DÖNITZ: I do not approve 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 his crew, and that responsibility is a serious one in time of war. Therefore, if for the reason that he believed he would otherwise be spotted and destroyed—and that reason was not unfounded, because in the same operational area and during the same time four submarines, I think, had been bombed—if he came to his decision for that reason, then a German court-martial would undoubtedly have taken it into consideration.
I believe that after the war one views events differently, and one does not fully realize the great responsibility which an unfortunate commander carries.
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. We have a large number of similar reports about the other side, and we were always of the opinion, and also stated that opinion in writing to the Führer and the OKW, that one must view these cases with a good deal of skepticism, because a shipwrecked person can easily believe that he is being fired on, whereas the shots may not be aimed at him at all, but at the ship, that is, misses of some sort.
The fact that the Prosecution gives just these two examples proves to me that my conviction is correct, that apart from the Eck case no further instances of this kind occurred during those long years in the ranks of the large German U-boat force.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: You mentioned before the discussion with the Führer in May 1942, during which the problem whether it was permissible to kill survivors was examined, or at least touched upon by the Führer. Was that question re-examined at any time by the Commander-in-Chief of U-boats or the Naval Operations Staff?
DÖNITZ: When I had become Commander-in-Chief of the Navy...
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: That was in 1943?