RAEDER: In my recollection, certainly not. The Führer was not accustomed to using expressions like that in speeches which he made to the generals.
DR. SIEMERS: On the other hand, the version put forth by Böhm shows that Hitler had, by this time, decided to attack Poland. I am asking you to give us briefly the impression, which the speech made on you at the time. Tell me also why, despite this speech which even in this version is severe, you retained your office as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy.
RAEDER: Without doubt, I had the impression that the situation was serious and tremendously tense. The fact, however, that Hitler in his speech put too great a stress on proving that France and England would not intervene, and the second fact that Herr Von Ribbentrop, the Reich Foreign Minister, left for Moscow on the same day to sign a pact there, as we were told—these things filled not only me but all listeners as well with the strong hope that here again was a case of a clever move by Hitler, which in the end he would successfully solve in a peaceful way.
Therefore I saw no reason to resign my office at that moment. I would have considered that pure desertion.
DR. SIEMERS: May it please the Tribunal, in this connection I would like, because of their chronological correspondence, to submit the two documents Exhibits Raeder-28 and 29, and I ask that the Tribunal only take judicial notice without my making further reference to them.
The Prosecution have cited Document C-155 and have accused you, through this document...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, of the documents to which Dr. Siemers has just referred—Documents Raeder-28 and 29—the first is a memorandum of General Gamelin and the second is a letter from General Weygand to General Gamelin of 9 September 1939.
Your Lordship will remember that the Prosecution objected to these documents as being irrelevant, and, My Lord, the Prosecution maintain that objection.
I do not wish to interrupt Dr. Siemers’ examination any more than is necessary. If at the moment he is merely asking the Tribunal to take judicial notice of the documents and does not intend to use them, it would probably be convenient—in order not to interrupt the examination-in-chief—that I merely indicate formally that we are maintaining our objection to the document. Of course, I am at the disposal of the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: Is this the position, that they were allowed to be translated and put in the document book but that no further order of the Tribunal has been given?