SCHACHT: The fact to which the Prosecution refer is a communication from a Lieutenant Colonel Wiedemann. March 11, at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon—I believe I remember that but I cannot say whether it was by telephone or in person—someone, it may have been Lieutenant Colonel Wiedemann, inquired of me how the purchasing power for the troops in Austria was to be regulated if German troops should march into Austria, purely as a matter of currency policy, and whether it was necessary to have any regulation prescribed. I told him that of course everything had to be paid for, everything that the troops might buy there, and that the rate of exchange; if they paid in schillings and not in marks, would be 1 mark to 2 schillings. That was the rate which obtained at the time, which remained fairly steady and was the recognized ratio of the schilling to the mark. The fact that in the afternoon of the 11th I was approached about this matter is the best proof that I had no previous knowledge of these matters.
DR. DIX: The Prosecution further consider it an accusation against you that in your speech to the Austrian National Bank after the marching in of the troops, you used decidedly National Socialist phraseology and thus welcomed the Anschluss.
Perhaps we can use this opportunity to save time and reply to the accusation made repeatedly by the Prosecution that in speeches, petitions, et cetera, you sometimes thought fit to adopt a tone, of which it could perhaps be said that it exuded National Socialist ideas. That has been used as circumstantial evidence against you. Will you please define your position to those arguments and give your reasons for this attitude of yours?
SCHACHT: If I did so in the first years, I did so only in order to remind Party circles and the people of the original program of the National Socialist Party, to which the actual attitude of the Party members and functionaries stood in direct contrast. I always tried to show that the principles which I upheld in many political matters agreed completely with the principles of the National Socialist program as they were stated in the Party program, namely, equal rights for all, the dignity of the individual, esteem for the church, and so forth.
In the later years I also repeatedly used National Socialist phraseology, because from the time of my speech at Königsberg, the contrast between my views and Hitler’s views regarding the Party was entirely clear. And gradually within the Party I got the reputation of being an enemy of the Party, a man whose views were contrary to those of the Party. From that moment on not only the possibility of my co-operation, but also my very existence was endangered; and in such moments, when I saw my activity, my freedom, and my life seriously threatened by the Party I utilized these moments to show by means of an emphatically National Socialist phraseology that I was working entirely within the framework of the traditional policies and that my activity was in agreement with these policies—in order to protect myself against these attacks.
DR. DIX: In other words, recalling the testimony of the witness Gisevius about a remark of Goerdeler’s, you used Talleyrand methods in this case?
SCHACHT: I am not entirely familiar with Talleyrand’s methods, but at any rate I did camouflage myself.
DR. DIX: In this connection I should like to read a passage from the affidavit of Schniewind which has been quoted repeatedly. It is Schacht Number 34. I have often indicated this page. It is Page 118 of the German, Page 126 of the English text. Schniewind says:
“If Schacht on the other hand occasionally made statements, oral or written, which could be construed as signifying that he went a long way in identifying himself with the Hitler regime, these statements were naturally known to us; but what Schacht thought in reality was known to almost every official in the Reichsbank and in the Reich Ministry of Economics, above all, of course, to his closest colleagues.
“On many occasions we asked Dr. Schacht if he had not gone too far in these statements. He always replied that he was under such heavy fire from the Party and the SS that he could camouflage himself only with strong slogans and sly statements.”