The Nuremberg Interviews (6 page)

I asked him whether he was still thinking in terms of a balance of power. Yes, definitely. I asked whether he felt a war with the East was not implicit in his recommendation as to a united commonwealth of Europe to balance the weight of Russia. He replied that he had no idea of what to expect in that regard, but he was not thinking of a war with Russia in recommending a united Europe which would be a commonwealth under British protection.

He asked me where I lived and I told him. He wanted to know if it were a hotel. I said that it was formerly an apartment house. He sighed. “I’m an old man at fifty-four, without teeth, and with rheumatism.” He explained by saying that he had mostly false teeth, and that he felt his useful life was more or less passed. “My wife will have to work to get bread for us while I write my memoirs,” he said whimsically.

I don’t believe this man has any notion of what is going on in the world. He is acute, in no ways dull, but his mind seems to have blocked out the salient features of the trials thus far. He rejects the atrocities, the killing of millions of Jews, the barbarism of the SS, the entire criminal modus operandi of the Nazi Party. He sees only that he was innocent of any crime, past or present, and that any attempt to incriminate him or any of the others on trial with him is political connivery. He feels Germany’s actions were the result of oppression after the last war, on the one hand, and on the other takes no cognizance of his own culpability in being a faithful servant to Hitler and his regime. He denies atrocities at sea, and is still doubtful about them on land. What about the evidence? I asked. “Yes,” he replied, “Dr. Douglas Kelley and Dr. Gustave Gilbert both said to me when that film was shown, where the people of Weimar had to go to see Buchenwald, that it was evident from the people’s faces that they knew nothing of what went on there. In the film their faces were merry as they walked to Buchenwald. When they left the place you could see they were broken.”

I asked whether that film itself wasn’t sufficient evidence as to war crimes and their existence and the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Did he accept that film as documentary and true? Yes, of course, he said, but
regarding the other atrocities he was doubtful still. “That just shows you how much we in the leadership knew of what was transpiring.”

During the interview he drew for me a one-man torpedo and explained its workings. I told him that I’d heard it was practically a suicide venture for the pilot. He agreed, but said it was a very effective weapon when the enemy was near shore and implied that it was worth a life to get a big battleship or other craft. I said I wouldn’t like to be the pilot of one of those one-man torpedoes. He laughed and said, “To get a big ship, it’s worth it.”

As I left when called to the phone, he wrote on the paper on which he had drawn the submarine torpedo (in German), “To a pleasant afternoon’s conversation,” and signed his name. He said he had enjoyed the talk very much and I should drop in again.

I visited Doenitz this evening. Hjalmar Schacht had been on the stand all day. Doenitz smiled and asked me where I had been all week. I explained that I had flown to London and visited there for five days. He wanted to know how things were in England, the sentiment of the people, what they thought of the trials, was London very much destroyed, and so forth. I explained that my impression was based on a very short stay, and that all I could say was that things seemed better than when I was in London last year about the same time. As far as public opinion concerning the trials, I really didn’t know. The British press seemed to give the trials more space than the American papers.

“Ah. What did they have to say about Julius Streicher’s defense? Did they have much to say about the beginning of Schacht’s case, or were you in London then?” I said that apparently adequate coverage of the trial in the London newspapers was being given the public as I could follow the events in Nuremberg quite reasonably by reading the London
Times
. “Have you noticed the difference between some Englishmen and others? Some look like north Germans. Others are more like Bavarians or easterners.” I remarked that I had not paid much attention to these differences.

“I can see it in the court. Most of the time I don’t pay much attention to what is being hashed over and over again by defense and prosecution. It doesn’t interest me. I watch the faces of the judges. Biddle has a very intelligent, sympathetic face. All the other judges, with the exception of
the Frenchmen and the Russians, who are like stone men, watch Biddle and react according to what he whispers in Lawrence’s ear. Justice Lawrence is probably trying to conduct the case fairly, but it is Biddle who steps in and makes the Russian prosecution behave decently when it is on one of its wild accusations.”

What did Doenitz think of Streicher’s defense? “I didn’t listen. I drew pictures and watched Biddle.” And of Schacht’s case? “Well, I don’t want to start any camps among us defendants. Schacht is wrong about Hitler. He didn’t have to come out so strongly against him. If Schacht knew all along about Hitler ordering the exterminations, why didn’t he say so before this trial? I personally don’t think Hitler ordered it, despite his last testament.”
⁶
I replied that he was expressing almost verbatim the opinion of Goering, who had the same idea and told me it was probably Martin Bormann who did it in Hitler’s name.
⁷

Doenitz did not particularly cherish the idea that he had said something which seemed to come out of Goering’s mouth. “I’m not a politician. I was a corvette captain when the war started. I hardly knew Hitler until 1942. He always seemed reasonable and his demands seemed for the good of Germany. Now I see that he had too little consideration for other peoples, such as the Jews, or neighbor states. But I never had any idea of the goings-on as far as Jews were concerned. Hitler said each man should take care of his own business, and mine was U-boats and the navy.”

As usual, Doenitz turned to a discussion of his own case and the ridiculousness of it. “It’s so ridiculous. That American navy officer who presented the case against me did me a favor. My best witnesses were the prosecution’s witnesses. It amounts to this: If a submarine torpedoes a boat and can safely take survivors, well and good. But if the submarine is in danger and must leave the scene immediately, survivors can’t be rescued. That is as true in the English and American navies as in the German.”

He repeated anew his theme about his being apolitical and merely a sailor doing his job. If Germany had won the war there would certainly have been a clamping down on the Nazi Party power, he said. Soldiers and sailors returning to their homes would not allow themselves to be bossed by a block leader, but would want freedom. Probably the National Socialist government would have collapsed soon after a German victory.
⁸

Was it not likely that if Hitler had won the war, he would have been politically even stronger than ever? “No. I don’t think so. Not after I see what crimes went on in the name of the party, the exterminations, the wholesale murders. No. I think a military party would have come into power almost at once.”

I remarked that it seemed to me he was quite satisfied with Hitler in every way if he accepted the leadership of Germany from Hitler after the latter’s suicide. “Is that a crime? Is to accept the leadership of a crumbling country a crime? Is to prevent the Russians, the natural enemy of Germany, from obtaining our arms and manpower a crime? In Russian eyes it probably is. But I’m referring to the eyes of a westerner. I knew that we had to capitulate and I wanted it to be to the Americans and British, and not to the East. I’m not even accused of war crimes in the sense of the atrocities. It’s clear they have no case against me. I came into a powerful position in 1943. How can I be accused of a conspiracy?

“They have only one point against me — that I gave an order not to rescue survivors. That that was false was proven by the prosecution and its own witness. I also give credit to my lawyer, who is very sharp, critical, and alert. The trial can only end in a mistake because it is founded on one. How can a foreign court try a sovereign government of another country? Could we have tried your President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Secretary Henry Morgenthau, or Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, if we had won the war? We could not have done so and would not have. Any trying that went on would have to be done by the nation itself and the courts set up there.”

Doenitz became quite excited and his voice rose. “To think of Russians sitting on a bench in Nuremberg, trying German leaders! The Russians sank a German boat with men, women, and children aboard. I know of the case. But is that investigated? You Americans were not completely without fault, either. You armed merchant boats before the U.S.A. was in the war.”

I replied that it was not my purpose to debate with him, but that I merely wanted his views so that I could try to understand his actions. He smiled suspiciously. “And write a book about me, telling the world what a stupid fellow I am, eh?” I assured him that if I wrote anything it would have to be approved by proper authorities, and that it was neither my purpose nor aim to portray him as anything but what he actually was.

One of the things which did puzzle me, I said, was Hitler’s choosing
him as his successor. “Hitler chose me because he felt, doubtlessly, that only a reasonable man with an honest reputation as a sailor could make a decent peace. I gladly accepted. Why not? I didn’t know then about Hitler’s extermination of Jews, which I learned about for the first time in Nuremberg.”

Did Doenitz know of persecutions of Jews at all? “Yes and no. I read sometime around 1938 of Jewish fines and some street actions against them.
⁹
But I was too concerned with U-boats and the naval problems to be concerned about Jews.” Was he concerned about the fate of these Jews now? “My conscience is clear. I did not participate in the brutalities or criminal actions. My aiding Hitler in carrying on a war for my Fatherland does not make me subject to the criticism that I helped him annihilate Jews. It just is not the case.”

Had Doenitz known of the concentration camps? “Yes. I knew there were such things in 1933 and 1934. But there were only about twelve thousand people, political enemies, in them at the time.
¹⁰
Now in American-occupied Germany alone there are over 600,000 Germans interned. Have you ever thought of that?” He smiled as if he had scored a point.

Then I was correct in understanding that he felt the concentration camps were justified? “In a measure they were justified. If Hitler had not thrown the Communists into camps in 1933 there would have been civil war and bloodshed. The Communists would have revolted against the legally elected government. The greatest danger of civil war in Germany came in 1932 when it was clearly a choice between Communism and National Socialism. So Paul von Hindenburg and the other conservative bourgeois elements chose Hitler. So did I, and I would do it again if a choice between Communism and Nazism arose.” He went on to explain that those were revolutionary times, and the herding together into concentration camps of a few thousand political opponents was not a particularly bad thing. “By placing these people with foreign ideas in camps, German blood was saved. Would it have been better to have a civil war?”

The former grand admiral was lying on his cot with a handkerchief over his head and forehead when I entered his cell. He arose with alacrity and said he was glad to see me, and asked what was new in the world. I
replied that there was nothing striking in the radio news I had heard this morning. He said he had a slight cold, which he attributed to the draft coming into the cell from the open window through the open square vent in the door.

He spoke with his usual incisive evasiveness. Tomorrow his defense counsel, Kranzbuehler, would speak in the final summation of his defense. “A very critical fellow, my lawyer,” said Doenitz. “And he tells me that as far as crimes are concerned, the defense is clear and the prosecution hasn’t a leg to stand on.” His lawyer also told him a few weeks ago, when he was through with his defense, that the chief of staff of an American admiral, who was visiting the trials, had personally conveyed his greetings to Doenitz. “Your American admiral said that he held me in the highest esteem, and thought that I conducted my defense perfectly. He said through his chief of staff that my conduct was beyond reproach and he had the greatest admiration for me.”

I recalled seeing a party of naval officers at Doenitz’s defense presentation, but I did not know the name of the American admiral. Doenitz did not know his name either, but stressed the importance of the greeting he had received through his lawyer.

“The Russians will cause trouble for you. You will see. I know those Russians. Ernest Bevin said that the Potsdam Agreement was the greatest folly.
¹¹
Harold Laski, the head of the English Labor Party, also said that the borders drawn up by the three powers at Potsdam was a great mistake.” Doenitz proceeded to draw a map of Europe on a pad, and the demarcation line between the Russian and the American-British zones. “All of the wheat and potatoes, the very granaries of Germany, lie in the Russian zone. They will never withdraw their troops. They will spread Communism. They will never withdraw from the Balkans either. Poor Turkey is now completely surrounded by Russians. Everything the Russians have done in the past year shows clearly that they are lining up against the western powers, namely against the U.S.A. and Great Britain.

“The Russians make an accusation against me that I sent our armies and navies to the West when I took over command of Germany after Hitler’s death. Well, let me tell you, General Dwight Eisenhower and especially General Bedell Smith and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery were very grateful at the time that I didn’t let the Russians get hold of our fleet and 3 million German soldiers and their weapons. It was
very clear to me at the time that if I sent the fleet to Leningrad to surrender, for example, or let 3 million soldiers be captured by the Russians, the latter would be that much stronger, and in the end German soldiers would be fighting against Germany.”