SCHACHT: The President of the Reichsbank did not hold a position in the government, but was a high official outside the government. The first time that there was any talk in my presence about this post was on 30 January 1933, when I accidentally ran into Göring in the lobby of the Kaiserhof Hotel, and he said to me, “Ah, there comes our future President of the Reichsbank.”
GEN. ALEXANDROV: When answering the questions of your counsel, you declared that the fascist theory of race supremacy was sheer nonsense, that the fascist ideology was no ideology at all, that you were opposed to the solution of the Lebensraum problem by the seizure of new territories, that you were opposed to the Leadership Principle within the Fascist Party and even made a speech on this subject in the Academy of German Law, and that you were opposed to the fascist policy of exterminating the Jews.
Is this right? Did you say this when answering the questions put by your counsel?
SCHACHT: Yes, we both heard it here.
GEN. ALEXANDROV: Well, then tell me, what led you to fascism and to co-operation with Hitler?
SCHACHT: Nothing at all led me to fascism; I have never been a fascist.
GEN. ALEXANDROV: Then what induced you to co-operate with Hitler since you had adopted a negative attitude toward his theories and the theories of German fascism?
THE PRESIDENT: General Alexandrov, he has told us what he says led him to co-operate with Hitler. I think you must have heard him.
GEN. ALEXANDROV: But it did, in fact, take place?
[Turning to the defendant.] In reply to a question by your counsel as to why you did not emigrate, you stated that you did not wish to be a simple martyr. Tell me, did you not know the fate which befell Germany’s outstanding personalities, who held democratic and progressive ideas when Hitler came to power? Do you know that they were all exiled or sent to concentration camps?