27 Nov. 45
of planes or flying associations will
go over to the Stahlhelm organization. It must be achieved that equal
conditions will be granted by the ROOM, also the NSDAP organization,'
The program of rearmament and the objectives of
circumventing and breaching the Versailles Treaty are forcefully
shown by a number of Navy documents, showing the participation and
cooperation of the German Navy in this rearmament program' secret at
first.
When they deemed it safe to say so, they openly acknowledged that
it had always been their objective to break Versailles.
In 1937 the Navy High Command published a secret book entitled
The Fight of the Navy against Versailles, 1919 to 1935. The
preface refers to the fight of the Navy against the unbearable '
regulations of the Peace Treaty of Versailles. The table of contents
includes a variety of Navy activities, such as saving of coastal guns
from destruction as required by Versailles; independent armament
measures behind the back of the Government and behind the back of the
legislative bodies; resurrection of the U-boat arm; economic
rearmament and camouflage rearmament from 1933 to the freedom from
the restrictions in 1935.
This document points out the significant effect of the seizure of
power by the Nazis in 1933 on increasing the size and determining the
nature of the rearmament program. It also refers to the far-reaching
independence in the building and development of the Navy, which was
only hampered in so far as concealment of rearmament had to be
considered in compliance with the Versailles Treaty.
With the restoration of what was called the military sovereignty
I of the Reich in 1935 and the reoccupation of the demilitarized zone
I of the Rhineland, the external camouflage of rearmament was
eliminated.
We have, if the Court please, a photostat of the German printed
book to which I have referred, entitled Der Kampf der Marine gegen
Versailles (The Fight of the Navy against Versailles) 1919 to
1935, written by Sea Captain Schüssler. It has the symbol of
the Nazi Party with the swastika in the spread eagle on the cover
sheet, and it is headed "Secret", underscored. It is
our Document C-156 It is a book of 76 pages of text, followed by
index lists and charts I offer it in evidence as Exhibit USA-41. I
may say that the Defendant Raeder identified this book in a recent
interrogation and explained that the Navy tried to fulfill the letter
of the Versailles Treaty and at the same time to make progress in
naval development meet. I should like to read from this book, if the
Court please, the preface and one or two other portions of the book: