Q. Do you have any feeling that in practice it didn’t work out that way? In fact, the evidence adduced here at this trial tends to prove, don’t you believe, that by the end of the war the Fuehrer really became the supreme judge and interfered with all judicial decisions?
A. I saw that later, and if I had known that before, I would not have undertaken this daring attempt, because there was no hope for it from the very beginning. But at the time, I thought that as a jurist I was under an obligation to make this final attempt, because I just could not accept the conditions which existed.
Q. You knew what the Party platform was, did you not? You knew what Hitler had said in Mein Kampf, did you not?
A. About that problem, he did not say anything in a negative way in his Party platform and not in Mein Kampf either.
Q. Well, as a reasonable man, Dr. Rothenberger, you knew what his attitudes were on all of these questions, and if your program embodied having him become the supreme judge, you knew fairly well how he would judge on all these questions from your prior knowledge, did you not?
A. No. I can only emphasize again and again that as long as I saw the possibility of influencing him, I considered it my duty to make this attempt; otherwise I would have been a fool.
Q. No one denies that you did influence him, Dr. Rothenberger; the implication is that you did, and that you were completely successful.
A. I did not have any success. That is just it. Hitler could not be convinced.
Q. He became the supreme judge, did he not?
A. In effect, he interfered with the administration of justice, as we know now.