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You can see that there were no strong characters surrounding Hitler. There were only weaklings like Ribbentrop, Funk, and so forth. Hitler wanted a silent audience. Even Goering, who superficially gives the appearance of a strong man, was in reality a childlike, weak character who was known as a dope addict in the inner circles.
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To Leon Goldensohn (13 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

 

Paul Schmidt

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He was interested mainly, I might say, solely in his personal standing with Hitler. He spent hours and days drafting letters of protest about Goebbels' interference in his affairs - merely because he was jealous of maintaining his prestige. Ribbentrop had an abnormal desire for rank and position. He wanted personal influence and good standing with Hitler. He did not want anybody to be closer to Hitler than himself. In this way he was unlike Himmler, who, I am convinced, wanted military power. Ribbentrop wanted to satisfy his own vanity. He is a very superficial man.

 

Joachim von Ribbentrop

 

The powerful men under Hitler were already jealously watching one another like so many pretenders to the throne. Quite early there were struggles for position among Goebbels, Goering, Rosenberg, Ley, Himmler, Ribbentrop, and Hess. Only Roehm had been left by the wayside, and before long Hess was to lose all his influence. But none of them recognized a threat in the shape of trusty Bormann. He had succeeded in representing himself as insignificant while imperceptibly building up his bastions. Even among so many ruthless men, he stood out by his brutality and coarseness. He had no culture, which might have put some restraints on him, and in every case he carried out whatever Hitler had ordered or what he himself had gathered from Hitler's hints. A subordinate by nature, he treated his own subordinates as if he were dealing with cows and oxen.

 

Martin Bormann

 

That man always made it a point to speak German, although he spoke English well enough. That was because he imitated Hitler to the last degree. He would say that his reason for speaking German instead of English during conferences with English-speaking representatives was that he wanted to concentrate on the subject in hand, and not on the language. Ribbentrop was a complete imitator of Hitler - even to the design of his cap. Originally he had a nice cap, but then he imitated the stationmaster type of cap preferred by Hitler.

 

Joachim von Ribbentrop

 

In the first place, there is the Hitler group, among whom are the most guilty of the defendants and about whom very little, if any, good can be spoken. By the Hitler group I include Göring, Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Rosenberg, Frank, and Streicher. Then there is the group which one might call idealistic. Unfortunately, too many of us were indifferent. Not many belonged to the idealistic group, and I don't care to name them because I think I would be stretching a point to call any of the defendants idealists. I feel that perhaps of all the defendants I was the only idealist, although I suffered from blindness and indifference myself. In this respect, I am not like Speer, Schirach, and Funk. Schacht I consider an opportunist.

 

Hans Fritzsche

 

Hitler had the willpower of a demon and he needed it. If he didn't have such a strong willpower he couldn't have achieved anything. Don't forget, if Hitler had not lost the war, if he did not have to fight against the combination of big powers like England, America, and Russia — each one he could have conquered individually — these defendants and these generals would now be saying, 'Heil Hitler,' and would not be so damn critical.

 

Hermann Goring