MAJOR JONES: When you discovered at the end of September that in fact it was the U-30 that had sunk the Athenia, there was then a good deal to be covered, was there not?
VON WEIZSÄCKER: I believe that I stated already yesterday that I had heard nothing to that effect.
MAJOR JONES: Are you saying that you did not know at the end of September, on the return of the U-30, that the U-30 had in fact sunk the Athenia?
VON WEIZSÄCKER: I do not remember that in any way at all.
MAJOR JONES: When did you first discover that the U-30 had sunk the Athenia?
VON WEIZSÄCKER: As far as I remember, not at all during the war.
MAJOR JONES: But I understood you to say yesterday that you thought that the publication in the Völkischer Beobachter, accusing Mr. Winston Churchill of sinking the Athenia, was a piece of perverse imagination; is that right?
VON WEIZSÄCKER: Completely.
MAJOR JONES: Are you really saying to the Tribunal that—though you were in a responsible job—are you saying to the Tribunal that you did not discover the true facts about the Athenia until the end of the war, when you were directly concerned in the Foreign Office with this matter?
VON WEIZSÄCKER: I told you already yesterday what I know about this. It seems, does it not, that it was realized later by the Navy that the sinking of the Athenia was due to the action of a German submarine, but I cannot at all remember that I or the Foreign Office were informed of this fact.