Schacht had a great quote. At one time, some large New York investment houses, impressed by Schacht’s ability to fund Germany’s economic revival (and rearmament) tried to lure him to work for them. Their bait was “Here in New York we are the world’s financial capital; we have plenty of money; that’s real banking.”
Schacht’s reply was something like “I’m working my economic plan in Germany with NO money! Now THAT’S real banking!”
Schacht scored the highest IQ among the Germans tried at Nuremberg. Goring also scored pretty high. Everyone thought Speer was a genius but his IQ was not that high; it was high enough to be considered bright, but he was not what you would put in the genius range.
Schact truly was brilliant. Speer was of average intelligence among the men in the docket according to the IQ scores which I have seen as well.
What saved Speer from the gallows was his truly heartfelt contrition—a trait noticeably absent from most of the other defendants who tried to avoid responsibility by simply saying they were following orders.
That Schacht, who spent much of WWII plotting against Hitler and sitting in concentration camps, was charged with war crimes was simply ridiculous. I regard him, along with Col. von Stauffenberg and FM Rommel as a true German heroes and patriots.