Do you agree that Captain Schüssler was giving an accurate description of your methods from 1933 to 1935?
RAEDER: How does he describe it? Where is that passage?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It is Number 4.
RAEDER: “Armament under the leadership of the Reich Government in camouflaged form”?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You agree that it is a correct description of your activities from 1933 to 1935?
RAEDER: Of course. I did that on orders from the head of the State; and before all the head of the State was very anxious to see that no exaggerated measures should be taken, so that it would not interfere in any way with his plans for making an agreement with Great Britain. He allowed very little to be done with regard to the Navy. He could at once have built eight armored ships, so many destroyers, and so many torpedo boats, none of which had yet been built, but he did none of these things because he said, “We do not want to create the impression that we are arming on a large scale.” He approved only two...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You have explained that; so note, Defendant, the point is this—the “camouflaged form” when you were negotiating the naval agreement. You did not want anyone to know what steps you had taken contrary to the treaty and how far you had gone. That is the plain fact of it—you wanted to get the naval agreement without disclosing what you had done, isn’t that so?
RAEDER: No, that distorts the sense of what I said. We did not want the announcement of these measures to cause strained relations between Germany and Britain. The measures as such were completely justifiable and were extremely minor ones.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I will come to that in a moment. I only do want, before we leave these naval works, to ask you one question about another book. You know that Oberst Scherff projected a history of the German Navy. I don’t want any misunderstanding about it. As I understand the position, you permitted Oberst Scherff to have recourse to the archives of the Navy but beyond that you hadn’t seen anything of his work, isn’t that right?
RAEDER: I did not see his book at all. I saw the table of contents here the first time I was interrogated. I did not give him the order, either; he received it from the Führer; and for that reason I allowed the Chief of the Navy Archives to assist him.