Dönitz: The Last Führer (77 page)

During lunch he was reminded that it was the anniversary of the capitulation.

‘That is why I am sitting here,’ he replied drily. ‘But if I had to do it all over again I don’t know that I would have done it any differently.’

‘Even if you knew then what you know now?’

‘Oh, since then I have become a hundred thousand years wiser. I mean just knowing and thinking what I did
then
, I couldn’t have acted any differently.’
⁸⁹

On the witness stand again afterwards, he was asked to explain the wording of the final sentence of his
Laconia
order.

‘That sentence is, of course, in a sense intended to be a justification. Now the prosecution says I could quite simply have ordered that safety did not permit it [rescue]—that the predominance of the enemy’s Air Force did not permit it—and as we have seen in the case of the
Laconia
, I did order that four times. But that reasoning had been worn out. It was a much-played record, if I may use the expression, and I was now anxious to state to the Commanders of the U-boats a reason which would exclude all discretion and all independent decisions of the Commanders. For again and again I had the experience that for the reasons mentioned before, a clear sky was judged too favourably by the U-boats and then the U-boat was lost—or that a Commander in the role of rescuer was in time no longer master of his own decisions, as the
Laconia
case showed. Therefore, under no circumstances whatever did I want to repeat the old reason which again would give the U-boat commander the opportunity to say, “Well, at the moment there is no danger of air attack”—that is I did not want to give him a chance to act independently… nor did I want to say “If somebody with great self-sacrifice rescues the enemy and in that process is killed by them then that is a contradiction of the most elementary laws of warfare.” I could have said that too. But I did not want to put it that way and therefore I worded the sentence as it now stands.’
⁹⁰

It is interesting to note the subtle differences between this sophisticated explanation in reply to Kranzbühler, and his earlier answers to interrogating officers. The chief difficulty with the explanation, however, is that it is not possible to reconcile his stated wsh ‘to exclude all discretion and all independent decisions’ from his Commanders and at the same time expect them to bring in Captains and other officers, as the orders also stipulated.

Kranzbühler pointed out this inconsistency to him.

‘There is,’ he replied, ‘a great difference in risk between rescue measures for which the U-boat has to stop and men have to go on deck and a brief surfacing to pick up a Captain, because while merely surfacing the U-boat remains in a state of alert, whereas otherwise the alertness is completely disrupted.’

Also there was a military purpose in taking Captains, for which he had orders from the High Command.

Asked about Möhle’s misunderstanding of the order, he took full responsibility on himself as its author, but said that Möhle was the only person who had doubts about it, and regretted that he had not communicated those doubts to him since everybody had access. If there had been any consequences of his doubts ‘I would of course assume responsibility for them’. Referred to the case of Eck, he said that Eck had stated under oath he knew nothing of Möhle’s interpretation or doubts; he had acted on his own initiative and his aim had been to remove wreckage, not to kill survivors.

‘Do you approve of his actions, now that you know of them?’ Kranzbühler asked.

‘I do not approve of his actions because as I said before in this respect one must not deviate from military ethics under any circumstances. However, I want to say that
Kapitänleutnant
Eck was faced with a very grave decision. He had to bear responsibility for his boat and crew and that responsibility is a serious one in time of war. Therefore, if for that reason that he believed he would otherwise be spotted and destroyed … if he came to this decision for that reason, then a German Court Martial would undoubtedly have taken it into consideration. I believe that after the war one views the events differently and does not fully realize the great responsibility which an unfortunate Commander carries.’

‘Apart from the Eck case did you, during the war or after, hear of any other instances in which a U-boat Commander fired on shipwrecked people or liferafts?’

‘Not a single one.’

Referred to the cases of the
Noreen Mary
and
Antonico
where, according to the prosecution, men had been fired at in boats, he replied that he had a great number of similar reports about the other side, but had always treated them with scepticism since shipwrecked people could easily believe they were being fired on, although the shots were actually directed at the ship itself. And he concluded from the fact that the
prosecution had only two examples that he was correct in assuming the Eck case the only real instance during the war.

Afterwards Kranzbühler turned to the conspiracy charges; Dönitz explained that his own dealings with Hitler had been strictly limited to his own sphere; it had been one of Hitler’s peculiarities only to listen to a person about matters which were that person’s express concern. He had had no knowledge of the internal policy of the SS or SD, and he had never received an order from the Führer which in any way violated military ethics. ‘Thus I firmly believe that in every respect I kept the Navy unsullied down to the last man until the end.’

Asked whether he ever considered breaking with the Führer or attempting a
Putsch
he denied it hotly.

‘The German nation was involved in a struggle for life and death. It was surrounded by enemies almost like a fortress. And it is clear, to keep the simile of the fortress, that every disturbance within would without doubt have affected our military might and our fighting power. Anyone who therefore violates his loyalty to his oath to plan or try to bring about an overthrow during such a struggle for survival must be deeply convinced that the nation needs such an overthrow at all costs and be aware of his responsibilities. Despite this every nation will judge such a man as a traitor …’

He went on in this vein until he was cut short by the President for making a political speech. He was then taken through the closing weeks of the war when he had learned of his surprise appointment as Hitler’s successor; he described how he had come to appoint von Krosigk as his chief minister:

‘I did this because in a chance discussion which had taken place several days before I had seen that we held much the same view, the view that the German people belonged to the Christian West, that the basis of future conditions of life is the absolute legal security of the individual and of private property …’

He explained his earlier ‘fanatical’ Nazi speeches as necessary to keep up morale, since the collapse of the eastern front would have meant that German women and children would have perished, and he went on to describe the Navy’s tremendous efforts to rescue the refugees from the east. ‘The very existence of the German people in this last hard period depended above all on the soldiers carrying on tenaciously to the end.’
⁹¹

At the luncheon adjournment Göring leapt up in delight. ‘Ah, now I
feel great for the first time in three weeks. Now we finally hear a decent German soldier speak for once.’
⁹²

Even Frank told Gilbert that Dönitz was speaking like a fine officer because after all orders were orders. Speer who had been stung by Dönitz’s reference to traitors, snapped back, ‘Of course—orders for the destruction of the German nation are immaterial! Just follow orders, that’s all!’
⁹³

The cross-examination began in the afternoon of May 9th; the British prosecutor, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, tried to draw an admission that Dönitz had known about the slave labour Sauckel imported and Speer used for his armaments programme. He denied all knowledge; during his conferences with Hitler and Speer the system of obtaining workers was never mentioned; he had been interested only in the number of U-boats he received.

‘You tell the Tribunal you discussed that with Speer and he never told you where he was getting the labour?’

‘Yes, that is my answer and it is true.’

Drawing his attention to the number of chiefs of the armed services and departments of State who attended the situation conferences Maxwell-Fyfe suggested that he had played as full a part in the government of Germany as anyone apart from Adolf Hitler himself. Dönitz denied it. Only the happenings of the past 24 hours were discussed at the conferences, and no one, neither Speer nor himself, nor anyone else, had an overall picture. The only one who had a complete picture was the Führer.

‘Well, I won’t argue with you, but I suppose, defendant, you say—as we have heard from so many other defendants—that you knew nothing about the slave labour programme, you knew nothing about the extermination of the Jews and you knew nothing about any of the bad conditions in the concentration camps. I suppose you are going to tell us you knew nothing about them at all, are you?’

‘That is self-evident since we have heard here how all these things were kept very secret; and if one bears in mind that everyone in this war was pursuing his own tasks with the maximum energy then it is no wonder at all. To give an example I learned of the conditions in concentration camps—’

‘I just want your answer for the moment. I want you to come to a point which was well within your knowledge, and that is the order for the
shooting of Commandos which was issued by the Führer on 18th October, 1942 …’
⁹⁴

Dönitz replied that he had received a copy of this order as a front Commander; it did not concern his sphere of activities, and when he became C-in-C a few months later he had so much to occupy him he had not gone into the question. The memorandum arising out of a staff discussion about it in February 1943, a fortnight after he had taken office—one of the documents submitted by the prosecution—had not been placed before him.

That ended the day’s sessions. Gilbert visited him in his cell in the evening and Dönitz asked him what he thought of his defence. The American replied that it was noticeable the military men were still refusing to say anything against Hitler even if they knew he was a murderer.

Dönitz replied that he had not been given a chance to say there was a black side which he didn’t see.
⁹⁵

The next morning he was pressed again about the Commando order, and the shooting of the torpedo-boat’s crew under its authority; the man directly responsible, Admiral von Schrader, had shot himself when he received orders to proceed to England. Dönitz continued to maintain he had not seen the order as C-in-C and had given it no consideration. He was then shown the document in which he had called for 12,000 concentration camp workers to be used in the shipyards. He explained that because of his urgent need of shipping space to evacuate refugees from the east he had called for suggestions as to how they might overcome the sabotage problem and get more ships.

‘I received suggestions from various quarters outside the Navy, including a suggestion that repair work might be speeded up by employing prisoners from the concentration camps. By way of justification it was pointed out that in view of the excellent food conditions such employment would be very popular. Since I knew nothing of the conditions and methods in the concentration camps I included these proposals in my collection as a matter of course, especially as there was no question of making conditions worse for them, since they would be given better food when working. And I know that if I had done the opposite I could have been accused here of refusing these people an opportunity of better food. I had not the slightest reason to do this as I knew nothing about any concentration camp methods at the time.’

‘Are you telling the Tribunal that when you ask for and may have got
12,000 people out of concentration camps, who work alongside people not in concentration camps, that the conditions inside the camps remain a secret to the other people and all the rulers of Germany?’

‘First of all I do not know whether they did come. Secondly if they did come I can well imagine that they had orders not to talk, and thirdly I do not even know what camps they came from …’
⁹⁶

He was asked about the proposals he had made for collective penalties against whole working parties in the shipyards in order to stop sabotage. Again he referred to ‘agencies outside the Navy’; they had suggested to him that measures for exacting atonement had been effective in France; he had since learnt that the measures proposed meant the withdrawal of rations issued by the management of the shipyard!

Maxwell-Fyfe passed on to his conduct of the U-boat war, suggesting that in the first year, out of 241 ships sunk by U-boat, at least 79 had been attacked without the warning necessary under the Conventions. Dönitz said he could not check these figures; the sinkings were not illegal, however, since the British had armed their merchant ships and had given them instructions to ram U-boats and to report their positions by wireless; they were therefore combatants and a part of the Navy’s intelligence system. Moreover, England acted in exactly the same way, as did other nations.

The questioning passed to Hitler’s anxiety to act against crews, and the orders Dönitz had issued. He was pressed on how the orders to bring in Captains and Chief Engineers could be reconciled with his explanation of the
Laconia
order—the aircraft danger.

‘You know perfectly well,’ Maxwell-Fyfe said, ‘that in order to find the Captain or Chief Engineer, the U-boat has got to go around the lifeboats or wreckage and make enquiries: “Where is the captain?” And you know very well that the usual practice in the British Merchant Navy was to hide the Captain and prevent them finding out who he was. Is that not the practical position that had to be met, that you had to go around the lifeboats asking for the Captain if you wished to bring him in?’

Dönitz stuck to his previous reply to Kranzbühler that ‘the risk of taking one man aboard was much less so far as time was concerned and would not limit the crash-diving ability of the boat’, and that there was a military aim in seizing the Captain and ‘as is always the case in war, a certain risk would have to be taken’. Moreover the significance of that order was not great as the results were always so poor.