A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased.
It was my dream, and probably the dream of every one of us, to bring about a revision of the Versailles Treaty by peaceful means, which was provided for in that very treaty.
I worked as a lawyer; as a member of the teaching staff of a technical college; and then I worked principally as legal adviser to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party.
My aim was to safeguard justice, without doing harm to our war effort.
The SS, as such, behaved no more criminally than any other social groups would behave when taking part in political events.
I dealt with legal questions in the interest of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP and its members during the difficult years of struggle for the victory of the Movement.
I never participated in far-reaching political decisions, since I never belonged to the circle of the closest associates of Adolf Hitler, neither was I consulted by Adolf Hitler on general political questions, nor did I ever take part in conferences about such problems.
The police officers, so far as discipline, organization, pay, and orders were concerned, came exclusively under the German Reich police system and were in no way connected with the administration of the Government General.
In the main the Academy helped to frame only laws of an economic or social nature, since owing to the development of the totalitarian regime it became more and more impossible to cooperate in other spheres.
Ninety percent of the members of the Academy of German Law were not members of the Party.
An administration without a police executive is powerless and there were many proofs of this.
Concentration camps were entirely a matter for the police and had nothing to do with the administration.
First, I was Bavarian State Minister of Justice, and after the ministries of justice in the various states were dissolved I became Reich Minister without portfolio.
I did not destroy the 43 volumes of my diary, which report on all these events and the share I had in them; but of my own accord I handed them voluntarily to the officers of the American Army who arrested me.
In 1930 I became a member of the Reichstag.
In my own sphere I did everything that could possibly be expected of a man who believes in the greatness of his people and who is filled with fanaticism for the greatness of his country, in order to bring about the victory of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist movement.
It was also my idea that the advisory committees of the Academy should replace the legal committees of the German Reichstag, which was gradually fading into the background in the Reich.
My first endeavor was to save the core of the German system of justice: the independent judiciary.
On 24 August 1939, as an officer in the reserve, I had to join my regiment in Potsdam.
War is not a thing one wants.
