M. DEBENEST: You even turned out the mayors of the more important municipalities?
SEYSS-INQUART: Certainly; and I am convinced, with the full right of an occupying power. The burgomaster of Amsterdam did not prevent the general strike but rather promoted it.
M. DEBENEST: But was that the same reason that made you turn out all the mayors, or at least a certain number of them?
SEYSS-INQUART: I did not remove any mayors from office until they became unbearable for me because of their actively hostile attitude. Otherwise their political attitude was of no significance to me. Up to 1945 I kept Herr Boraine’s brother as mayor in a Dutch city, even though he was a very bitter enemy of National Socialism and of us Germans.
M. DEBENEST: Very well. And by whom did you replace all these mayors?
SEYSS-INQUART: I believe that until the year 1943, at least, the posts were filled in agreement with Mr. Frederiks, the Secretary General of the Interior, who was left behind for me by the Dutch Government to administer interior affairs. There were National Socialists; there were those who were not National Socialists. For instance, the son of the province commissioner of Holland was a firm enemy of National Socialism and of Germany, and yet I appointed him mayor of one of the largest Dutch cities, Zwolle.
M. DEBENEST: You are not exactly answering my question. I am asking you to tell me by whom you replaced all the mayors whom you had turned out? Were they members of the NSB?
SEYSS-INQUART: In part they were members of the Dutch National Socialist Party. In part they were nonpolitical men; and in part they were members of political trends which were absolutely against National Socialism and against Germany. In time there were more and more people of the Dutch National Socialist Party, for other people did not put themselves at our disposal any longer. That was the greatest success of the Dutch resistance movement that politically it resisted us so completely. That was Holland’s significance in this war.
M. DEBENEST: You therefore assert that it was the Dutch resistance movement which led you to put a great number of NSB people in all the important positions?
SEYSS-INQUART: No, that would be going a bit too far. The Dutch resistance movement merely induced the population not to co-operate with the occupying power at all, so that outside of the members of the Dutch National Socialist Party there was no one who wanted to work with us.