SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, I put to you your own statement that you made a year ago. I just want to get it quite clear that the first time in your life that you were moved to protest was, I think, in March 1945, when you saw the actual marks of torture on the hands of your friend, Herr Gessler, and at that time the Soviet troops were over the Oder and the Allies were over the Rhine, and that was the first time that you made any protest when you took off your Party Golden Emblem, wasn’t it? That was the first protest you ever made in your naval, military, political career; is that right?
RAEDER: Not a bit of it. I did not really know what was going on.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well then—I put it again. In March 1945 you took off the Party Golden Emblem when you saw the marks of torture on your friend Gessler’s hands. Isn’t that right?
RAEDER: When Dr. Gessler, who in spite of my objections had been kept for several months in a concentration camp, returned from the concentration camp and informed me that he was in extremely pitiful condition, and that in spite of my request in August, when he was sent to the concentration camp and when I had asked the Führer through Admiral Wagner for Dr. Gessler to be questioned quickly because he was certainly innocent in connection with the assassination attempt, so that he could be released as soon as possible, then...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, my question is, was it then that you took off the Party Emblem. You can answer that. You can give your explanation later.
RAEDER: Yes, but wait a moment.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But up to then you did not make any protest against anything that Hitler did, except the purely military one on the invasion of the Soviet Union?
RAEDER: I always made serious protests, and that I have proved here, and the adjutant, General Schmundt, told me, “You will be most successful if you try to influence the Führer personally when you are alone with him and tell him quite openly what you think.” This is important enough to mention and I must say it.
Well, Dr. Gessler came back from the concentration camp and told me that during his first interrogation—at that time I had not yet had a chance to intervene—he had been tortured. That was the first time that I heard that anywhere in Germany anybody was tortured. There is a letter from Dr. Gessler about that—that I told him immediately, “I am going to the Führer at once to tell him about this because I cannot imagine that he knows about that.” Gessler begged me—when he confirmed that letter—for goodness sake not to go to the Führer then, because that would endanger his, Gessler’s, life. I said I would answer for it that nothing would happen to him, and that I would still try to approach the Führer.
During the whole of the ensuing period I attempted to approach the Führer, who was not at headquarters. When I was informed in April that he was in Berlin, which was already under heavy attack, I tried to approach the Führer day after day by calling Admiral Voss over the telephone. That was no longer possible, and after I received that information the first thing I did was that I went, together with my wife, to the lake which was behind our house and tore off my Party Emblem and threw it into the lake. I told that to Admiral Voss but unfortunately I could not tell it to the Führer any more. That can be seen from the letter which Dr. Gessler wrote, and we would have liked to have him as a witness, but his state of health did not permit it.