SEYSS-INQUART: I certainly thought it did; especially in these territorial districts I had to have a man who was responsible to me for the administration and not an anonymous majority of a representative body.
M. DEBENEST: I am having Document F-861 handed to you, which I submit under Number RF-1524. From the last paragraph you will see the importance which was attached to that in the Reich. It is a letter of the Minister of the Interior dated 6 September 1941. It reads as follows:
“Particular importance must be accorded to the decree because it contains detailed regulations concerning the introduction of the Führer Principle in the municipal government of the Netherlands.”
SEYSS-INQUART: Yes. The Minister of the Interior was interested in this. I should only like to point out, to get things straight, that the Reich Minister of the Interior exerted no influence, and in the second place that these larger powers were given in 1941 to at least 80 percent of the mayors, who belonged to the democratic party and were therefore my political opponents.
MR. PRESIDENT: M. Debenest, haven’t you established, by the questions that you have put to this defendant, that he did alter, to a considerable extent, the form of government in the Netherlands, and that he introduced a different form of government? Isn’t that all that you really require for the argument which, no doubt, you intend to present? The details of it don’t very much matter, do they?
M. DEBENEST: Mr. President, I simply wish to demonstrate that, contrary to what the defendant said, he had sought to impose the National Socialist system upon the people of the Netherlands.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, to a large extent, I think he had admitted that. He said just now that he introduced what he called “one-man responsibility,” which is another phrase for the Führer Principle, and that he had dissolved various organizations of the Netherlands Government. All I am suggesting to you is that, having got those general admissions, it isn’t necessary to go into details about the exact amount that the Government of the Netherlands was interfered with or the exact way in which it was replaced. Isn’t it really all stated in a document drawn up by the defendant, namely, the document you have been putting, 997-PS?
M. DEBENEST: More or less, Mr. President, but not entirely.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the only question is whether the details are really very important for the Tribunal.
M. DEBENEST: I thought that those details might have a certain importance, since the governors of the Reich itself attached a great deal of importance to it and, in fact, the whole was part of a plan which had been definitely laid down.