dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
RAEDER: Then there is the "Salute Battery Friedrichsort." Friedrichsort is the entrance to Kiel where foreign ships salute when they enter, and the salute must be returned. Two 7.]-centimeter field guns which had been rendered unserviceable had been approved for this purpose. With these guns, sharp-shooting was not possible; it was since there was a battery foundation already available there, that instead of these two 7.]-centimeter guns we should set up four 8.8-centimeter A. A. guns which were ready for full use. But this too was long before the time when I was Commander-in-Chief of the Navy.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now. [The Tribunal adjourned until 16 May 1946, at 1000 hours.]
MARSHAL (Col. Charles W. Mays): If it please the Tribunal, the Defendants Sauckel and Von Papen are absent. [The Defendant Raeder resumed the stand.]
DR. WALTER SIEMERS (Counsel for Defendant Raeder): Admiral, yesterday we finished with the somewhat involved Document C-32, and we had got as far as Point 11. We now come to Point 12, "Ammunition stocks in excess of the armament permissible." May I remind the Tribunal that this is Document C-32, Exhibit USA-50, in Document Book 10 a, Page 8, Point 12, which contains three columns. Defendant, may I ask what you have to say to the accusation that you exceeded the permissible amount of ammunition?
ERICH RAEDER (Defendant): Certain ammunition stocks were in excess of the permissible amount and some were below it. I cannot tell you at this date what the reason was in each particular case. I assume that this depended to a considerable extent on the amounts left over from the last World War. In the case of the first two items, the 17- and 15-centimeter shells, the actual stocks rather exceeded the quantity permitted, whereas the third item, the 10.5-centimeter, falls very far short of it-instead of 134,000 there were 87,000. In the case of the 8.8-centimeter shells there was an excess, then again a deficit, and the same thing applies to the last item. But they are all very insignificant amounts.
DR. SIEMERS: In the copy before the Tribunal there appears to be a note in the third column-on the next page in yours, Defendant-saying that quantities of ammunition are partly manufactured and partly in course of delivery, and that the total amount permissible will soon be exceeded. I only wanted to ask you: The list was made out in September 1933. Then are the figures stated correct for September 1933 or autumn 1933?
RAEDER: I did not quite understand you.
DR. SIEMERS: If it says in this document that measures to be taken later will bring the totals above the quantities permissible, which-according to this statement-they had not yet reached, then that is calculated as from autumn 1933.
RAEDER: That may be assumed, yes. Because new ammunition as well as new guns were being manufactured, and old ammunition then had to be scrapped. It also must be noted that ammunition for heavy artillery, which is not listed here, was in every case short of the permissible amount. A comparatively large amount of heavy artillery ammunition had been granted us for heavy coastal guns, and we had by no means as much as we were allowed to have.
DR. SIEMERS: For the assistance of the Tribunal, I may point out that this last point is proved by the actual documents in the hands of the Tribunal. In the Tribunal's copy under the Figure 12, Column 2, just beside the separate figures, there is a sentence which says, "...that the whole quantity permitted for heavy artillery has not been reached." We now come to Number 13: "Exceeding the permissible stocks of machine guns, rifles, pistols, and gas masks."
RAEDER: Here, too, it must be admitted that in isolated cases stocks were a little higher than permitted. There were, for instance, 43,000 gas masks instead of the 22,500 permitted. Large numbers of rifles and machine guns were taken away even by individuals after the World War to farms, et cetera . They were later collected, and for that reason there was a comparatively large stock of them. But we are not dealing here with any considerable quantities. Similarly ammunition, bayonets, hand grenades, searchlights, fog equipment, et cetera , also exceeded the prescribed limits but not to any great extent.
DR. SIEMERS: Now, Figure 14: "Obtaining 337 M.G. C/30's without scrapping equally serviceable weapons." As I did not...
THE PRESIDENT (Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence): Surely, Dr. Siemers, it would be possible to deal with all these various points in the documents in one statement as to why there were these excesses. We have a statement here which contains 30 different items, and you have only got as far as 13, and you are dealing with each one.
DR. SIEMERS: Mr. President, personally I agree entirely. I am sorry that I caused the Tribunal so much trouble in connection with this document. As I am not a naval expert, I had a great deal of trouble finding my way through it; but I do not think that I was the cause of the trouble. The Prosecution, you see, have made use of the single points in evidence.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Siemers, the question is-I am not blaming you, but we want to get on. We are not blaming you. Can't it be done in one explanatory statement, one short statement?
DR. SIEMERS: I will try, Mr. President, and I will shorten it. There is no need to say anything more about Numbers 15 to 17. I think these were the most important points. The points planned for a later date were not to be effective until the years '33 and '34. I may perhaps just point out to the Tribunal that Number 17 refers to the intended construction of reserve destroyers. The Versailles Treaty permitted the construction of these. I pass over Number 18 because we have already dealt with that. Number 19, again, refers only to intended construction. Number 20 I may consider irrelevant; it concerns only the arming of fishing vessels. Numbers 21 to 29...
THE PRESIDENT: I think, perhaps, you should ask the Defendant to explain some of these observations in the third column. I mean in Number 18, for instance: "Difficult to detect. If necessary can be denied."
RAEDER: These were explanations given to our League of Nations representative at the Disarmament Conference by the competent expert. It does not refer to local conditions. Construction of submarine spare parts, for instance, took place abroad or was to be prepared. It was actually carried out in 1934 and '35, and the first submarine was launched at the end of June 1935.
DR. SIEMERS: I may take it, Defendant, that only the construction and purchase of submarines was prohibited.
RAEDER: Yes, the construction in Germany.
DR. SIEMERS: I cannot prove until a later stage that no violation of the Treaty was involved by the construction of these spare parts; but I think you will have to give some indication of your reason for wishing to conceal it, in view of the fact that spare parts were not forbidden. I may remind you that this took place in September 1933 at a time when negotiations had already been planned.
RAEDER: At that period, before the German-English Naval Agreement was concluded on the basis of 35 to 100, Hitler was particularly eager to avoid everything which might embarrass the negotiations in any way. The construction and preparation of submarine parts came under this heading as being a subject on which England was peculiarly sensitive.
DR. SIEMERS: Was there not an additional reason for this appendix and other remarks in this second column-namely, the unfortunate experiences which the Navy had caused in home politics, the fact that whenever the slightest action was taken a quarrel immediately ensued on the home political front?
RAEDER: Yes; and that went so far that the Reichswehrminister was attacked on occasions by Prussian ministers who disagreed with the Reich Government-for instance, Mueller, Severing, Stresemann and later Bruening, who alleged to the Reich Chancellor that he took steps which he was not authorized to take. In reality, however, the Reich Government itself had sanctioned these things already and had accepted the responsibility for them.
DR. SIEMERS: So these things were kept secret for reasons of home policy, so that they should not be apparent. . .
RAEDER: Yes.
DR. SIEMERS: With the approval of the Reich Government?
RAEDER: With the approval of the Reich Government. As regards the firms, a number of firms...
DR. SIEMERS: I would prefer now to refer back to Column 2, Number 20, as I see from the record that the Prosecution have also expressly raised this point in connection with the arming of fishing craft, emphasized it, and made it the basis of a charge, "Warning shots, play it down."
RAEDER: The two fishing boats were quite small vessels and were normally unarmed. They served to supervise the fishing boats in the North Sea right up to Iceland, to help them in case of emergency, to take sick men aboard and to afford protection against fishermen of other nations. We thought it advisable to mount at least a 5-centimeter gun on these ships since they were actually warships. "Warning shots" means that they fired a salute when they wanted to draw the fishermen's attention to something; so it was quite an insignificant affair and had no need to be artificially reduced to a bagatelle but was in fact a bagatelle.
DR. SIEMERS: We now come to Numbers 21 to 28. This is a list of various firms, including industrial firms working on armament contracts. The Versailles Treaty admitted certain firms for this type of work while it excluded others. In actual fact, other firms had received contracts. Perhaps you can make a general statement on this point.
RAEDER: This was at a time when we had strong hopes that progress would be made at the Disarmament Conference. The Macdonald Plan, which brought about a certain improvement, had already been accepted; and we might have expected, in consequence, that the few factories still left to us would have to increase their output during the next few years. I may refer you to the shipping replacement scheme. Consequently, factories producing specialized articles were better equipped and supplied. There was, however, never any question of heavy guns or anything of that kind but of automatic fuse-igniters, explosives-for instance, mine containers, et cetera, small items but special items which could be made only by certain firms. But, apart from the firms admitted, other firms which had been excluded were also employed. Thus, for instance, the Friedrich Krupp Grusenwerke A. G. at Magdeburg, Number 25 , was equipped to manufacture antiaircraft guns and antiaircraft barrels from 2-centimeters to 10.5-centimeters; similarly Number 26, a firm manufacturing antiaircraft ammunition, explosives; Number 27...
DR. SIEMERS: I do not think we need the details.
RAEDER: No. And then engines for which there was also a great demand.
DR. SIEMERS: I have some questions which apply to all these figures. Is this not offset to a certain extent by the fact that some of the firms admitted had already dropped out for economic reasons?
RAEDER: Yes, you can certainly say that. These firms had comparatively few deliveries which were not sufficient to keep them going.
DR. SIEMERS: Defendant, I think one not only can-I think one must-say so. May I draw your attention to Point 22, Column 3, which reads, "The list in any case is out of date, as some firms have dropped out."
RAEDER: Yes.
DR. SIEMERS: That leaves us with Numbers 29 and 30. Number 29, "Preparations in the field of experiments with motorboats." I think that these were preparations in a very small field.
RAEDER: At the moment I cannot tell you exactly what this means.
DR. SIEMERS: I do not believe in any case that the Prosecution will attach any importance to it. Then I only want you to make a final statement on Number 30, "Probable further concrete violations becoming necessary in the near future" up to 1934 inclusively. To all intents and purposes you have already answered the question by your reference to the negotiations planned with the British Government, some of which were already in progress.
RAEDER: Yes, that was the point.
DR. SIEMERS: These are matters, therefore, which were in any case due to be discussed in the course of the negotiations with the British Government, or rather the Admiralty.
RAEDER: You cannot say that of them all. For instance, Points 1 to 3 deal with mines. The number of mines was to be increased and modern material was to replace the old. It goes on in the same way with the transfer of guns from the North Sea to the Baltic "A" batteries, not with the scrapping of guns.
DR. SIEMERS: To conclude the whole matter, may I ask you to say what impression the whole thing made on a naval expert like yourself. All things considered, would you say that these are minor violations, and how far are these violations of an aggressive nature?
RAEDER: As I said yesterday, most of them are very inadequate improvements in defense of an almost entirely defenseless position. The separate items, as I explained yesterday, are so insignificant that it is really impossible to spend very much time on them. I believe that the Control Commission also had the impression that very little weight need be attached to all these matters; for in 1925 when the Control Commission left its station at Kiel where it had worked with the organizations of the Naval Command, Commander Fenshow, Admiral Charlton's chief of staff and head of the Commission, whose main interest was guns and who had worked with a Captain Raenkel, a gunner and a specialist in these matters, said: "We must leave now, and you are glad that we are going. You did not have a pleasant task, and neither did we. I must tell you one thing. You need not think that we believed what you have said. You did not say a single word of truth, but you have given your information so skillfully that we were able to accept it, and for that I am grateful to you."
DR. SIEMERS: I now come to Document C-29, which is Exhibit USA-46. Mr. President, it is in Raeder's Document Book 10, Page 8 of the Prosecution's document book.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean 10a?
DR. SIEMERS: Number 10, Page 8. This document, too, was submitted during the general Indictment made by the Prosecution at the beginning of the Trial on 27 November. It consists of a speech, a document signed by Raeder, dated 31 January 1933, "General Directives for the Support of the German Armaments Industry by the Navy." [Turning to the defendant.] The Prosecution pointed this out; and they have thought fit to conclude from it that on the day after Hitler's nomination as Chancellor of the Reich, you were already acting positively in his support through this letter. Will you define your attitude, please?
RAEDER: There is no connection whatsoever between this letter and Hitler's accession to power. You must admit that it would be impossible to compile so long and complicated a document-which was, after all, carefully prepared-between the evening of 30 and the morning of 31 January. This document results from the hope, which I mentioned before, that already under the Papen and Von Schleicher Government the stipulations of the Versailles Treaty and the Disarmament Conference might be gradually relaxed, since the British Delegation had repeatedly said that they favored the gradual restoration of equal rights. We had, therefore, to get our industries into the best possible condition, as far as the manufacture of armaments was concerned, by increasing their output and enabling them to overcome competition. As I say in Paragraph c of this letter, almost every country was at that time making efforts in the same direction, even those which, unlike Germany, had no restrictions imposed on them. Great Britain, France, North America, Japan, and especially Italy made the most determined efforts to gain markets for their armaments industry; and I wanted to follow them in this particular sphere. In order to do this, there had to be an understanding between the various departments of the Naval Command Staff to the effect that industry must be given support in a way which avoided the secrecy of technical matters and developments to too petty a degree. That is why I explain in Paragraph c that secrecy in small matters is less important than maintaining a high standard and keeping the lead. I state in the final sentence: "To sum up, I attach particular importance to the continued support of the industry in question by the Navy, even after the expected relaxation of the present restrictions, so that the industry would command confidence abroad and would find a market." This has nothing at all to do with Hitler nor with any independent rearmament on my own behalf.
DR. SIEMERS: Can you tell us when, approximately, you drafted these directives?
RAEDER: During the month of January. I may say that we had a conference-perhaps at the beginning of January-and after that I had it put in writing.
DR. SIEMERS: That would be certainly 2 to 3 weeks before this letter was written?
RAEDER: Yes, certainly.
DR. SIEMERS: I think it happens rarely that one receives a letter from a government office one day after its being conceived by the head of that office. May I ask you now to tell me one thing more in connection with the "relaxation of the present restrictions." That means the relaxation of the Versailles Treaty, I presume, through the Disarmament Conference. You have mentioned that four times in this document, so that I assume that was your basis.
RAEDER: Yes, it was. The whole atmosphere at that time under both the governments I mentioned, was such that one could expect an improvement.
DR. SIEMERS: And this was the basis for which, to quote a few names only, Stresemann, Bruening, fought.
RAEDER: Yes.
DR. SIEMERS: As they felt it their duty to take certain advance precautions?
RAEDER: Yes.
DR. SIEMERS: I think there is no need for me to go into further details. I have read this document again and again, and have been unable to find any point on which the Prosecution could base the conclusion that you had National Socialist ideas. I now come to Document C-140. It is Exhibit USA-51, and is in the Document Book 10a, Page 104.
RAEDER: May I interrupt you, please? Would it not be appropriate that I should say now what I wanted to say to supplement the statement in C-156 regarding aircraft?
DR. SIEMERS: I apologize. It might be practicable to finish with the infringements of the Versailles Treaty before going on to another subject. I had forgotten that. The Prosecution have submitted Document C-156. It is Captain Schuessler's book from the year 1937 and contains almost the same list of infringements as Document C-32, so that that document can be disposed of at the same time. In addition, it deals with the case of the designing office for submarines in Holland, with which we have already dealt. But there is still one point on which I should like to have your comments, and that concerns certain preparations in connection with navy aircraft which might be permitted later.
RAEDER: All sorts of preparations had been made in the field of aviation long before I came into office. A number of aircraft had been purchased, as I see from this book. They were stored with a firm called "Severe G.m.b.H.," which was known to the Reichswehrminister. The Versailles Treaty had permitted us antiaircraft guns both on ships and on the coast, as was mentioned yesterday; and for these antiaircraft, firing practice had to be arranged. The Control Commission had allowed us a certain number of aircraft to tow the necessary targets. These aircraft were flown by ex-naval pilots employed by this company. The company, in turn, was managed by an old naval pilot. Since we were not allowed to train naval pilots or were not allowed to have any naval air force, we gave a year's training in the civil aviation school to a number of prospective naval officers before they joined the Navy, so that through this 1-year training they developed into very good pilots. Then they joined the Navy and went through their ordinary naval training. The aircraft purchased in this way was temporarily in the possession of the "Severa," which also had a good deal to do with the Lohmann affairs and for that reason was dissolved by Reichswehrminister Groener in the summer of 1928. Reichswehrminister Groener established a new company with similar assignments in the autumn of 1928, soon after I assumed office. But he had signed the agreement himself in order to control the correct management of the whole affair. In this company, in addition to their ordinary work, the Navy pilots carried out experiments in connection with the development of aircraft for a later Navy air force. We had the Government's permission to manufacture a model of every type likely to be of use, but we were not allowed to accumulate aircraft. The Government had expressly forbidden that. The result was that in the course of years the company developed a number of aircraft types which would be useful at a later date when we were once more allowed to have aircraft.
RAEDER: In the early period exercises in the Navy were carried out by the old naval pilots-that is to say, it was demanded that exercises in observation be taken and that the crews of ships learn how to act against aircraft. When these young naval pilots were assigned to such exercises, they were discharged from the Navy for that time. It was an awkward affair, but it was always carried out punctiliously.
DR. SIEMERS: I may now turn to Document C-140, which is in Document Book 10a, Page 104. It is a letter from Reich Defense Minister Von Blomberg dated 25 October 1933. It is addressed to the Chief of the Army, the Chief of the Navy, and the Reich Minister for Aviation. On this document the Prosecution based their accusations that you, Witness, prepared military plans for an armed resistance which might become necessary in consequence of Germany's withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations. Perhaps you can briefly state your view.
RAEDER: I had no previous knowledge of our imminent withdrawal from the League of Nations. This directive came out 11 days after we had left the League of Nations, and it merely provides defensive measures in the event of sanctions being applied against Germany by other powers in consequence of her departure from the League of Nations. It says under 2c: "I prohibit any practical preparations in the meantime." So, at first, nothing was done in consequence of this directive, and the Reich Defense Minister merely asked for a report from me as to what should be done. As far as I remember, no practical preparations of any kind were carried out by the Navy at the time, because the situation remained absolutely quiet and there was no reason to assume that there would be any need for defense.
DR. SIEMERS: That is probably indicated by the words under Point 2a, "Preparation for defense against sanctions." It concerns the defense only.
RAEDER: The defense only.