FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: A memorandum of the Naval Operations Staff was issued in the middle of October: “On the Possibilities of Intensifying the War against Merchant Shipping”; I am going to have this memorandum shown to you. Its number is GB-224. After looking at this memorandum please tell me what its purpose was and what the memorandum contains.
Mr. President, some extracts can be found on Page 199, in Volume IV of the document book.
WAGNER: This memorandum was issued due to the situation that existed since the beginning of the war. On 3 September 1939 Britain had begun a total hunger blockade against Germany. Naturally that was not directed only against the fighting men, but against all nonfighting members, including women, children, the aged, and the sick. It meant that Britain would declare all food rations, all luxury goods, all clothing, as well as all raw materials necessary for these items, as contraband and would also exercise a strict control of neutral shipping of which Germany would be deprived insofar as it would have to go through waters controlled by Great Britain. Apart from that, England exercised a growing political and economic pressure upon the European neighbors of Germany to cease all commerce with Germany.
That intention of the total hunger blockade was emphatically confirmed by the Head of the British Government, Prime Minister Chamberlain, during a speech before the House of Commons at the end of September. He described Germany as a beleaguered fort; and he added that it was not customary for beleaguered forts to be accorded free rations. That expression of the beleaguered fort was also taken up by the French press.
Furthermore, Prime Minister Chamberlain stated around the beginning of October—according to this memorandum it was on 12 October—that in this war Britain would utilize her entire strength for the destruction of Germany. From this we drew the conclusion, aided by the experiences of the last World War, that England would soon hit German exports under some pretext or other.
With the shadow of the total hunger blockade, which no doubt had been thoroughly prepared during long years of peace, creeping in upon us we now had a great deal to do to catch up, since we had not prepared for war against Great Britain. We examined, both from the legal and military point of view, the possibilities at our disposal by which we in turn might cut off Britain’s supplies. That was the aim and purpose of that memorandum.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: You are saying, therefore, that this memorandum contains considerations regarding means for countering the British measures with correspondingly effective German measures?
WAGNER: Yes, that was definitely the purpose of that memorandum.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Studying that memorandum you will find a sentence—C. 1. is the paragraph—according to which the Naval Operations Staff must remain basically within the limits of international law, but that decisive war measures would have to be carried out even if the existing international law could not be applied to them.
Did this mean that international law was to be generally disregarded by the Naval Operations Staff, or what is the meaning of this sentence?