I am very proud of the fact that many workers in my Gau, numerous former Communists and Social Democrats were won over by us and became local group leaders and Party functionaries.
Through the Young Men's Christian Association and principally in Australia and North America, as well as in South America, I came into contact with families of these countries.
The controversies between the proletariat and the middle class had to be smoothed out and bridged over by each getting to know and understand the other.
One day I heard a speech of Hitler. In this speech he said that the German factory worker and the German labourer must make common cause with the German intellectual worker.
Many years before I had left a beautiful country and a rich nation and I returned to that country six years later to find it fundamentally changed and in a state of upheaval, and in great spiritual and material need.
When she became very ill with heart trouble, I saw that it would be impossible for my parents to provide for my studies, and I obtained their permission to go to sea to make a career for myself there.
I did that all the more, if I may say so, because I was aware of the fact that there is an inclination to go to extremes in German people, and in the German character generally.
Although as a sailor I despised politics - for I loved my sailor's life and still love it today - conditions forced me to take up a definite attitude towards political problems.
As I, as a worker, came to know them, the aims of German trade unions were political, and there were a number of various trade unions with varied political views.
At that time we were very definitely told that under no circumstances should there be any secret chapters or any other secrecy in the life of the Party, but that everything should be done publicly.
I could not have the honour of being a German soldier because of my imprisonment in the First World War. And in this world war the Fuehrer refuses to allow me to serve as a soldier.
