“On 30 September 1939 the first sinking of a neutral ship by a submarine took place without a warning signal having been given. On that occasion some people lost their lives. The ship was the Danish steamer Vendia.”
With reference to this I am submitting Dönitz-83, on Page 235. That is the War Log of Submarine U-3, which sank the Vendia. I should like to read parts of it on account of its importance. I begin with the second sentence:
“The steamer turns away gradually and increases speed. The boat comes up only very slowly. Obvious attempt to escape. The steamer is clearly recognizable as the Danish steamer Vendia. Boat reduces speed and uncovers her machine gun. Several warning shots are fired across the steamer’s bow. Thereupon the steamer stops very slowly; nothing more happens for a while. Then some more shots are fired. The Vendia lies into the wind.
“For 10 minutes nothing is visible on deck to remove suspicion of possible intended resistance; at 1124 hours I suddenly see bow waves and screw movements. The steamer swings sharply round toward the boat. The officer on watch and the first mate agree with my view that this is an attempt at ramming. For this reason I turn in the same angle as the steamer. A torpedo is fired 30 seconds later; point of aim, bow; point of impact, extreme rear of stern. The stern is torn off and goes down. The front part remains afloat.
“By risking the loss of our own crew and boat (heavy sea and numerous floating pieces of wreckage) six men of the Danish crew are rescued, among them the captain and helmsman. No further survivors can be seen. In the meantime the Danish steamer Swawa approaches and is stopped. She is requested to send her papers across in a boat. She is carrying a mixed cargo from Amsterdam to Copenhagen. The six persons rescued are transferred to the steamer for repatriation.”
I read the second to the last sentence on the next page:
“After the crew of the steamer had been handed over, it was learned that the engineer artificer of the steamer had told the stoker Blank that the captain had intended to ram the submarine.”
The document on Page 237, an excerpt from the Prosecution’s Exhibit GB-82, shows that the Vendia case formed the subject of a protest by the German Government to the Danish Government.
I shall deal now with the sinking of the City of Benares on 18 September 1940. In this connection I should like first to read several sentences from the Prosecution’s document, because in my opinion it is characteristic of the probative value of the entire Exhibit GB-191. I read from the British Document Book, Page 23, starting at the passage where the Prosecution stopped reading. The Tribunal will remember that the City of Benares had children on board. The Foreign Office report says here:
“The captain of the U-boat presumably did not know that there were children on board the City of Benares when he fired the torpedoes. Perhaps he did not even know the name of the ship, although there the evidence suggests strongly that he had been dogging her for several hours before torpedoing her. He must have known, however, that this was a large merchant ship, probably with civilian passengers on board, and certainly with a crew of merchant seamen. He knew the state of the weather, and he knew that they were six hundred miles from land and yet he followed them outside the blockade area and deliberately abstained from firing his torpedo until after nightfall when the chances of rescue would be enormously reduced.”