DR. DIX: Then, I may assume that you probably saw the leading men, Hess, Ley, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Frick, Frank, Schirach, Speer, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, Kaltenbrunner, et cetera, then for the last time?
SCHACHT: It is possible that all these gentlemen were there, but I did not speak at length with any of them except Hitler himself.
DR. DIX: Did you speak with Hitler at that time?
SCHACHT: Hitler addressed me, and that was one of the strangest scenes of my life. We were all standing in line and Hitler passed everyone by rather quickly. When he saw me, he came up to me with a triumphant smile and extended his hand in a cordial manner, something which I had not seen from him for a long time, and he said to me, “Now, Herr Schacht, what do you have to say now?” Then, of course, he expected me to congratulate him or express my admiration or a similar sentiment, and to admit that my prognostication about the war and about the disaster of the war was wrong, for he knew my attitude about the war quite exactly. It was extremely hard for me to avoid such an answer and I searched my mind for something else to say, finally replying: “I can only say to you, ‘God protect you.’ ” That was the only significant conversation which I had that day. I believed the best way to have kept my distance was through just such a completely neutral and inconsequential remark.
DR. DIX: Well...
SCHACHT: But perhaps you would like me to refer to the individual gentlemen, and I can tell you with this exception just when I spoke to these gentlemen for the last time.
DR. DIX: Himmler?
SCHACHT: Himmler, I would judge that perhaps I talked to him last in 1936.
DR. DIX: Hess?
SCHACHT: Hess—of course I am not referring to the conversations here in the prison. I had not spoken with Hess for years before the beginning of the war.