Fritz Sauckel Quotes

Many years before, I had left a beautiful country and a rich nation and I returned to that country six years later to find it fundamentally changed and in a state of upheaval, and in great spiritual and material need.

I had repeatedly made written requests to the Fuehrer that I might be allowed to join the Wehrmacht as an ordinary soldier. He refused to give me this permission.

As I, as a worker, came to know them, the aims of German trade unions were political, and there were a number of various trade unions with varied political views.

I had to examine myself very thoroughly to find the right path personally.

Although as a sailor I despised politics - for I loved my sailor's life and still love it today - conditions forced me to take up a definite attitude towards political problems.

I became Gauleiter in 1927.

I did that all the more, if I may say so, because I was aware of the fact that there is an inclination to go to extremes in German people, and in the German character generally.

The controversies between the proletariat and the middle class had to be smoothed out and bridged over by each getting to know and understand the other.

I'm a sailor, not a politician.

What would you do if your country's welfare depended on labor? When a ship is in a storm it requires one captain.

I was never informed in advance about the start of the war or about foreign political developments.

Himmler, Bormann, and Goebbels, they were probably bad fellows.

As a cabin boy on a Norwegian sailing ship I earned five kronen a week in addition to my keep.

Slaves who are underfed, diseased, resentful, despairing, and filled with hate will never yield that maximum of output which they might achieve under normal conditions.

Only Communists and Social Democrats who acted against the state were incarcerated. Most of the Communists and Social Democrats I had known became Nazis later. Only those who were doing anything against the state were thrown in concentration camps.

One day I heard a speech of Hitler. In this speech he said that the German factory worker and the German labourer must make common cause with the German intellectual worker.

I could not have the honour of being a German soldier because of my imprisonment in the First World War. And in this world war the Fuehrer refuses to allow me to serve as a soldier.

The Diet was dissolved by a Reich Government decree.

It so happened that I was on a German sailing vessel on the way to Australia when the ship was captured, and on the high seas I was made prisoner by the French.

Through the Young Men's Christian Association and principally in Australia and North America, as well as in South America, I came into contact with families of these countries.

I was elected to the Diet in the same way as at every parliamentary election.

The dissolution of the trade unions was in the air then.

I am very proud of the fact that many workers in my Gau, numerous former Communists and Social Democrats were won over by us and became local group leaders and Party functionaries.

My connection with the Reich Ministers was of a purely official nature and was very infrequent.

In order to provide the German housewife, above all mothers of many children...with tangible relief from her burdens, the Fuhrer has commissioned me to bring into the Reich from the eastern territories some four to five hundred thousand select, healthy, and strong girls.

I am dying innocent. The sentence is wrong. God protect Germany and make Germany great again. Long live Germany! God protect my family!

I was member of the Diet as long as it existed, until May 1933.

In my Gau, as far as I know, only Communists who had actually worked against the State were arrested.

I joined the Party definitely in 1923 after having already been in sympathy with it before.

As regards personal relationships I cannot say that I had any particularly personal intercourse with anyone.

I attended the elementary school at Schweinfurt and the secondary school.