“A. We were much menaced in the first years after the first war by danger that the Poles would attack East Prussia and so we tried to strengthen a little our very, very weak forces in this way, and so all our efforts were directed to the aim to have a little more strength against the Poles, if they would attack us; it was nonsense to them of attacking the Poles in this state, and for the Navy a second aim was to have some defense against the entering of French forces into the Ostsee, or East Sea, because we knew the French had intentions to sustain the Poles from ships that came into the Ostsee Goettinger, and so the Navy was a defense against the attack by the Poles, and against the entrance of French shipping into an Eastern Sea. Quite defensive aims.
“Q. When did the fear of attack from Poles first show itself in official circles in Germany would you say?
“A. When the first years they took Wilma. In the same minute we thought that they would come to East Prussia. I don’t know exactly the year, because those judgments were the judgments of the German government ministers, of the Army and Navy Ministers, Groner and Noske.
“Q. Then those views in your opinion were generally held existing perhaps as early as 1919 or 1920, after the end of the First World War?
“A. Oh, but the whole situation was very, very uncertain, and about those years in the beginning, I can not give you a very exact thing, because I was then two years in the Navy archives to write a book about the war, and how the cruisers fought in the first war. Two years, so I was not with these things.”
The same kind of aims and purposes are reflected in the table of contents of a history of the German Navy, 1919 to 1939, found in captured official files of the German Navy (C-17). Although a copy of the book itself has not been found, the project was written by Oberst Scherff, Hitler’s special military historian. The table of contents however, is available. It refers by numbers to groups of documents and notes in the documents, which evidently were intended as working material for the basis of the chapters to be written in accordance with the table of contents. The title of this table of contents fairly establishes the navy planning and preparations that were to get the Versailles Treaty out of the way, and to rebuild the navy strength necessary for war. Some of the headings in the table of contents read:
“Part A (1919—The year of Transition.)
“Chapter VII.
First efforts to circumvent the Versailles Treaty and to limit its effects.
“Demilitarization of the Administration, incorporation of naval offices in civil ministries, etc. Incorporation of greater sections of the German maritime observation station and the sea-mark system in Heligoland and Kiel, of the Ems-Jade-Canal, etc. into the Reich Transport Ministry up to 1934;