SEYSS-INQUART: I am a member; that is, I belong to the Catholic Church.
M. DEBENEST: Were you not also a member of a Catholic fraternity when you were a student?
SEYSS-INQUART: I never belonged to any student organization, Catholic or national.
M. DEBENEST: Very well. You were appointed Reich Commissioner for Holland by a decree of Hitler’s dated 18 May 1940; is that correct?
SEYSS-INQUART: Yes.
M. DEBENEST: Your orders, on reaching the Netherlands—as you told us yesterday—were: To maintain the independence of the Netherlands and to establish economic relations between that country and Germany. You added that these orders were never afterwards modified by the Führer; is that true?
SEYSS-INQUART: I did not quite understand one word, the reference to economic relations.
M. DEBENEST: I said that you had arrived in the Netherlands with the following orders: 1) to maintain the independence of the Netherlands and 2) to establish economic relations between that country and Germany. Is that so?
SEYSS-INQUART: I would not put it that way exactly; rather, I was to try and bring about as close an economic relationship between Holland and Germany as possible. The economic stipulations, too, were, in the long run and apart from war necessities, not intended to be dictatorial.
M. DEBENEST: But you did say that you had not come with the intention of giving a definite political outlook to the people of the Netherlands. Is that correct?