DÖNITZ: Yes.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Why didn’t the Defendant Von Ribbentrop and all these naval advisers stipulate for that when Germany adhered to this Treaty, if you were going to interpret it in that way? Were you ever asked about it before Germany adhered to this Treaty in 1936?
DÖNITZ: I was not asked before Germany signed this Treaty; Germany adhered to the Treaty in practice, as I know very well, until countermeasures were introduced; and then I received orders to act accordingly.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Just let us go through this document and see if you can help me perhaps a little more on some other points. Why was this action to be based on the unspoken approval of the naval war staff? Why hadn’t the naval war staff the courage to speak its approval in an ordinary order if it was all right?
DÖNITZ: Yes; the paper you are showing me is a note or memorandum made by a young official on the Naval Operations Staff. In fact—it was the idea of that particular officer on the Naval Operations Staff; and as I have pointed out here, I did not know of the matter—in actual fact, the Naval Operations Staff never gave me such an order. The contents of that paper are fiction.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: No, of course, they weren’t to issue an order at all. You see, this states with great frankness that you were to act on the unspoken approval of the naval war staff, so that the naval war staff could say, as you have said now, “We didn’t issue an order;” and the junior officers would be acting on an unspoken word, and I want to know—you have been Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy—why is it done in this way, why is it done by unspoken words, on oral orders?
DÖNITZ: No, precisely that is not correct. That was this young officer’s idea. The order which I received from the Naval Operations Staff stated explicitly that blacked-out vessels could be sunk in this area where English transports were traveling from England to France. So, you see, it contained none of the things stated in this memorandum. There is no doubt that the section chief and likewise the Chief of the Naval Operations Staff refused and rejected that entirely impossible idea and gave me that short and explicit order.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Are you suggesting to the Tribunal that on these vitally important points—“unspoken approval of the war staff, U-boat commanders informed by word of mouth”—that a young staff officer is allowed to put in an incorrect memorandum and get away with it uncorrected? Is that the way, is that the state of efficiency of the staff of the German Navy?
DÖNITZ: No, that is a misunderstanding. It actually has been corrected. That is a note submitted by the official on the Naval Operations Staff, of which his superiors on the Naval Operations Staff did not approve. It was corrected. There was no unspoken agreement but an explicit and clear order to myself; so that young officer’s idea had already been turned down by the Naval Operations Staff itself.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You know that the original is initialed by Admiral Von Friedeburg?