MR. ROBERTS: Very good. Now, I want to come to the document which you put in yesterday.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, wait a minute. Defendant, what do you mean by saying you don’t know that? Do you mean that you did not know the document? You said, “I don’t know that.”
JODL: I do not know what the Führer actually said in his conference on the 22d of August. I did not even know that a discussion had taken place, for I was in Vienna. I only know what is ostensibly in documents which have been submitted here.
MR. ROBERTS: Now I want to put the whole Document L-52. Dr. Exner, quite properly of course, read some extracts; but I want to read some more. Have you got copies for the Tribunal?
Now, L-52 was Hitler’s memorandum on the 9th of October 1939. May I point out that the 9th of October 1939 was 3 days after his renewed assurances to the western neutrals.
I want to refer—certain passages you have read; I want to refer to others.
[Turning to the Tribunal.] My Lord, what I am now reading from, starting with the outside page, is the 5th page. It is Page 27 of the original, which appears in the bottom right-hand corner.
[Turning to the defendant.] I read the paragraph on Page 25 of your original, Witness.
“Germany’s military means of waging a lengthy war are, as far as our main enemy is concerned, the Air Force and the U-boat arm.
“The U-boat can even today, if ruthlessly employed, become an extraordinary threat to England. The weaknesses of German U-boat warfare lie in the great distance of approach to the scene of their activity, in the extraordinary danger attached to these approaches, and in the continual threat to their home bases. That England has not, for the moment, laid the great mine fields as in World War I, between Norway and the Shetland Islands, is possibly connected—provided the will to wage war exists at all—with a shortage of necessary blockade materials. But if the War lasts long an increasing difficulty to our U-boats must be reckoned with in the use of these only remaining inward and outward routes. Every creation of U-boat bases outside these constricted home bases would lead to an enormous increase in the striking power of this arm.”