COL. POKROVSKY: Yes, and I would like you to be brief.
RAEDER: Quite briefly, yes. I had requested Hitler when I heard that he intended in the course of the war to bombard Leningrad, that he should spare the port and dock installations because they would be useful for us later, as we had to keep moving our bases back to the East on account of the British air attacks in the Baltic. Shortly before the date which you have mentioned Admiral Fricke had been at the Führer’s headquarters—I do not know for what reason—and had there spoken with the Führer in my absence, and the Führer had explained to him that plan to bombard Leningrad, especially with aircraft, and he used those very exaggerated words which were then written down in the document. The Navy had absolutely nothing to do with the shelling of Leningrad. We received no orders for that. We were only interested in that one thing which I mentioned before, that the shipyards and port installations should be spared. The Führer had informed Fricke that unfortunately he was not in a position to do that because the attack, especially if made with aircraft, could not be directed quite so precisely. All we could do was to inform Generaladmiral Carls that Leningrad, in case it should be taken, could not be used as a base, and Generaladmiral Carls had to stop the preparations which he had already begun by allocating German workers and probably also machinery which was intended to be used in Leningrad later on. Carls had to know of that and, as the document says, the so-called Quartermaster Department of the Navy had to know about it, and that was why Admiral Fricke passed on that paper. Unfortunately he included in this paper the expressions used by Hitler, which had nothing to do with the whole affair as far as we were concerned, because we had nothing to do with the shelling. By so doing he did not assume in any way the responsibility, in the sense that he approved it. He only believed that he had to pass on Hitler’s wording of the order.
The Navy had nothing to do with the matter. It would not have been necessary to pass it on, and unfortunately and very clumsily that expression used by Hitler was entered in that document. However, nothing happened and that document was not passed on from Generaladmiral Carls to our Finland Commander. That is the whole story.
COL. POKROVSKY: It seems to me the question is becoming more complicated. I asked you a simple question. Your Chief of Staff, Chief of Operations, published a directive. Did you know about the directive?
RAEDER: No. That is not a directive—that can be seen also from the photostat—because the letter had not been submitted to me for passing on, and that shows that it was not considered to be very important. It was not a directive to undertake any operation or anything important. It was just a directive to stop anything that might have been done with regard to bases; so that really nothing happened. Thus, when that document was passed on by Admiral Fricke, nothing happened at all. It was quite superfluous.
COL. POKROVSKY: You are talking about the destruction of one of the biggest cities of the Soviet Union. You are talking in this document about razing the city to the ground, and you maintain now that it is a more or less trifling question, that this question was not important enough to be reported to you, as Fricke’s Chief? Do you want us to believe that?
RAEDER: Of course. It is not a question of the shelling of Leningrad, with which we had nothing to do at all. It was the minor question which concerned us, the question as to whether we would later be able to establish a naval base there, and whether we could bring workers and machines and such things to Leningrad. That was a minor issue. The shelling of Leningrad was a major issue.
COL. POKROVSKY: I think that the Tribunal will be able to understand you correctly and to draw the necessary conclusions, both from this document and from your testimony.
Now, I have one last question for you. On 28 August 1945, in Moscow, did you not write an affidavit as to the reasons for Germany’s defeat?
RAEDER: Yes, I took special pains with that after the collapse.