DR. DIX: Earlier you briefly dealt with the question of keeping armament secret in another connection. Have you anything to add to that?
SCHACHT: I think in a general manner it must be realized that State expenditures do not come under the jurisdiction of the President of the Reichsbank, and that the expenses and receipts of the State are under the control of the Reich Minister of Finance, and consequently the responsibility lies in his hands and it is his duty to publish the figures. Every bill which the Reichsbank had in its possession was made known every week.
DR. DIX: Is that what you have to add to your answer to the basic question of allegedly keeping the armament program secret?
SCHACHT: Yes.
DR. DIX: You have also already explained on the side why you fundamentally were in favor of rearmament. Have you anything to add to that?
SCHACHT: Yes. A few very important remarks are, of course, to be made on that and since this question concerns the chief accusation against me, I may perhaps deal with it in greater detail.
I considered an unarmed Germany in the center of Europe, surrounded by armed nations, as a menace to peace. I want to say that these states were not only armed but that they were, to a very large part, continuing to arm and arming anew. Especially two states which had not existed before, Czechoslovakia and Poland, were beginning to arm, and England, for example, was continuing to rearm, specifically with reference to her naval rearmament in 1935, et cetera.
I should like to say quite briefly that I myself was of the opinion that a country which was not armed could not defend itself, and that consequently it would have no voice in the concert of nations. The British Prime Minister Baldwin once said, in 1935:
“A country which is not willing to take necessary precautionary measures for its own defense will never have power in this world, neither moral power nor material power.”
I considered the inequality of status between the countries surrounding Germany and Germany as a permanent moral and material danger to Germany.