DR. SERVATIUS: What made you do it?
SAUCKEL: One of those days I heard a speech of Hitler’s. In this speech he said that the German factory worker and the German laborer must make common cause with the German brain worker. The controversies between the proletariat and the middle class must be smoothed out and bridged over by each getting to know and understand the other. Through this a new community of people would grow up, and only such a community, not bound to middle class or proletariat, could overcome the dire needs of those days and the splitting up of the German nation into parties and creeds. This statement took such hold of me and struck me so forcibly, that I dedicated my life to the idea of adjusting what seemed to be almost irreconcilable contrasts. I did that all the more, if I may say so, because I was aware of the fact that there is an inclination to go to extremes in German people, and in the German character generally. I had to examine myself very thoroughly to find the right path for me personally. As I have already said, I had hardly taken any interest in political questions. My good parents, who are no longer alive, brought me up in a strictly Christian but also in a very patriotic way. However, when I went to sea, I lived a sailor’s life. I loaded saltpeter in Chile. I did heavy lumber work in Canada, in Quebec. I trimmed coal on the equator, and I sailed around Cape Horn several times. All of this was hard work; I ask...
DR. SERVATIUS: Please, come back to the question of the Party.
SAUCKEL: This has to do with the question of the Party, for we must all give some reasons as to how we got there. I myself...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Servatius, I stated at the beginning of the defendant’s case that we had heard this account from the Defendant Göring and that we did not propose to hear it again from 20 defendants. It seems to me that we are having it inflicted upon us by nearly every one of the defendants.
DR. SERVATIUS: I believe, Mr. President, that we are interested in getting some sort of an impression of the defendant himself. Seen from various points of view, the facts look different. I will now briefly...
THE PRESIDENT: It is quite true, Dr. Servatius, but we have had half an hour, almost, of it now.
DR. SERVATIUS: I shall limit it now.
The Party was dissolved in 1923, and refounded in 1925. Did you join it again?
SAUCKEL: Yes.