DÖNITZ: I mean that crews were always available to the enemy, or unskilled men could very quickly be trained.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Under Heading 4, you point to the great danger of reprisals against your own submarine crews. Did such reprisals against German U-boat crews occur at any time in the course of the war?
DÖNITZ: I do not know. I did not hear anything about reprisals in that respect. I only received reliable reports that when U-boats were bombed and destroyed from the air, the men swimming in the water were shot at. But whether these were individual acts or reprisals carried out on orders, I do not know. I assume they were individual acts.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: The decisive point of the entire letter seems to be in Heading 3; I shall read that to you:
“A directive to take action against lifeboats of sunken vessels and crew members drifting in the sea would, for psychological reasons, hardly be acceptable to U-boat crews, since it would be contrary to the innermost feelings of all sailors. Such a directive could only be considered if by it a decisive military success could be achieved.”
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.
That was necessary, and I continued that training throughout the war and supported it by very close personal contacts with the men at the bases. It was necessary to achieve very high morale, very high fighting spirit, because otherwise the severe struggle and the enormous losses, as shown on the diagram, would have been morally impossible to bear. But in spite of these high losses we continued the fight, because it had to be; and we made up for our losses and again and again replenished our forces with volunteers full of enthusiasm and full of moral strength, just because morale was so high. And I would never, even at the time of our most serious losses, have permitted that these men be given an order which was unethical or which would damage their fighting morale; much less would I myself ever have given such an order, for I placed my whole confidence in that high fighting morale and endeavored to maintain it.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: You said the U-boat forces were replenished with volunteers, did you?
DÖNITZ: We had practically only volunteers.