"I don't mean that it is important whether a few of us like Goering, myself, or the others are sentenced to death or hard labor or whatever, but to the German people we will always remain their leaders, right or wrong, and in a few years even you Americans and the rest of the world will see this trial as a mistake. The German people will learn to hate the Americans, distrust the British and French, and unfortunately, perhaps be taken in by the Russians. That will be the worst calamity of all. I hate to think of Moscow ruling Germany or Germany becoming a territorial possession of the Soviet Union. The Allies should take the attitude, now that the war is over, that mistakes have been made on both sides, that those of us here on trial are German patriots, and that though we may have been misled and gone too far with Hitler, we did it in good faith and as German citizens. Furthermore, the German people will always regard our condemnation by a foreign court as unjust and will consider us martyrs."
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People indicted for war crimesPeople of Nazi GermanyNazisGerman foreign ministersAmbassadors of Germany
Original Language: English
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Sources
To Leon Goldensohn (June 23, 1946), from The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop
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Joachim von Ribbentrop
1893 – 1946
13 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Joachim von Ribbentrop →
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