dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBUEHLER: Paragraph 4, "He can believe that in a matter of doubt he must obey his superior." Now, the Prosecution seems to be of the opinion that Admiral Doenitz a few months later, when he had become Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, had the opportunity and also the obligation to inform himself as to the basis of the Commando Order. This conception fails to appreciate the duties of a Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. He has to wage naval war. The whole German naval war, especially submarine warfare, in the spring of 1943, owing to huge losses inflicted by the enemy air force, was on the verge of collapse. These were the worries with which the new Commander-in-Chief had to cope, in addition to an abundance of new problems concerning the Navy which were coming up. How can one require such a man as in the quietest of times to cope with an order of remote date, which had nothing whatever to do with naval warfare? On the contrary, a special paragraph explicitly excluded prisoners taken during naval operations. A word or two on the channels of command. The naval units were under the control of the Naval Operations Staff only in those matters which belonged to the duties of the Navy, that is to say, naval warfare and coastal defense by artillery. Concerning so-called territorial questions they were not subordinate to the Naval Operations Staff but to the Armed Forces commander of the theater of war in which their basis was established. Orders concerning such measures of war on land were given without collaboration on the part of the Naval Operations Staff and their execution was not reported to them. Just as hardly anyone can think seriously of holding a general responsible for German submarine warfare, just as little, in my opinion, does it seem justified to hold an admiral responsible for orders given in land warfare. Mr. President, I have come to the end of a section.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly. We will break off. [The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.] AfternoonSession
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: Before the noon recess I was discussing the fact that units of the Navy were not subordinate to the Naval Operations Staff in matters affecting warfare on land. This channel of orders for territorial questions also explains the complete ignorance of Admiral Doenitz and of his colleagues in the Naval Operations Staff about the delivery to the SD of the crew of the Norwegian motor torpedo boat MTB 345 after its capture by units under Admiral Von Schrader. As the testimony of witnesses and the records of the Oslo War Crimes Court show, the Naval Operations Staff only received an operational report about the capture of the boat and the number of prisoners. All other details, the discovery on board of material for sabotage, of civilian suits and sabotage orders, and the treatment of the crew as saboteurs according to the Commando Order were regarded as territorial matters, and as such dealt with by Admiral Von Schrader and the Armed Forces commander in Norway. The decision regarding the fate of the crew came from the Fuehrer's headquarters in reply to an inquiry from Gauleiter Terboven. Not only is there no proof that the Naval Operations Staff took part in those territorial questions, but this must in fact be considered refuted on the basis of the evidence submitted and the chain of command as explained. I regard as the second attempt of the Prosecution to establish a participation in the alleged conspiracy to commit war crimes the submission of Admiral Wagner's minutes on the question of withdrawal from the Geneva Convention in the spring of 1945. The details are contained in Wagner's testimony, according to which the Fuehrer pointed out in a conference on 17 February that the enemy propaganda about the good treatment of prisoners of war was clearly having an influence on the units fighting on the Western Front, and that many cases of desertion to the enemy were being reported. He ordered that the question of a withdrawal from the Geneva Convention be investigated.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: In this way he wanted to convince his own soldiers that they could no longer rely upon receiving good treatment as prisoners of war, and thus create a countereffect against enemy propaganda. Two days later Hitler returned to this idea, although he then put forward another reason as the main one. He termed enemy warfare in the East and the bomb attacks on the German civilian population an outright renunciation of international law by the enemy, and he, for his part, also desired to free himself from all obligations by withdrawing from the Geneva Convention. Once more he asked for the opinion of the Armed Forces in this matter and addressed himself directly to Grossadmiral Doenitz, who did not answer. The attitude of the military leaders on this matter was unanimously negative. On the next day, just before the daily conference on the situation, a 10-minute conversation took place between Grossadmiral Doenitz, Generaloberst Jodl, and Ambassador Hewel; in the course of this conversation Doenitz expressed his negative attitude. According to the notes of Admiral Wagner he said that "it would be better to take the measures considered necessary without previous announcement and, at any rate) to save face before the world." The Prosecution sees in this a readiness and a design to expose hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners of war to arbitrary murder. Admiral Doenitz himself has no recollection of this sentence. That is not surprising, as this is not a record, but a summary of a lengthy conversation in four sentences, the summary being worded on the day after the conversation by Admiral Wagner. This summary admits that the Grossadmiral disapproved of any "wild measures" which would put us in the wrong from the beginning, and considered justifiable only measures actuary warranted by the conduct of the enemy in each case. Since Wagner himself, as the author of the transcript, should know best what he meant thereby' I personally cannot add anything to this statement.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: The interpretation of the Prosecution is equally little supported by other circumstances. There was no question at all of keeping any measures secret; they had to be made known, regardless of whether they were meant to deter our own deserters or as reprisals. But Wagner's note does not mention any kind of concrete measures to be taken, and all witnesses present at this situation conference in Hitler's headquarters state that not a word was spoken on that subject. The idea of killing prisoners of war could not, therefore, have been present in the minds of any of the participants in this discussion which Wagner noted down. Now it has come to light here, through the statements of the Defendants Ribbentrop and Fritzsche, that apart from the action for which he was preparing the ground during the discussion with the generals, Hitler had evidently at the same time planned a second action, in which only Goebbels and Himmler were to participate, and which by chance also came to Ribbentrop's knowledge. In this action the shooting of thousands of prisoners of war seems to have been contemplated as a reprisal against the air attack on Dresden. Hitler' very wisely, did not give the slightest indication of such a plan to the generals. This plan was not followed up and no reprisals were taken. And now I return to the facts. It is a fact that Admiral Doenitz disapproved of the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention, and that Hitler, in view of the attitude of all military leaders who clearly opposed it did not follow up the idea any further. It is also a fact that no measures in violation of international law were taken by the Germans as a result of this remark which the Prosecution has criticized, and finally it is a fact that enemy sailors who were captured were sent to as prisoner-of-war camp of the Navy where they were treated in an exemplary way up to the last day of the war.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: Whoever, in his own sphere, behaved as Admiral Doenitz did with regard to the prisoners of war of the Navy, cannot reasonably be charged with having thrown overboard al, standards of law and ethics applying to prisoners of war. A British commander has certified that when the prisoner-of-war camp of the Navy was taken over by British troops, all prisoners without exception said that they had been treated with fairness and consideration. The Tribunal will, no doubt, appreciate such unanimous expression of views, especially after what has come to light elsewhere in these proceedings with regard to the breakdown not only by Germans in the proper treatment of prisoners of war. I shall now deal with the conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity, and I should like first of all to point out that Admiral Doenitz is not accused, under Count Four of the Indictment, of direct commission of Crimes against Humanity. Not even participation in the conspiracy to commit Crimes Against Humanity was contended in the detailed charges. That, I would say, is an admission that there was in fact no relation between his activity and the Crimes against Humanity of which the Prosecution has brought evidence. Nevertheless the Prosecution presented some documents which are apparently meant to prove his participation in the responsibility for certain Crimes against Humanity. In judging these documents the most important question always is: What did Admiral Doenitz know of those alleged crimes? On this subject I should like to make one point clear. During the entire war he resided and lived at his staff headquarters, first on the North Sea coast, after 1940 in France, in 1943 for a short time in Berlin, and then in the Camp Koralle near Berlin. When he was at the Fuehrer's headquarters, he stayed with the naval staff there. Even outside his duty, his time was thus spent almost exclusively with naval officers. This may have been a weakness, but it is a fact which gives an additional explanation of his lack of knowledge of many events.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: The fact that the defendant forwarded a proposal by the Ministry for Armaments to employ 12,000 men from concentration camps as workers in the shipyards proves, according to the Prosecution, that Admiral Doenitz knew and approved of the arrest of countless innocent people and their ill-treatment and extermination in concentration camps. He actually knew, of course, that concentration camps existed and he also knew that, apart from the professional criminals, people arrested for political reasons were kept there. As has already been explained here, the protective custody of political adversaries for reasons of safety is a measure adopted by all states, at any rate in an emergency, and knowledge of such a measure can therefore incriminate no one. However, an unusually high number of political prisoners-out of proportion to the number of the population-may stamp a regime as a regime of terror, but taking into account a population of o0 million in the fifth year of a grim war, even twice or three times the number of 12,000 men, which is the number mentioned by Admiral Doenitz, would not indicate a regime of terror, and the Prosecution will hardly claim that. Admiral Doenitz stated here that the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, as well as his collaborators and the overwhelming part of the German people, did not know of the abuses and killings that occurred in the concentration camps. All that the Prosecution has put forward against this are assumptions, but no proofs. On this point, therefore, I will only refer to the statement of the then Minister for Armaments, Speer, according to which the inmates of concentration camps were much better off in industrial work than in camp, and that they tried with all means to obtain employment in such work. The proposal forwarded therefore did not imply anything inhuman, but rather the opposite. The same request also contains a suggestion to take energetic measures against sabotage in Norwegian and Danish shipyards, where seven out of eight vessels under construction had been destroyed.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: If need be, the personnel should be entirely or in part employed as "KZ workers" because, so it says, sabotage of such dimensions can only occur if all the workers silently condone it. This therefore amounts to a proposition for security measures to consist in keeping the workers who actively or passively participated in sabotage in a camp close to the shipyard, so that their connections with sabotage agents would be cut off. I do not believe that juridical objections can be raised against such measures of security. According to the practice of all occupation troops even measures of collective punishment would be justified in such cases.* Actually the measures proposed were never carried out and the Prosecution presumably presents them only to accuse Admiral Doenitz quite generally of a brutal attitude toward the inhabitants of occupied territories. For this same purpose it even refers to a statement of the Fuehrer at a conference on the military situation in the summer of 1944, according to which terror in Denmark must * See Wheaton's International Law, 5th Edition, Pages 543-5 be fought with counter/error. Admiral Doenitz's only connection with this statement was that he heard it and that his companion, Admiral Wagner, wrote it down. The Navy had no part in this statement, nor did it take any measures as a result of it. In contrast to this line of evidence of the Prosecution, I should like to emphasize the attitude which Admiral Doenitz actually showed toward the population of the occupied territories. There is before the Tribunal a survey of the administration of justice by the naval courts in protecting the inhabitants of the occupied territories against excesses by members of the Navy. The survey is based on an examination of about 2,000 files on delicts and some of the judgments given are quoted with the facts and the reasons of the verdicts.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: Judging from that survey, one can fairly say that the naval courts protected the inhabitants in the West and in the East with justice and severity, including their lives as well as their property and the honor of their women. This administration of justice was constantly supervised by the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy as the Chief Court Administrator. Under terms of legal procedure it was his duty to confirm death penalties imposed on German soldiers. The time at my disposal does not permit a more detailed discussion of some of these judgments. A phrase expressed in one of them may be taken to apply to all: All soldiers must know that in occupied territory as well the life and property of others will be fully safeguarded. This was the general attitude in the Navy, and the severity of the penalties inflicted proves how seriously it was taken. I need only say a few words about the order issued in the spring of 1945, in which a German prisoner of war, a noncommissioned officer, was cited as an example, because he had unobtrusively and systematically done away with some Communists who were attracting attention to themselves in their prison camp. As Admiral Wagner recalled, it was actually an informer who was liquidated. But the facts were camouflaged as described in order to avoid giving enemy intelligence a clue to the camp and the person of the noncommissioned officer. There cannot be any doubt that this order in its true background could be justified in view of the enormous number of political murders which have been committed with the connivance or assistance of governments engaged in the war, the perpetrators being today extolled as heroes. I cannot, however, consider as serious the argument that the unfortunately camouflaged wording could be proof of a general plan to liquidate Communists. A court judgment for the protection of Communists will reveal the true circumstances. A sergeant had stolen hospital blankets which were intended for Soviet prisoners of war and had extracted a dead prisoner's gold teeth.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: This sergeant was sentenced to death by a naval court and executed after the sentence had been confirmed by the Commander-in-Chief. Finally, the Prosecution also established a connection with the Jewish question through a remark in which Grossadmiral Doenitz speaks of the "creeping poison of Jewry." On this point I should like to add some comments. Doenitz knew as little of the plan for the destruction of the Jews as he did of its execution. He did know of the resettlement in the Government General of Jews living in Germany. I do not think that a resettlement of this sort can be condemned at a time when expulsions of Germans on a much larger scale are taking place before the eyes of a silent world. Here, too, I refer to a sentence of long penitentiary terms against two German sailors who, together with some Frenchmen, had robbed French Jews. From the findings of the court I again quote a sentence which characterizes the general attitude: "That the crimes were committed against Jews does not excuse the defendants in Any way." Similarly, it seems to me that the efforts of the Prosecution to include Admiral Doenitz in its construction of the conspiracy by terming him a fanatical Nazi have failed. He was neither a member of the Party nor was he ever politically prominent before his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. The assertion of the Prosecution that he became Commander-in-Chief of the Navy because of his political attitude lacks all foundation. As a professional officer, to whom every political activity was forbidden by the Reich Defense Law, he had no reason for dealing with National Socialism in any way. However, he, too, like millions of other Germans, recognized the unique success of Hitler's leadership in social and economic fields and, of course, also the liberation from the obligations of Versailles which Hitler had brought about and which particularly concerned Admiral Doenitz as a soldier.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: Therefore, at the time of his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, he was politically in no way active, although loyal to the National Socialist State. This appointment introduced two new elements into his relations with National Socialism. There was first of all his personal contact with Adolf Hitler. Like almost everyone else who had personal dealings with this man, he too was most deeply impressed by him. The respect for the head of the State and loyalty to the Supreme Commander inherent in the professional officer were complemented by admiration for the statesman and strategist. It is difficult fully to appreciate such an attitude in view of the information which has come to light in the course of this Trial. I feel neither called upon nor able to judge a personality like Adolf Hitler. But one thing seems to me certain, namely, that with a consummate art of camouflage he skillfully concealed the repulsive traits of his character from those of his collaborators to whom he did not dare reveal this part of his nature. The Hitler with whom the new Commander-in-Chief of the Navy became acquainted at that time, and whom he admired, was therefore an entirely different man from the one which the world-rightly or wrongly-pictures today. The second new element in the relations between Grossadmiral Doenitz and National Socialism was that in the performance of his military duties he necessarily came into contact with the political authorities of the Reich. Whether he needed more men, more ships, or more arms, in the end he always had to discuss these matters with the political authorities, and in order to be successful in his demands, he had to make sure-that any political mistrust was eliminated from the very start. This he deliberately did, and he demanded the same of his subordinates. To him the Party was not an ideological factor, but rather the actual exponent of political power. He was linked with it in the common aim to win the war, and for the achievement of this aim he considered it his ally.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: But to obtain the advantages which one expects of an ally, one must be willing to make certain sacrifices, especially sacrifices in overlooking faults and in ignoring conflicting issues. However, his connection with the Fuehrer and his contact with the Party, which were concomitants of his position and of his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, never led him to participate in anything for which he could not assume responsibility before his conscience. Some points of the Prosecution even go to prove this. The Fuehrer demanded action against shipwrecked crews; Admiral Doenitz rejected it. The Fuehrer asked for withdrawal from the Geneva Convention; Admiral Doenitz rejected it. He stubbornly and successfully resisted the Party's influence upon the Armed Forces. Thanks to his resistance the National Socialist Fuhrungsoffiziere did not become political commissars, but were, as genuine officers, merely advisers to their commander, who retained the sole responsibility for the leadership of his unit. The transfer of proceedings against soldiers on political grounds from the military courts to the People's Courts, which had been advocated by the Party, was prevented by Grossadmiral Doenitz until the winter of 1944-45, and a Fuehrer order to this effect issued at that time was never carried out in the Navy. Thus he never identified himself with the Party and can therefore surely not be held responsible for its ideological endeavors or its excesses, just as in foreign politics a government would not be ready to assume responsibility for such things if they had been done by an ally. I do not by any means want to give the impression that Admiral Doenitz was not a National Socialist. On the contrary, I just want to use him as an example to disprove the theory that every National Socialist as such must be a criminal. This Tribunal is the sole instance in which authoritative personalities of the great Allied Powers are dealing directly and in detail with the last 12 years of the German past.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBOHLER: It is, therefore, the only hope of very many Germans for the removal of a fatal error which is causing the weaker elements of our nation to become hypocrites and is thus proving a decisive obstacle on the road to political recovery. And now I should like to deal with the charge that in February 1945 Admiral Doenitz protracted the inevitable surrender out of political fanaticism, and I wish to do so for a particular reason. This charge, which seems hardly to have anything to do with the Indictment before an International Tribunal, weighs particularly heavily in the eyes of the German people, for this nation truly knows what destruction and losses it endured in those last months from February until May 1945. I have submitted declarations of Darlan, Chamberlain, and Churchill from the year 1940 in which those statesmen, in a critical hour for their countries, called for desperate resistance, for the defense of every village and of every house. Nobody will conclude from this that these men were fanatical National Socialists. The question ~ of unconditional surrender is indeed of such colossal import to a nation, that in fact it is not possible until after the event to judge whether a statesman who had to face this question did or did not do the right thing. Admiral Doenitz, however, was not a statesman in February 1945, but the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Should he have asked his subordinates to lay down their arms at a time when the political authority of the State still considered military resistance as opportune and necessary? Nobody will seriously demand that. Much more difficult seems to me the question of whether, in view of the high esteem Hitler had for him, he should not have considered it his duty to point out clearly to Hitler the hopelessness of prolonged resistance. Personally, I would have affirmed this to be his duty toward his nation, if Admiral Doenitz himself at that time had considered that surrender was justified.