I'm a sailor, not a politician.

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.

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.

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

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

The Diet was dissolved by a Reich Government decree.

I became Gauleiter in 1927.