DR. STEINBAUER: So if you look back today and examine the question of how conditions were between 1940 and 1945 regarding the offices and civil servants in the Netherlands, what can you state in that respect?
WIMMER: I believe I may say that at the end of the period of German occupation the majority of the civil servants who had been in office when the German occupation force came into the Netherlands were still in office.
DR. STEINBAUER: Seyss-Inquart has been accused of dissolving the political parties. When and why did that take place?
WIMMER: The dissolution of the political parties was necessitated by the fact that some political parties displayed an attitude which, especially in critical times, the occupying power could not tolerate, apart from the fact that in an occupied territory it is generally difficult, if not impossible, to deal with political parties. Report after report came from our intelligence services about conspiracies of the most various kinds, and so the Reich Commissioner felt himself called upon to dissolve the parties. Nevertheless, he did not constitutionally remove the parties as such; the institution of parties, as such, still remained.
DR. STEINBAUER: It was suggested on the part of the Reich that the administration be reorganized and that the Netherlands be divided into five administrative districts instead of the traditional provinces. Did Seyss-Inquart do that?
WIMMER: The Reich Commissioner refused such suggestions or demands every time, and indeed he could do that all the more easily because the Dutch administration was on a high level and primarily because the Reich Commissioner expected, and on the basis of all kinds of assurances was able to expect, that the Dutch administration would co-operate with the occupying power.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now we also have a party which was very close to the National Socialists, the NSB, led by Mussert. Did this NSB party gain a leading influence in the administration or not?
WIMMER: The NSB, as a party, gained no influence at all in the administration. It was only that the occupying power, as was very natural, applied to the NSB and consulted it in certain cases, for no occupying power, in history, I believe, as well as in our day, is going to approach those parties or groups which assume a hostile attitude towards it.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did the leader of the NSB, Mussert, try to create a similar situation as existed in Norway under Quisling; that is, for him to become Prime Minister of the Netherlands?
WIMMER: Mussert did have that aim. He expressed it persistently, again and again, and I can say that by doing so he put the Reich Commissioner into disagreeable situations.