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

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

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.

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.

The Diet was dissolved by a Reich Government decree.

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