THE PRESIDENT: What do you mean exactly by the Currency Frontier that you are dealing with now? We merely want to understand what you are talking about.
M. DEBENEST: I mean the free circulation of German currency in Holland.
[Turning to the defendant.] Did not Holland also have to pay large sums in the form of so-called voluntary contributions, among other things, for the war against Bolshevism?
SEYSS-INQUART: I believe I have explained this matter quite clearly. The Reich demanded during a certain period of time, as direct occupation costs, 50 million marks for the defenses of Holland. In Holland we called this a “voluntary contribution” for obvious political reasons. In reality it was a demand of the Reich which would have had to be paid one way or another, and I would not lay it to the charge of any Dutchman that he paid this contribution voluntarily.
M. DEBENEST: You agreed to these measures, did you not?
SEYSS-INQUART: Yes.
M. DEBENEST: What were the economic and financial consequences of all these measures?
SEYSS-INQUART: The financial consequences were a greatly increased circulation of bank notes, and extremely large banking accounts which remained the same in the Reich as in all occupied countries. We applied one system in Holland, another in France, and in view of the collapse of the Reich, the financial consequences were the same. If Germany had not lost the war, Holland would have had a claim of more than 4,500 million guilders against a sovereign Germany.
M. DEBENEST: Good. Will you then look at Document 997-PS, which you had in your hands yesterday. I will read to you what you thought of these measures. It is Page 14 of the French text and Page 12 of the German text. It is the big Seyss-Inquart report, RF-122, 997-PS.
You write there—and I am reading from the sixth line: