THE PRESIDENT: There may have been some mistake.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You will certainly get it.
[Turning to the defendant.] Now, we will pass to another gentleman on your staff. You told us a good deal about the naval budgets. Do you remember a Flottenintendant in your department, Secretary Flottenintendant Thiele, of the OKM Department E, the Budget Department of the German Admiralty? Do you remember?
RAEDER: Yes. Mr. Prosecutor, may I just say one more thing about the question of 118? I have just remembered something in connection with this Number 6, Chief of the Naval Budget Department. It is perfectly possible that in this case Admiral Assmann has taken two things together. All U-boats and ships were, of course, included in the budget and in this way sanctioned. This budget was drafted at the end of the year and published before the year to which it applied. As this large figure suddenly appears in this document, it is perfectly possible that here the Figure 118 originates on the basis of the agreement with England made on 30 or 31 December. It is perfectly natural that we should include in the budget all the other U-boats which we were allowed to build to complete the 100 percent. This does not necessarily mean that we started to build the U-boats in 1938. Incidentally I think we might have perhaps begun, because one can only build so and so many U-boats in any one year.
I think that this explanation, which occurred to me when I saw the words “Naval Budget Department,” is a perfectly correct one.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The Tribunal has the wording; that is, “up to 1938,” and I am not going to argue the point with you. The words speak for themselves.
I would like you to look at Document Number D-855, which becomes Exhibit Number GB-461, and it is an extract from a lecture by the gentleman I have just mentioned, Herr Thiele, which was given at the German Naval Training Center for Administrative Officers in Prague on 12 July 1944. The extract I want to put to you is on Page 22, and it is headed “Ship Construction Plan.” Have you got that—Page 22, and the heading is “Ship Construction Plan”? You see the paragraph beginning:
“The era of the very large development of the Navy had therefore come at the moment of the seizure of power. Already in the first year after this, in March 1935, the construction of battle cruisers with a displacement of 27,000 tons was undertaken. Such a vessel was ordered to be constructed. Thus one of the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles which was the most important for us was at once violated in the naval sphere in a manner which in a short time could no longer be camouflaged.”
Is not Flottenintendant Thiele right when he says that in his lecture?
RAEDER: Of course it was a violation, but I have explained here at length that there was no question of building new battle cruisers but of utilizing the two armored ships which had already been granted us; and I said that in 1934 Hitler had only given me permission to enlarge somewhat the plans for these ships, so that the armor might be heavier. I see from this that it was not until March 1935, when it was certain that the treaty would be concluded and also that England would allow us to build such ships through this treaty in a few months’ time that the Führer sanctioned the plans projected for the 26,500 ton ships which were to be the first of the battleships in the new program; and they were then begun. So that the three 28 cm turrets—that is, the offensive weapons which he had not yet approved in 1934—were thrown in.