DR. SERVATIUS: Witness, you have held a number of high positions and offices. You knew the Reich Ministers and Reichsleiter. Will you please explain why you went aboard the submarine at that time?
SAUCKEL: I had repeatedly made written requests to the Führer that I might be allowed to join the Wehrmacht as an ordinary soldier. He refused to give me this permission. So I arranged in secret for someone to take my place and went aboard Captain Salmann’s submarine with his agreement. As a former sailor and now a politician in a high position I wanted to give these brave submarine men a proof of my comradeship and understanding and of my sense of duty. Apart from that I had 10 children for whom, as their father, I had to do something too.
DR. SERVATIUS: I should like now, in a number of questions, to refer to your activities. Were you a member of a trade union?
SAUCKEL: No.
DR. SERVATIUS: Do you know what the aims of German trade unions were?
SAUCKEL: Yes, I do.
DR. SERVATIUS: Were they economic or political?
SAUCKEL: As I, as a worker, came to know them, the aims of German trade unions were political, and there were a number of different trade unions with varied political views. I considered that a great misfortune. As workman in the workshop I had had experience of the arguments among the trade unionists—between the Christian Socialist trade unions and the Red trade unions, between the syndicalist, the anarchist and the communist trade unions.
DR. SERVATIUS: The trade unions in your Gau were then dissolved. Were the leaders arrested at the time?
SAUCKEL: No.