Do you agree with Admiral Assmann on that?
RAEDER: No, he is wrong. It was not violated at all in this point, and the reason it started so early was because all the ex-U-boat commanders and U-boat officers and technicians were out of a job and offered their services to maintain technical developments in U-boats abroad; that is why it was so early. But that has nothing to do with me because I had no say in these matters then. At that time I was working on the Navy Archives.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, how are you able to be so confident today that Admiral Assmann is wrong? I thought you said that he was a good historian. He had not to go back very far. He only goes back 20 years.
RAEDER: A good historian can make mistakes too if his information is wrong. I merely said I had confidence in him...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You say quite in detail—the first paragraph is about Japan.
RAEDER: Yes; what he says about the building of U-boats is wrong.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, let’s just see how far he was wrong. We needn’t go into the first paragraph which deals with shipbuilding for Japan, but take the second one: “In 1922...” Do you see the paragraph which begins:
“As early as 1922, three German shipbuilding yards established a German U-boat designing office in Holland under a Dutch cover name with about 30 engineers and designers. In 1925 a Dutch shipbuilding yard built two 500-ton U-boats for Turkey according to the plans of this bureau, which enjoyed the financial and personal support of the Naval Command. In the solution of this question, too, Kapitän zur See Lohmann was concerned decisively.”
Is that right?
RAEDER: We have admitted that. That was in no way a violation of the Versailles Treaty.