RAEDER: No.
DR. SIEMERS: You do not know when it was written down?
RAEDER: No, I never heard when.
DR. SIEMERS: Did you ever see this document before this Trial?
RAEDER: No.
DR. SIEMERS: Does this document contain a correct reproduction in all points of Hitler’s speech, or does what you said about the Hossbach Document apply here also?
RAEDER: It applies even more here. In my opinion it is the most abstruse document concerning a Hitler speech in existence, for a large part of the statements in my opinion makes no sense whatsoever, as I have tried to show. The adjutant stated that he was only paraphrasing.
DR. SIEMERS: This is on the first page in the center where it is written, “Reproduced in Substance.”
Please explain to the Court what impression this speech made on you at the time and why you believed, in spite of this speech, that Hitler was not planning any war of aggression.
RAEDER: I should like to point out again here that the trial brief makes the comment that consultation took place regarding the scale on which the plan should be executed. Particularly in this case this does not at all represent the character of the speech correctly. The meaning of the whole first part of the speech, as I said, is extremely vague. Whereas in the 1937 speech he gave 1943 to 1945 as the latest deadline and the possibility of an earlier date under certain improbable circumstances, here Hitler speaks of a solution as being possible in 15 to 20 years. He says that Poland is always on the side of the enemy, in spite of the treaty of friendship, that her secret intention is to take advantage of any opportunity to act against us, and that he, therefore, wants to attack Poland at the first opportunity. The Polish problem cannot be separated from the conflict in the West, but a conflict in the West must not be permitted to arise simultaneously. If it is uncertain as to whether a war with the West will or will not take place in the wake of the German-Polish conflict, then a line of battle first against England and France is perhaps of greater importance. Then again, he says that we cannot allow ourselves to be drawn into a war with England on account of Poland, a war on two fronts such as the incapable men of 1914 had brought about.