DR. STEINBAUER: Then Seyss-Inquart formed his Cabinet and took you over, too, as State Secretary. Why did you join that Ministry?
SKUBL: Seyss-Inquart proposed that I retain direction of matters of public security in the State Secretariat under his Government. I accepted the offer, having confidence that Seyss-Inquart would remember the conditions which he had stipulated with the Führer; that is, that he would be Federal Chancellor of an independent Austria. Apart from that, I was impelled by the desire and hope that I could keep the executive force in my hands, and that in the event that Seyss-Inquart had difficulties in representing the Austrian point of view, I could be of assistance to him. In other words, there should be an Austrian strong point, an Austrian enclave, in the Cabinet of the Austrian Federal Chancellor Seyss-Inquart.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did Seyss-Inquart still at that time speak in favor of Austrian independence?
SKUBL: He did not speak about it in detail. We took that for granted during the conference.
DR. STEINBAUER: When did you leave the Cabinet, and why?
SKUBL: During the night between March 11 and 12 I took over the task of going to the airfield to receive the Reichsführer SS Himmler, who had been announced from Berlin. On that occasion he did not arrive alone, but with a whole entourage. I can no longer remember the names of the individuals, the number was too large; one name I understood very clearly, and that was the name of Meissner—Meissner, the Austrian naval officer who had joined the National Socialist uprising on 25 July, and who then, after the collapse of this uprising, had fled to the Reich and now had returned under Himmler’s protection.
That to me was such an impossible situation that I made the firm decision not to have any more to do with all this, and so when I entered the Federal Chancellery at noon and received the surprising news from Glaise-Horstenau that Himmler had demanded my resignation, I answered, “He can have that very cheaply, because I had already decided on that in the early hours of the morning.”
Subsequently I also informed Federal Chancellor Dr. Seyss-Inquart that I had had knowledge of Himmler’s request, and that I had naturally decided to resign and asked him to take official notice of my resignation.
Upon this Seyss-Inquart replied, “It is true that Himmler has demanded your resignation, but I am not going to have anything dictated to me from outside. At the moment the situation is such that I think it is perhaps better for you to disappear for a few weeks, but then you must come back because I consider your co-operation important.”
Naturally I declared that I would not do that. And the following day, in writing, I handed in my resignation as Chief of Police and State Secretary, after I had already on the evening of the 12th actually handed the affairs of the office over to Kaltenbrunner, who had been attached to me as a so-called political leader of the executive force.