COL. POKROVSKY: All right. We will be more exact about whether this is really the fact. Several times, in a very definite manner, you testified here before the Tribunal that for many years before the war and during the war you were indoctrinating the Navy in the spirit of pure idealism and firm respect for the customs and laws of war. Is that so?
DÖNITZ: Right; yes.
COL. POKROVSKY: In particular, on 9 May, yesterday, at 1254 hours, you said, “I educated the submarine fleet in the pure idealism and I continued such education during the war. It was necessary for me in order to achieve high fighting morale.” Five minutes later on the same day, you said, when speaking about the Navy, “I never would have tolerated that orders were given to these people which would be contradictory to such morale, and it is out of the question that I myself could have given such an order.” You acknowledge that those were your words, or approximately your words, allowing for the possible inexactness of translation; is that not so?
DÖNITZ: Of course, that is what I said.
COL. POKROVSKY: I would like you to take a look at the document which is in your possession now, the document presented by your defense counsel as Dönitz-91. In this document your defense counsel presents an excerpt from the testimony, the affidavit made by Dr. Joachim Rudolphi. In order not to waste the Tribunal’s time, I would like you to tell us briefly in one word, “yes” or “no,” whether Rudolphi is correct in his testimony; that you always strongly opposed the introduction into the German Armed Forces of the Hitlerite so-called “People’s Courts.” Did you understand me?
DÖNITZ: I was against handing over legal cases from the Navy to other courts. I said that, if one bears the responsibility for a branch of the Armed Forces, one also must have court-martial jurisdiction. That is what it says.
COL. POKROVSKY: And you are familiar with Rudolphi’s affidavit?
DÖNITZ: Yes, I know it.
COL. POKROVSKY: You remember that on the first page of that excerpt presented to the Tribunal it says:
“Early in the summer of 1943, the first threatening attempt to undermine the nonpolitical jurisdiction of the Armed Forces was made.”