Various

“ SCHACHT: No, it was not taken “at the point of a gun.”
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, we will pass on to your speech. Did you say also:
“Instead of a weak and vacillating government a single, purposeful, energetic personality is ruling today. That is the great miracle which has happened in Germany and which has had its effect in all fields of life and not last in that of economy and finance. There is no German financial miracle. There is only the miracle of the reawakening of German national consciousness and German discipline, and we owe this miracle to our Führer, Adolf Hitler.” ”

“ Today we pledge allegiance to the great Reichsbank family, to the great German community; we pledge allegiance to our newly arisen, powerful Greater German Reich, and we sum up all these sentiments in the allegiance to the man who has brought about all this transformation. I ask you to raise your hands and to repeat after me:
“I swear that I will be faithful and obedient to the Führer of the German Reich and the German people, Adolf Hitler, and will perform my duties conscientiously and selflessly. (The audience takes the pledge with uplifted hands.) ”

“ SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Did not Gauleiter Sauckel tell you on the occasion of this trip that he had got 5 million foreign workers into the Reich, of whom only 200,000 had come voluntarily?
DÖNITZ: I did not have a single conversation with Gauleiter Sauckel. I have never had a discussion with anyone about questions referring to workers.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, Defendant, you were head of a service department in the fifth and sixth years of the war. Wasn’t Germany, like every other country, searching around to scrape the bottom of the barrel for labor for all its requirements? ”

“ People who never again want war cannot possibly wish to become soldiers. One cannot take it amiss if the Wehrmacht infuses into its servicemen a manly and warlike spirit; not the desire for war or even a war of revenge or a war of aggression, for to strive after that would certainly in the general opinion of all Germans be a crime, but the will to take up arms in the defense of the fatherland in its hour of need. ”

“ If the leaders considered it necessary to introduce countermeasures against air attacks on open German towns, or against the propaganda for desertion in the West, then one should confine oneself to such countermeasures which appear necessary and justifiable. One should not put oneself in the wrong before the world and one’s own people by totally repudiating all the Geneva Conventions and announce measures which went far beyond what appeared to be necessary and justifiable. ”

“ I assumed that Schacht was a member of the Party. I told him that I had no intention of becoming a member of the Party, and Schacht said to me: “You do not have to. You are not supposed to. What do you think? I would not even dream of becoming a member of the Party. Can you imagine me bending under the Party yoke, accepting the Party discipline? And then, think of it, when I speak to Hitler I should click my heels and say, ‘Mein Führer,’ or when I write to him address him as ‘Mein Führer.’ That is quite out of the question for me. I am and remain a free man.” ”

“ Do you say that men captured in uniform should be taken out and shot without trial?
WAGNER: I cannot consider men of whom I know that they have orders to commit crimes, as soldiers, within international law.
COL. PHILLIMORE: Are you saying that this action was perfectly proper—are you?
WAGNER: Yes, entirely and perfectly.
COL. PHILLIMORE: Shoot helpless prisoners without trial, bully little neutrals who cannot complain? That is your policy, is it?
WAGNER: Not at all.
COL. PHILLIMORE: What crime did Robert Paul Evans commit, who attacked the Tirpitz in a two-man torpedo? ”

“ I never received from the Führer an order which in any way violated the ethics of war. Neither I nor anyone in the Navy—and this is my conviction—knew anything about the mass extermination of people, which I learned about here from the Indictment, or, as far as the concentration camps are concerned, after the capitulation in May 1945.
In Hitler I saw a powerful personality who had extraordinary intelligence and energy and a practically universal knowledge, from whom power seemed to emanate and who was possessed of a remarkable power of suggestion. ”

“ Goebbels quite suddenly and to the surprise of everyone gave the order for these Jewish pogroms. Frau Funk confirms in her affidavit that her husband, as soon as he heard of these excesses, called Dr. Goebbels over the telephone in great excitement and asked him:
“Have you gone crazy, Goebbels, to commit such outrages? It makes one ashamed to be a German. Our whole prestige abroad is being lost. I am trying day and night to preserve the national patrimony and you throw it recklessly out of the window. If this beastly mess does not stop immediately, I will throw everything overboard.” ”

“ What was Sauckel’s motive?
DÖNITZ: No doubt a belligerent one. He wanted to go to sea again.
DR. SERVATIUS: But he was a Gauleiter. Did he not have particular reasons in order to show that he too was ready to fight in the war and did not want to remain behind?
DÖNITZ: It surprised me that he, as a Gauleiter, should want to go to sea; but, at any rate, I considered that here was a man who had his heart in the right place.
DR. SERVATIUS: You believe that his motives were idealistic?
DÖNITZ: Certainly. Nothing much can be got out of a submarine trip. ”

“ The U-boat has, of course, the assignment of approaching an enemy and attacking him with torpedoes. Therefore, in that respect, the U-boat is an aggressive weapon.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Do you mean to say by that that it is a weapon for an aggressive war?
DÖNITZ: Aggressive or defensive war is a political decision and, therefore, it has nothing to do with military considerations. I can certainly use a U-boat in a defensive war because, in defensive war also, the enemy’s ships must be attacked. Of course, I can use a U-boat in exactly the same way in a politically aggressive war. ”

“ SCHACHT: I do not know what they believed at that time, hence I ask you not to question me about that. You will have to ask somebody from the regime; you still have enough people here.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You have now contended that you knew about the plot of 20 July on Hitler’s life?
SCHACHT: I knew about it.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You knew that Gisevius says you did not know about it?
SCHACHT: I already stated yesterday that I was informed not only of Goerdeler’s efforts but that I was thoroughly informed by General Lindemann, and the evidence of Colonel Gronau has been read here. ”

“ Whereas I have called Hitler an amoral type of person, I can regard Göring only as immoral and criminal. Endowed by nature with a certain geniality which he managed to exploit for his own popularity, he was the most egocentric being imaginable. The assumption of political power was for him only a means to personal enrichment and personal good living. ”

“ Admiral, you yourself have repeatedly spoken about the harshness of war. Are you, nevertheless, of the opinion that psychologically the U-boat crews could not be expected to carry out such an order? And why?
DÖNITZ: We U-boat men knew that we had to fight a very hard war against the great sea powers. Germany had at her disposal for this naval warfare nothing but the U-boats. Therefore, from the beginning—already in peacetime—I trained the submarine crews in the spirit of pure idealism and patriotism. ”

“ At that time I not only had no interest in having foreign workers brought to Germany but actually, from the economic aspect, I wanted to have the workers remain abroad, for the production of consumer goods had, to a large extent, been shifted from Germany to the occupied countries so that in other words this production, that is, French production or Belgian production, could work unhindered for the German populace; I did not want the workers taken away, and particularly I did not want them to be taken away by force, for in that way the entire order and the whole social life would be disturbed. ”

“ FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Was this intensification of the war against merchantmen by the order to fire on armed merchantmen, and later the order to attack all enemy merchantmen, based on the free judgment of the Naval Operations Staff, or was it a forced development?
DÖNITZ: This development, as I have said before, was entirely forced. If merchantmen are armed and make use of their arms, and if they send messages which summon protection, they force the U-boat to submerge and attack without warning. ”

“ Schacht considered armaments necessary, because otherwise Germany would always be defenseless in the midst of armed nations. He was not thinking of definite attack from any side, but he said that in every country there was a militarist party which might come to power today or tomorrow, and a completely helpless Germany, surrounded by other nations, was unthinkable. It was even a danger to peace because it was an incentive to attack her one day. Finally, however, and principally Schacht saw in armaments the only means of revitalizing and starting up German economy as a whole. ”

“ FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Apart from the Eck case did you, during the war, or after, hear of any other instance in which a U-boat commander fired on shipwrecked people or life rafts?
DÖNITZ: Not a single one.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: You know, do you not, the documents of the Prosecution which describe the sinking of the ships Noreen Mary and Antonico? Do you or do you not recognize the soundness of these documents as evidence according to your experience in these matters?
DÖNITZ: No. I believe that they cannot stand the test of an impartial examination. ”

“ The two bombing attacks showed clearly that in spite of good weather, in spite of the large numbers of people to be rescued who were more clearly visible to the aviators than in normal heavy sea conditions when few people have to be rescued, the danger to the submarines was so great that, as the one responsible for the boats and the lives of the crews, I had to prohibit rescue activities in the face of the ever-present—I cannot express it differently—the ever-present tremendous Anglo-American air force. ”

“ We have shown you a film, haven’t we?
THOMS: Yes.
MR. DODD: After seeing that film, are you able to say whether or not that represents a fair representation of the appearance of some of the shipments that were received by the Reichsbank from the SS?
THOMS: I may say that this film and the pictures which I have seen in it were typical of the “Melmer” deliveries. Perhaps I should qualify that by saying that the quantities shown in this film were in excess of the quantity of dental gold and particularly jewelry which came with the first deliveries. ”

“ And in these countries, too, a correct financial policy overthrew the old thesis that a war would, of necessity, bring about the destruction of the monetary value.
The German people, up to the very end, until the terrible collapse, maintained admirable discipline. Money as a function of the state will have its value and currency will function so long as the state has authority to maintain it on a stable basis, to keep the economy under control, and as long as the people themselves maintain the necessary discipline. ”

“ DÖNITZ: No. The word “Putsch” has been used frequently in this courtroom by a wide variety of people. It is easy to say so, but I believe that one would have had to realize the tremendous significance of such an activity.
The German nation was involved in a struggle of life and death. It was surrounded by enemies almost like a fortress. And it is clear, to keep to the simile of the fortress, that every disturbance from within would without doubt perforce have affected our military might and fighting power. ”

“ COL. PHILLIMORE: Do you know that he was on his first voyage when his U-boat sank the Peleus and then machine-gunned the survivors? Do you know that?
GODT: Yes.
COL. PHILLIMORE: He had set out from the 5th U-boat flotilla at Kiel where Möhle was briefing the commanders, had he not?
GODT: He must have.
COL. PHILLIMORE: Yes. Now, if—instead of taking the whole blame upon himself for the action which he took—if he had defended his action under this order of 17 September 1942, are you saying that you could have court-martialed him for disobedience?
GODT: It might have been possible. ”

“ DÖNITZ: They are measures against our own troops. I had heard, or I was told that the Führer intended, or had said, that because the front was yielding in the West and he feared that American and British propaganda might induce men to desert, he intended to leave the Geneva Convention, so I said to my staff, “How is it possible in this connection to contemplate abandoning lock, stock, and barrel a system of international law almost a century old?” ”

“ And I believe there was no officer in the German Navy—it is no doubt true of all the other nations—who, for example, would not consider a medal for rescue, rescue at personal risk, as the highest peacetime decoration. In view of this basic attitude it is always very dangerous not to change to a wartime perspective and to the principle that the security of one’s own ship comes first, and that war is after all a serious thing. ”

“ The Führer told me, in great excitement, that Schacht was sabotaging his policies, that he would not tolerate the Reichsbank’s interference with his policies any longer and the gentlemen in the Reichsbank Directorate were utter fools if they believed that he would tolerate it. No government and no chief of state in the world could possibly make policy dependent on co-operation or non-co-operation of the issuing bank. ”

“ GEN. ALEXANDROV: When answering the questions of your counsel, you declared that the fascist theory of race supremacy was sheer nonsense, that the fascist ideology was no ideology at all, that you were opposed to the solution of the Lebensraum problem by the seizure of new territories, that you were opposed to the Leadership Principle within the Fascist Party and even made a speech on this subject in the Academy of German Law, and that you were opposed to the fascist policy of exterminating the Jews. ”