I turn to the next document in the document book, D-443, which I put in to become Exhibit GB-185. It is an extract from a speech made by the defendant at a meeting of commanders of the Navy in Weimar on the 17th of December 1943. It was subsequently circulated by the defendant as a top secret document for senior officers only and by the hand of officers only. My Lord, if I might read:
“I am a firm adherent of the idea of ideological education. For what is it in the main? Doing his duty is a matter of course for the soldier. But the full value, the whole weight of duty done, is only present when the heart and spiritual conviction have a voice in the matter. Doing his duty is then quite different from what it would be if I only carried out my task literally, obediently, and faithfully. It is therefore necessary for the soldier to support the execution of his duty with all his mental, all his spiritual energy; and for this his conviction, his ideology are indispensable. It is therefore necessary for us to train the soldier uniformly, comprehensively, that he may be adjusted ideologically to our Germany. Every dualism, every dissension in this connection, or every divergence or unpreparedness imply a weakness in all circumstances. He in whom this grows and thrives in unison is superior to the other. Then indeed the whole importance, the whole weight of his conviction comes into play. It is also nonsense to say that the soldier or the officer must have no politics. The soldier embodies the state in which he lives, he is the representative, the articulate exponent of his state. He must therefore stand with his whole weight behind this state.
“We must travel this road out of our deepest conviction. The Russian travels along it. We can only maintain ourselves in this war if we take part in it, with holy zeal, with all our fanaticism. . . .
“I alone cannot do this, but it can be done only with the aid of the man who holds the production of Europe in his hand—with Minister Speer. My ambition is to have as many warships for the Navy as possible so as to be able to fight and to strike. It does not matter to me who builds them.”
My Lord, that last sentence is of importance in connection with a later document. The Tribunal will see when I come to it that the defendant was not above employing concentration camp labor for this purpose.
I put in the next document in the document book, D-640, which becomes Exhibit GB-186. It is an extract from a speech on the same subject by the defendant as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy to the Commanders on the 15th of February 1944. My Lord, it is cumulative except that I think the last two sentences add, if I might read them:
“From the very start the whole of the officer corps must be so indoctrinated that it feels itself co-responsible for the National Socialist State in its entirety. The officer is the exponent of the State, the idle chatter that the officer is non-political is sheer nonsense.”
Now, the next document is 2878-PS, which I put in to become Exhibit GB-187. It consists of three extracts from speeches. The first is from a speech made by the defendant to the German Navy and the German people on Heroes’ Day, the 12th of March 1944.