, for instance, also Herr Von Papen and Hugenberg belonged, and which during that very meeting was extended to comprise a third group, the German People’s Party. It was, therefore, a collective fund for those parties who went into the election campaign together, and not just a Nazi fund.
DR. DIX: The Prosecution have mentioned those laws which were decreed after the seizure of power, and which introduced and then established the totalitarian rule of the Nazis and of Hitler. We have to consider the question of your personal responsibility as a later member of the cabinet and I must discuss these laws with you in detail; for the present I just want to remind you of them generally: First, the Enabling Act; then the law about the prohibition of parties and the establishment of one Party; the law about the unity of Party and State; the law decreeing the expropriation of the SPD and the trade unions; the law about civil service associations; the law about the legal limitation of professions for Jews; the law instituting the Peoples’ Court; the law legalizing the murders of 30 June 1934; and the law about the merger of the offices of the Reich Chancellor and the Reich President in the person of Hitler. How do you, as a member of the Cabinet, define your personal responsibility with respect to these laws?
SCHACHT: When all these laws were issued I was not a Cabinet member. I had no vote in the Cabinet. I had a vote in the Cabinet only after 1 August 1934, at which time the last disastrous law, the merger of the offices of Reich Chancellor and Reich President was decreed. I did not participate in the discussions preceding this law, nor did I vote on it. I had absolutely no part in any of these laws.
DR. DIX: I do not know whether I mentioned it, but I want to protect you against a misunderstanding. This does not apply to the merger of the offices of the Reich President in the person of Hitler, after Hindenburg’s death?
SCHACHT: Of course, I did not take part in that either.
DR. DIX: And why not?