SPEER: On 23 April I flew to Berlin in order to take leave of several of my associates, and—I should like to say this quite frankly—after all that had happened, also in order to place myself at Hitler’s disposal. Perhaps this will sound strange here, but the conflicting feelings I had about the action I wanted to take against him and about the way he had handled things, still did not give me any clear grounds or any clear inner conviction as to what my relations should be toward him, so I flew over to see him. I did not know whether he knew of my plans, and I did not know whether he would order me to remain in Berlin. Yet I felt that it was my duty not to run away like a coward, but to stand up to him again. It was on that day that Göring’s telegram to Hitler arrived. This telegram was not to Hitler, but from Göring to Ribbentrop; it was Bormann who submitted it to him.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Submitted it to Hitler?
SPEER: Yes, to Hitler.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: What did Hitler say on that occasion?
SPEER: Hitler was unusually excited about the contents of the telegram, and said quite plainly what he thought about Göring. He said that he had known for some time that Göring had failed, that he was corrupt, and that he was a drug addict. I was extremely shaken, because I felt that if the head of the State had known this for such a long time, then it showed a lack of responsibility on his part to leave such a man in office, when the lives of countless people depended on him. It was typical of Hitler’s attitude towards the entire problem, however, that he followed his statement up by saying: “But let him negotiate the capitulation all the same.”
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Did he say why he was willing to let Göring negotiate the capitulation?
SPEER: No. He said in an offhand manner: “It doesn’t matter anyway who does it.” He expressed all his disregard for the German nation in the way he said this.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: That is, his attitude was that there was nothing left worth saving, so let Göring work it out. Is that a fair statement of his position?
SPEER: That was my impression, yes.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Now, this policy of driving Germany to destruction after the war was lost had come to weigh on you to such a point that you were a party to several plots, were you not, in an attempt to remove the people who were responsible for the destruction, as you saw it, of your country?