FUNK: I do not know anything about that.
DR. SAUTER: Dr. Schacht has asserted that in an affidavit of 7 July 1945 (Document Number 3936-PS).
FUNK: I had a lot to do with Jews. That was in the nature of my profession. Every day at the stock exchange I was together with 4,000 Jews.
DR. SAUTER: Then in 1931 you resigned your post as editor in chief?
FUNK: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: What were the reasons for that?
FUNK: I was convinced that the National Socialist Party would come to power in the Government, and I felt called upon to make my own political and economic opinions heard in the Party.
DR. SAUTER: Would you like to explain a little more in detail what kind of opinions you had, Dr. Funk, especially concerning the clashes between parties, between classes at that time?
FUNK: The German nation at that time was in sore distress, spiritually as well as materially. The people were torn by Party and class struggle. The Government, or rather the governments, had no authority. The parliamentary system was played out, and I myself, for 10 or 12 years before that, had protested and fought publicly against the burden of the Versailles reparations, because I was convinced that those reparations were the chief cause of the economic bankruptcy of Germany. I, myself, have fought all my life for private enterprise, because I was convinced that the idea of private enterprise is indissolubly bound up with the idea of the efficiency and worth of individual human beings. I have fought for the free initiative of the entrepreneur, free competition, and, at that time in particular, for putting an end to the mad class struggle, and for the establishment of a social community on the basis of the industrial community.
All those were ideas to which I found a ready response in my conversations, particularly, with Gregor Strasser.