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Every decent German today is ashamed of the crimes which the Third Reich committed behind the nation's back. To hold the people as a whole responsibl… - Karl Dönitz
" "Every decent German today is ashamed of the crimes which the Third Reich committed behind the nation's back. To hold the people as a whole responsible for the misdeeds of a small minority is contrary to every canon of justice. Men cannot be condemned for things of which they did not even know. The assumption that any one people is morally worse than other peoples is, in itself, a false premise, and it comes particularly unjustly from nations who, during the war and after 1945, did things which were an offence against both legal and moral justice and which resulted in the sacrifice of millions of Germans. I therefore regard it as wrong that individual Germans should be constantly indulging, in the name of the whole German people, in public self-accusations and confessions of guilt. That sort of thing does not win us the respect of other nations; nor, be it noted, has any other nation done the same thing with regard to the inhuman acts committed against us.
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About Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz (September 16, 1891 – December 24, 1980) was a German naval leader who commanded the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during the second half of World War II after Erich Raeder. He became a Großadmiral (Grand Admiral) and served as Commander of Submarines and later was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. Under his command, the U-boat fleet fought the Battle of the Atlantic. He ended the war as a prisoner-of-war of the British. After the war, Dönitz was charged and convicted of "crimes against peace" and "war crimes" at the Nuremberg Trials and served ten years. He died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve, 1980.
Also Known As
Also Known As:
The lion
Alternative Names:
Großadmiral Dönitz
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Grand Admiral Donitz
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Karl Doenitz
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Dönitz, Karl
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Additional quotes by Karl Dönitz
When responsible generals like Rommel subscribed to the idea in 1944 that we should make peace with the West and throw the whole weight of our military strength against the East, they failed to realize that the political prerequisites to such a move were lacking. The British and the Americans would never have considered an offer of this nature, as was proved by the attitude to which they still adhered even in May 1945. At the Casablanca conference in 1943 Roosevelt and Churchill declared that they would continue to fight until Germany and Japan 'surrendered unconditionally'. This meant that in the event of our submitting we should have no rights whatever, but would be wholly at the mercy of our enemies, and of what that meant some idea can be gathered from Stalin's demand at the Teheran conference at the end of November 1943, when he insisted that at least four million Germans should be deported for an unspecified number of years to Russia as forced labor.
The Navy had done its duty to the end. Against its innermost wishes, which were for understanding and lasting peace, unconsulted and poorly equipped, it had been called upon, in 1939 to fight against the naval might of Great Britain. With the meagre forces at its disposal it had fought to the best of its ability against Britain and the United States and achieved successes out of all proportion to its strength. That it had been able to do so was in no small measure to the spirit and determination of its men, without which it would never have been able to stand up thus splendidly to the material superiority of these two great maritime powers.
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The biggest mistake of Hitler, I have to say the main fault, was that under his government these terrific exterminations of men happened, which went on behind the backs of the German nation, which would never have tolerated them, but the government kept these crimes completely secret from the German people.
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