FUNK: Yes. I wanted to clarify the position, but later it was not clarified in that sense but in the sense that I was dependent upon the directives of the Reich Marshal. I wrote this letter in order to try to obtain a clarification, but I do not remember this letter in detail.
MR. DODD: You told Lammers...
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Dodd, is not this letter that you have just read the very letter which is referred to in the letter which you put to him immediately before?
MR. DODD: Yes, Sir, it is. It referred to EC-271. I am sorry, I said 271, I meant 270.
THE PRESIDENT: GB Number 649/38 is the letter you just read. Will you look at the first paragraph of EC-270; the letter referred to there, criticizing, is the Defendant Funk’s letter you just read.
MR. DODD: Yes, it is, your Honor.
[Turning to the witness.] My point here, Mr. Witness, is that, you see, you told the Tribunal that you really just worked for Göring; that you did not have much to say about these things, but now we find that you were writing a letter asserting your supreme authority and saying now, “it is a fact that I am really only answerable to Hitler,” and, you see, those two are quite inconsistent. What have you got to say about that?
FUNK: Yes; in fact, I was never successful.
MR. DODD: Now, let us see if you were not. Now you turn another page in that document and you will find another letter from Lammers, written on 6 April 1938, and it is written to you, and he tells you that you are just right in what you understood to be your position; that you are indeed only subordinate to the Führer and that he has sent a copy of your letter to both Field Marshal Göring and the Commander of the OKW. Now, what do you say about that?
FUNK: I see from this that I tried at that time to achieve that post, but in fact I never succeeded because the Reich Marshal himself stated later that he would never turn over the war economy to me. The formal authority of the Plenipotentiary for Economy was turned over to the Four Year Plan by a decree of the Führer of December 1939.