MR. DODD: Did you hold any offices in the Party at any time?
HAYLER: No; I never held office in the Party.
MR. DODD: You were the head of a trade group in 1938, the Reichsgruppe “Handel”?
HAYLER: I was the head of the Economic Group “Retail Trade” from 1934 on, and from 1938 on, head of the Reich Group “Trade.” This organization was a part of the organization of industrial economy and was under the Reich Ministry of Economics.
MR. DODD: Membership in the group that you were the head of was compulsory, wasn’t it?
HAYLER: Yes.
MR. DODD: When did you join the SS?
HAYLER: I joined the SS in 1933, in the summer.
MR. DODD: That was a kind of Party office, wasn’t it, of a sort?
HAYLER: No, it was not an office. I became connected with the SS because of the fact that in Munich 165 businessmen were locked up and because I knew Himmler from my student days—I had not seen him again until then—the businessmen in Munich asked me to intercede for them in the summer of 1933. But I had no office in the Party or in the SS.