The same sense of responsibility caused him, when he became head of the State on 1 May 1945, to cease hostilities against the West, but to protract the surrender in the East for a few days, days in which hundreds of thousands were able to escape to the West. From the moment when—to his own complete surprise—he was given a political task, he calmly and intelligently averted a threatening chaos, prevented desperate mass action without a leader, and assumed responsibility before the German people for the gravest action which any statesman can take at all.
Thus, to revert to the beginning of the Indictment, he did nothing to start this war, but he took the decisive steps to end it.
Since that moment the German nation has learned of many things which it did not expect, and more than once it has been referred to the unconditional surrender which the last head of the State carried through. It is for this Tribunal to decide whether in the future this nation will be reminded of the binding value of the signature of a man who is being outlawed as a criminal before the whole world by his partners in the agreement.
At the beginning of my speech I mentioned the doubts which any trial of war criminals is bound to call forth in the mind and heart of any lawyer. They must weigh upon all who bear any responsibility in such a trial. I could not more fittingly describe the task of all the responsible persons than in the words of a British attorney speaking of the trials before the German Supreme Court in the year 1921. I quote:
“The war criminals’ trials were demanded by an angry public rather than by statesmen or the fighting services. Had public opinion in 1919 had its way, the trials might have presented a grim spectacle, of which future generations would have been ashamed. But thanks to the statesmen and the lawyers, a public yearning for revenge was converted into a real demonstration of the majesty of right and the power of law.”[[38]]
May the verdict of this Tribunal stand in a similar way before the judgment of history.
THE PRESIDENT: I call on Dr. Siemers for the Defendant Raeder.
DR. WALTER SIEMERS (Counsel for Defendant Raeder): Gentlemen of the Tribunal, in my final speech for the Defendant Grossadmiral Dr. Raeder, I should like to keep to the order I chose for my document books and for the whole presentation of my evidence. I think a survey of the whole case will thus be made easier.
Raeder, who has just turned 70 years of age, has been exclusively a soldier, body and soul, ever since the age of 18, that is to say, for nigh on half a century covering an eventful period. Although he was never concerned with anything but his duties as a soldier, the Prosecution has accused him, in this great Trial against National Socialism, not only as a soldier, namely, as Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, but, a singular and decisive point, as a politician, as a political conspirator, and as a member of the Government, three things which in truth he never was.
I am, therefore, faced with the singular task of defending Raeder as a politician, although it was precisely, as I shall demonstrate, his life principle as an officer to keep aloof from politics, and to command an officers’ corps and a Navy likewise committed to remain entirely free from politics.