Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Schacht's  Hitler
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project (CANADA)
Keywords: Schacht

"During direct examination ... Schacht demonstrated that his 
reputation for articulateness, adroit phraseology, and cutting 
sarcasm was well deserved.  He left no doubt of his sentiments 
toward Hitler and the Nazis: `Only one thing did most of the leaders 
of the party have in common with the old Teutons, and that was 
drinking,' he said. `Excessive drinking was a main part of the Nazi 
ideology.'

Hitler, Schacht continued, `did not have sufficient school education, 
but he read an enormous amount later, and acquired a wide knowledge. 
He juggled with that knowledge in a masterly manner in all debates, 
discussions, and speeches.

`No doubt he was a man of genius in certain respects. He had sudden 
ideas of which nobody else had thought and which at times were useful 
in solving great difficulties, sometimes with astounding simplicity, 
sometimes, however, with equally astounding brutality.

`He was a mass psychologist of really diabolical genius. While I 
myself and several others were never captivated in personal 
conversations, still he had a very peculiar influence on other people, 
and particularly he was able -- in spite of his screeching and 
occasionally breaking voice -- to stir up the utmost overwhelming 
enthusiam of large masses in a filled auditorium.

`He promised equal rights for all citizens, but his adherents, 
regardless of their capabilities, enjoyed privileges before all 
other citizens. He promised to put the Jews under the same protection 
which foreigners enjoyed, yet he deprived them of every legal 
protection. He had promised to fight against political lies, but 
together with his minister Goebbels he cultivated nothing by political 
lies and political fraud. He promised the German people to maintain the 
principles of positive Christianity, yet he tolerated and sponsored 
measures by which institutions of the church were abused, reviled, and 
damaged. Also, in the foreign political field he always spoke against a 
war on two fronts -- and then later undertook it himself. He despised 
and disregarded all laws of the Weimar Republic, to which he had taken 
the oath when he became chancellor. He mobilized the Gestapo against 
personal liberty. He pardoned criminals and enlisted them in his 
service. He did everything to break his promises. He lied to and 
decieved the world, Germany, and me.'

Spotlighting the fallacy in the argument of many of his fellow 
defendants that they were bound by the oath of allegiance that they 
had taken to Hitler, Schacht pointed out that Hitler himself had taken 
the oath to the Weimar constitution and that this constitution had 
never been repealed, but that Hitler had violated it repeatedly. 
Ministers, Schacht said, could not evade their responsibilities by 
referring to the 'Fuehrer Principle.' The responsibility of the 
ministers continued to exist, my own also, and was kept down only 
by the terror and the violent threats of Hitler. I would never keep 
an oath of allegiance to a perjurer, and Hitler turned out to be a 
perjurer a hundredfold.'" (Conot, 396-7)

                            Work Cited

Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg.  New York: Harper & Row, 1983

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