Goering: The Führerprinzip
Justice Jackson: You are perhaps aware that you are the only living man who can expound to us the true purposes of the Nazi Party and the inner workings of its leadership?
Goering: I am perfectly aware of that.
Justice Jackson: You, from the very beginning, together with those who were associated with you, intended to overthrow and later did overthrow, the Weimar Republic?
Goering: That was, as far as I am concerned, my firm intention.
Justice Jackson: And, upon coming to power, you immediately abolished parliamentary government in Germany?
Goering: We found it to be no longer necessary. Also I should like to emphasize the fact that we were moreover the strongest parliamentary party, and had the majority. But you are correct, when you say that parliamentary procedure was done away with, because the various parties were disbanded and forbidden.
Justice Jackson: You established the Leadership Principle (Führerprinzip), which you have described as a system under which authority existed only at the top, and is passed downwards and is imposed on the people below; is that correct?
Justice Jackson: In other words, you did not believe in and did not permit government, as we call it, by consent of the governed, in which the people, through their representatives, were the source of power and authority?
Goering: That is not entirely correct. We repeatedly called on the people to express unequivocally and clearly what they thought of our system, only it was in a different way from that previously adopted and from the system in practice in other countries. We chose the way of a so-called plebiscite. We also took the point of view that even a government founded on the Leadership Principle could maintain itself only if it was based in some way on the confidence of the people. If it no longer had such confidence, then it would have to rule with bayonets, and the Fuehrer was always of the opinion that that was impossible in the long run -- to rule against the will of the people.
Justice Jackson: But you did not permit the election of those who should act with authority by the people, but they were designated from the top downward continuously, were they not?
Goering: Quite right. The people were merely to acknowledge the authority of the Fuehrer, or, let us say, to declare themselves in agreement with the Fuehrer. If they gave the Fuehrer their confidence, then it was their concern to exercise the other functions. Thus, not the individual persons were to be selected according to the will of the people, but solely the leadership itself.
Goering: I beg your pardon, I did not quite understand the question, but I could perhaps answer it as follows: I consider the Leadership Principle necessary because the system which previously existed, and which we called parliamentary or democratic, had brought Germany to the verge of ruin. I might perhaps in this connection remind you that your own President Roosevelt, as far as I can recall---I do not want to quote it word for word--declared:
Certain peoples in Europe have forsaken democracy, not because they did not wish for democracy as such, but because democracy had brought forth men who were too weak to give their people work and bread, and to satisfy them. For this reason the peoples have abandoned this system and the men belonging to it.
The Nuremberg Tribunal Biographies
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