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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.