SPEER: Yes. But I want to add...
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: There were more plots than you have told us about, weren’t there?
SPEER: During that time it was extremely easy to start a plot. One could accost practically any man in the street and tell him what the situation was, and then he would say: “This is insane”; and if he had any courage he would place himself at your disposal. Unfortunately, I had no organization behind me which I could call upon and give orders to, or designate who should have done this or that. That is why I had to depend on personal conversations to contact all kinds of people. But I do want to say that it was not as dangerous as it looks here because actually the unreasonable people who were still left only amounted perhaps to a few dozen. The other 80 million were perfectly sensible as soon as they knew what it was all about.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Perhaps you had a sense of responsibility for having put the 80 million completely in the hands of the Führer Principle. Did that occur to you, or does it now, as you look back on it?
SPEER: May I have the question repeated, because I did not understand its sense.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You have 80 million sane and sensible people facing destruction; you have a dozen people driving them on to destruction and they are unable to stop it. And I ask if you have a feeling of responsibility for having established the Führer Principle, which Göring has so well described for us, in Germany?
SPEER: I, personally, when I became Minister in February 1942, placed myself at the disposal of this Führer Principle. But I admit that in my organization I soon saw that the Führer Principle was full of tremendous mistakes, and so I tried to weaken its effect. The terrible danger of the authoritarian system, however, became really clear only at the moment when we were approaching the end. It was then that one could see what the principle really meant, namely, that every order should be carried out without criticism. Everything that has become known during this Trial in the way of orders carried out without any consideration, finally proved—for example the carrying-out of the order to destroy the bridges in our own country—to be a mistake or a consequence of this authoritarian system. The authoritarian system—or let me put it like this—upon the collapse of the authoritarian system it became clear what tremendous dangers there are in a system of that kind, quite apart from the personality of Hitler. The combination of Hitler and this system, then, brought about these terrible catastrophes in the world.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, now—Hitler is dead; I assume you accept that—and we ought to give the devil his due. Isn’t it a fact that in the circle around Hitler there was almost no one who would stand up and tell him that the war was lost, except yourself?
SPEER: That is correct to a certain extent. Among the military leaders there were many who, each in his own sphere, told Hitler quite clearly what the situation was. Many commanders of army groups, for instance, made it clear to him how catastrophic developments were, and there were often fierce arguments during the discussions on the situation. Men like Guderian and Jodl, for instance, often talked openly about their sectors in my presence, and Hitler could see quite well what the general situation was like. But I never observed that those who were actually responsible in the group around Hitler, ever went to him and said, “The war is lost.” Nor did I ever see these people who had responsibility endeavor to unite in undertaking some joint step with Hitler. I did not attempt it for my part either, except once or twice, because it would have been useless, since at this stage, Hitler had so intimidated his closest associates that they no longer had any wills of their own.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, let us take the Number 2 man, who has told us that he was in favor of fighting to the very finish. Were you present at a conversation between Göring and General Galland, in which Göring, in substance, forbade Galland to report the disaster that was overtaking Germany?