SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, I want to ask you about an officer of yours, Vice Admiral Assmann. Was he an officer in whom you had confidence?
RAEDER: He was a very able historian.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Will you answer my question? Was he an officer in whom you had confidence?
RAEDER: I had confidence that he would write history correctly.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That is all I wanted. Now, would you have a look at a new document, which is Document Number D-854, which, My Lord, will be Exhibit Number GB-460. Now, that is an extract from one of a series of essays on the operational and tactical considerations of the German Navy and consequent measures taken for its expansion between 1919 and 1939, contained among the files of Vice Admirals Assmann and Gladisch, who were in the historical section of the German Admiralty.
Now, would you mind not looking at it for a moment, Defendant? I want to ask you some questions and then you can look at it with pleasure afterwards. Do you agree that in nearly all spheres of armament where the Navy was concerned, the Treaty of Versailles was violated in the letter and all the more in the spirit? Do you agree with that?
RAEDER: No, by no means in every sphere. In the most important sphere we were far behind the Versailles Treaty, as I explained to you very clearly. Possibly we infringed on it the other way round, by not doing as much as we could have done.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Will you just look at this document. At the beginning of the first quotation your officers say:
“But if—as was stated—in nearly all spheres of armament where the Navy was concerned, the Treaty of Versailles was violated in the letter and all the more in the spirit—or at least its violation was prepared—a long time before the 16th of March 1935...”
Are your admirals wrong in stating that? Is that what you are telling the Tribunal?