Thus runs the quotation from your speech which otherwise contains no anti-Semitic declarations on your part. Considering your previous statements, Witness, I am compelled to ask you: Did you make that speech, and how did you come to make it despite your basic attitude which you have previously described to us?
VON SCHIRACH: First, I want to say that I did make that speech. The quotation is correct. I said that. I must stand by what I have said. Although the plan of the deportation of the Jews was Hitler’s plan and I was not charged with its execution, I did utter those words, which I now sincerely regret; but I must say that I identified myself morally with that action only out of a feeling of misplaced loyalty to the Führer. That I have done, and that cannot be undone. If I am to explain how I came to do this, I can only reply that at that time I was already “between the Devil and the deep sea.” I believe it will also become clear from my later statements that from a certain moment on I had Hitler against me, the Party Chancellery against me, and very many members of the Party itself against me. Constantly I heard from officials of the Party Chancellery who expressed that to the Gauleiter of Vienna, and from statements made in Hitler’s entourage that one was under the impression—and that this could be clearly recognized from my attitude and my actions—that I was no longer expressing myself publicly in the usual anti-Semitic manner or in other ways, either; and I just have no excuse. But it may perhaps serve as an explanation, that I was trying to extricate myself from this painful situation by speaking in a manner which today I can no longer justify to myself.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, I should like to ask you, in this connection—you have just spoken of a painful situation in which you found yourself in Vienna. Is it true that Hitler himself, on various occasions, reproached you personally and severely because your attitude in Vienna had not been sufficiently energetic, that you had become too slack and too yielding; that you should concern yourself more with the interests of the Party, and that you should adopt far stricter methods? And what, Witness, did you then do?
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sauter, I assume that you realize that you are putting questions in the most leading form, that you are putting questions which suggest the answer to the defendant, and such questions cannot possibly carry—the answers to such questions cannot possibly carry the weight which answers given to questions not in their leading form would carry.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, did Hitler personally reproach you for your behavior in Vienna, and what attitude did you adopt?
I believe that is not a suggestive question.
THE PRESIDENT: I think it is. I should have thought it is a leading question. He says he was in a very difficult situation. You could ask him if he would explain what was the difficulty of the situation.
DR. SAUTER: Very well. Then will you answer this question, Witness?
VON SCHIRACH: Counsel for the defense, I could not, in any case, have accepted the question in the form in which you previously presented it.
The difference between Hitler and myself arose primarily over an art exhibition, and the breach between Hitler and myself in 1943 was in the beginning the result of differences of opinion over the cultural policy. In 1943 I was ordered to the Berghof where Hitler, in the presence of Bormann, criticized me violently on account of my cultural work and literally said that I was leading the cultural opposition against him in Germany. And further, in the course of the conversation he said that I was mobilizing the spiritual forces of Vienna and Austria and the spiritual forces of the young people against him in cultural spheres. He said he knew it very well indeed. He had read some of my speeches, primarily the Düsseldorf speech; he had discovered that I had authorized in Weimar and in Vienna art exhibitions of a decadent nature; and he offered me the alternative, either to end this kind of oppositional work immediately—then for the time being everything could remain as in the past—or he would stop all Government subsidies for Vienna.