“The rescue of members of the crew of a ship sunk is not to be attempted. Rescue is contradictory to the most primitive demands of warfare, which are the annihilation of enemy ships and crews.”
It has been disputed by the Prosecution that this actually prohibits rescue. It looks upon this order as a hidden provocation to kill the shipwrecked, and it has gone through the press of the world as a command for murder. If any accusation at all has been refuted in this Trial, then it seems to me to be this ignominious interpretation of the order mentioned above.
How was this order brought on? Beginning with June 1942, the losses of German submarines through the Allied air force rose by leaps and bounds, and jumped from a monthly average of 4 or 5 during the first 6 months of 1942 to 10, 11, 13, finally reaching 38 boats in May 1943. Orders and measures from the command of submarine warfare multiplied in order to counter those losses. They were of no avail and every day brought fresh reports of air attacks and losses of submarines.
This was the situation when on 12 September it was reported that the heavily armed British troop transport Laconia with 1,500 Italian prisoners of war and an Allied crew of 1,000 men and some women and children aboard had been torpedoed. Admiral Dönitz withdrew several submarines from current operations for the purpose of rescuing the shipwrecked, no distinction being made between Italians and Allies. From the very start the danger of enemy air attacks filled him with anxiety. While the submarines during the following days devotedly rescued, towed boats, supplied food, and so forth, they received no less than three admonitions from the Commander to be careful, to divide the shipwrecked, and at all times to be ready to submerge. These warnings were of no avail. On 16 September one of the submarines displaying a Red Cross flag and towing life boats was attacked and considerably damaged by an Allied bomber; one lifeboat was hit and losses caused among the shipwrecked. Following this report the Commander sent three more radio messages with orders immediately to submerge in case of danger and under no circumstances to risk the boats’ own safety. Again without avail. In the evening of that day, 17 September 1942, the second submarine reported that during rescue actions it had been taken unawares and bombed by an airplane.
Notwithstanding these experiences, and in spite of the explicit order from Führer headquarters not to endanger any boats under any consideration, Admiral Dönitz did not discontinue rescue work, but had it continued until the shipwrecked were taken aboard French warships sent to their rescue. However, this incident was a lesson. Due to enemy air reconnaissance activity over the entire sea area, it was simply no longer possible to carry out rescue measures without endangering the submarine. It was useless to give orders over and over again to commanders to undertake rescue work only if their own boats were not endangered thereby. Earlier experiences had already shown that their human desire to render aid had led many commanders to underestimate the dangers from the air. Yet it takes a submarine with decks cleared at least one minute to submerge on alarm, while an airplane can cover 6,000 meters in that time. In practice this means that a submarine engaged in rescue action when sighting a plane has not time enough to submerge.
These were the reasons which caused Admiral Dönitz directly after the close of the Laconia incident to forbid rescue measures on principle. This was motivated by the endeavor to preclude any calculation on the part of the commander as to the danger of air attack whenever in individual cases he should feel tempted to undertake rescue work.
It is difficult to judge the actual effects of this order. From 1943 on about 80 percent of the submarines were fighting against convoys, where even without this order rescue measures would have been impossible. Whether or not some commander would have, without this order, again risked concerning himself with the lifeboats, nobody can tell with certainty. As is known, an order existed since the middle of 1942 to bring in as prisoners, if possible, captains and chief engineers. Over a period of almost 3 years this order was carried out not even a dozen times, which proves how high the commanders themselves estimated the danger to their boats in surfacing. On the other hand, nothing was more distressing for members of the crews of torpedoed ships than to be taken aboard a U-boat, because of course they knew that their chance of being rescued was much better in a lifeboat than on a U-boat which, with a probability of at least 50 percent, would not return to its base. Therefore, I arrive at the conclusion, as did Admiral Godt, that the Laconia order may have cost the lives of some Allied seamen just as it may have saved the lives of others. Be that as it may, in the face of the enormous losses by the enemy air forces the order forbidding rescue was justified. It was completely in line with the basic idea of the precedence of one’s own vessel and of one’s own task, as prevailing in all navies; a principle which I believe I have proved as commonly valid in view of existing British and American orders and practices.
How then can the Prosecution consider this order an “order to murder”? Grounds for this are said to be furnished by the discussion between Hitler and the Japanese Ambassador, Oshima, in January 1942, in which Hitler mentioned a prospective order to his U-boats to kill the survivors of ships sunk. This announcement, the Prosecution infers, Hitler doubtless followed up, and Admiral Dönitz carried it out by the Laconia order. Actually, on the occasion of a report on U-boat problems which both admirals had to make in May 1942, the Führer suggested that in future action should be taken against the shipwrecked, that is, to shoot them; Admiral Dönitz immediately rejected this sort of action as thoroughly impossible and Grossadmiral Raeder unreservedly agreed with him. Both admirals specified the improvement of torpedoes as the only permissible way to increase losses among the crews. In the face of the opposition of both admirals Adolf Hitler dropped his proposal, and following this report no order whatever was given concerning shipwrecked crews, let alone concerning the killing of the shipwrecked by shooting. The destruction of the crews through improved efficiency of the torpedoes is an idea which for the first time cropped up during this discussion in May 1942, and which recurs in later documents of the Naval Operations Staff. I must therefore express myself on the legality of such a tendency. According to classical international law the destruction of combatants constituted a legal aim of war actions, not however that of noncombatants.[[27]] In view of the development of the last wars one may be doubtful whether this classical theory still has any validity. I am inclined to regard the hunger blockade as the first important infringement of this theory, which by cutting off all food supply was aimed at the civilian population, therefore the noncombatants of a country. The victims of this during the first World War were estimated at 700,000 people.[[28]] Although this blockade was frequently acknowledged to be inadmissible according to international law,[[29]] it was nevertheless practiced, and therefore it amounts to an infringement of the principle of protection for noncombatants against war measures.[[30]]
The second great infringement was brought on by aerial warfare. I do not wish to discuss the unsolvable question of who started it, but only to state the fact that war from the air, at least during the two final years, was aimed against the civilian population. If in dozens of attacks on residential quarters of German cities thousands or tens of thousands of civilians were among the victims while soldiers numbered only a few dozen or a few hundred, then nobody can assert that the civilian population was not included in the target of the attack. The mass dropping of explosives and incendiary bombs on entire areas does not permit of doubt, and the use of the atomic bomb has produced final evidence thereof.
In view of the hundreds of thousands of women and children who in this manner miserably perished in their houses by being buried, suffocated, or burnt to death, I am surprised at the indignation of the Prosecution about the loss of about 30,000 men who lost their lives in war areas on ships which were armed and carried war material, and often enough bombs destined for German cities. Moreover, most of these men died in combat, that is, by mines, aircraft action, and especially in attacks on convoys, all actions which according to British conception, too, were lawful.