FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Page 32, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: I should like to state my position on a formal objection. Some of these statements are not sworn statements. I refer to Article 19 of the Charter, according to which the Tribunal is to use all matters of evidence which have probative value. I believe that a written report by an officer about his activity as commanding officer has probative value, even if it is not sworn to. A report of this kind before a German naval court would be accepted in evidence without question.
The last document in this group, Dönitz-19, Page 34, concerns the document of the Prosecution, Exhibit GB-199. It is a radio message on Page 36 of the British document book of the Prosecution. It concerns a radio message which the U-boat commanded by Kapitänleutnant Schacht received from Admiral Dönitz, and deals with the rescue or nonrescue of Englishmen and Italians.
Document Dönitz-19 is a log book of Schacht’s U-boat and shows, first, the armament and crew of the Laconia, whose crew is the one in question, and second, it explains why comparatively few of the numerous Italians and comparatively many of the less numerous Englishmen were rescued. The events were known to Admiral Dönitz from radio messages.
Document Dönitz-29...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kranzbühler, as I told you, the Tribunal has read all of these documents and examined them, and therefore it isn’t necessary for you to go into them as a small group, and it isn’t necessary for you to go into each document, if you will indicate the nature of the groups.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Then I should like to mention the Documents Dönitz-29 on Pages 54 to 59 of the document book; Dönitz-31, Page 64; Dönitz-32 on Page 65; Dönitz-33 on Page 66; Dönitz-37 on Page 78; Dönitz-38 on Page 80 and Dönitz-40 on Page 86; these documents are also concerned with the subject of survivors. Dönitz-29 is concerned with a statement of the witness Heisig.
The Prosecution has declared that I could not question the character of the witness Heisig because I had not made that point during the cross-examination of Heisig. In this connection I wish to state that in my opinion I attacked the credibility of Heisig during the cross-examination as far as it was possible at the time. I knew of the existence of that witness only three days before he appeared here.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kranzbühler, you are now proceeding to deal with each document. You have given us quite a number of documents which all fall in this group, of the treatment of shipwrecks and we have already seen those documents and therefore, we can consider them as a group. We do not need to have these details about the question of the credibility of Heisig, which is already before us.