SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But the argument I am suggesting to you, you know, was that the building program would be useless if you could destroy or frighten off sufficient merchant navy crews. That is the point in Hitler’s conversation, and that Heisig said you said. Did you say that?
DÖNITZ: I have always taken the view that losses of crews would make replacement difficult, and this is stated in my war diary together with similar ideas, and perhaps I said something of the kind to my midshipmen.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Would you look at Page 37 of the Prosecution document book, Page 76 in the German translation? It is an order dated 7 October 1943 (Document Number D-663, Exhibit Number GB-200). I just want you to look at the last sentence: “In view of the desired destruction of ships’ crews, their sinking is of great value.”
DÖNITZ: I have read it.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: “In view of the desired destruction of ships’ crews, their sinking is of great value,” and it is continually pressing, the need for ships’ crews.
DÖNITZ: Yes, of course, but in the course of fighting. It is perfectly clear that these rescue ships were heavily armed. They had aircraft and could be sunk just like other convoy ships. If there were steamer crews on hand it was naturally our desire to sink them since we were justified in sinking such crews. Moreover they were used as U-boat traps near the steamers.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: On the question of the rightness or wrongness of sinking rescue ships, the destruction of ships’ crews, now, I want to ask you one or two questions about Möhle. He commanded the U-boat Flotilla from 1942 until the end of the war. That is nearly three years; and as he told us, he has a number of decorations for gallant service. Are you telling the Tribunal that Commander Möhle went on briefing submarine commanders on a completely mistaken basis for three years without any of your staff or yourself discovering this? You saw every U-boat commander when he came back.
DÖNITZ: I am sorry that Korvettenkapitän Möhle, being the only one who said he had doubts in connection with this order, as he declared here, did not report this right away. I could not know that he had these doubts. He had every opportunity of clearing up these doubts and I did not know, and nobody on my staff had any idea, that he had these thoughts.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, I have a letter here, a letter from a widow of one of your submarine commanders. I cannot get the commander and this is a letter from his widow. I want you to say what you think of a passage in it.
She says—in the second paragraph—“Captain Möhle says he has not found one U-boat commander who objected to the order to fire at helpless seamen who were in distress in the water.”