Reading from Page 9 of the translation, he says in this letter, which is a letter to Himmler, dated 19 August 1939:
“As far as my membership in the Party is concerned, I state that I was never asked to join the Party but had asked Dr. Kier in December 1931 to clarify my relationship with the Party, since I regarded the Party as the basis for the solution of the Austrian problem . . . I paid my membership fees and, as I believe, directly to the Gau Vienna. These contributions also took place after the period of suppression. Later on I had direct contact with the Ortsgruppe in Dornbach. My wife paid these fees, but the Blockwart”—and I believe that is another word for Blockleiter—“was never in doubt, considering that this amount, 40 shillings per month, was a share for my wife and myself, and I was in every respect treated as a Party member.”
Seyss-Inquart, in the last sentence of the paragraph says:
“In every way, therefore, I felt as a Party member, considered myself a Party member, thus, as stated, as far back as December 1931.”
Now, if the Tribunal please, and before I leave this letter, I want just to refer to one or two sentences which the Tribunal will find in the third paragraph on Page 7 of the translation. Referring to a meeting which he had had with Hitler, Seyss-Inquart says:
“I left this discussion a very upright man with the unspeakably happy feeling of being permitted to be a tool of the Führer.”
The truth of the matter is that Seyss-Inquart was an active supporter of the Nazis at all times after 1931. But after the Nazi Party in Austria was declared illegal in July 1934, he avoided too notorious a connection with the Nazi organization, in order to safeguard what the Nazis called his good legal position. By this device he was better able to use his connections with Catholics and others in his work of infiltration for his Nazi superiors.
The Tribunal will remember, as Document 2219-PS, Exhibit Number USA-62, a letter from Seyss-Inquart to Göring of 14 July 1939, in which Seyss-Inquart makes this clear. It was in this letter also that he said:
“Yet, I know that I cling with unconquerable tenacity to the goal in which I believe; that is Greater Germany and the Führer.”
The evidence which Mr. Alderman introduced told in detail the manner in which the Nazi conspirators carried out their assault on Austria. I do not intend to attempt to review any part of this evidence. I merely wish to refer the Tribunal to two documents which are particularly important in showing the part played by this defendant. I refer to the Rainer report to Gauleiter Bürckel, dated 6 July 1939, which relates the part played by the Austrian Nazi Party, the Defendant Seyss-Inquart and others between July 1934 and March 1938; and the astonishing record of telephone calls between the Defendant Göring or his agents in Berlin and Seyss-Inquart and others in Vienna on 11 March 1938. The Rainer report is Document 812-PS, Exhibit Number USA-61, and was read into the Record beginning at Page 502 (Volume II, Page 370) of the English version and continuing for a number of pages thereafter. The transcript of the telephone calls is Document 2949-PS, Exhibit Number USA-76, and was introduced first at Page 566 (Volume II, Page 414) of the English Record.