. NMT06-T0342
Volume VI · Page 342
| F. Testimony of Defendant Steinbrinck | |
| EXTRACTS FROM THE
TESTIMONY OF DEFENDANT STEINBRINCK* |
|
| DIRECT EXAMINATION | |
| DR. FLAECHSNER (counsel for
defendant Steinbrinck) : Mr. Steinbrinck, will you first give the Tribunal a
description of your career until you resigned from the navy? DEFENDANT STEINBRINCK: I was born on 19 December 1888 in Lippstadt in Westphalia. My father was a professor there at the Gymnasium. In 1907 I graduated from high school and in 1907, I joined the Imperial Navy to become a naval officer. From 1909 to 1911 I was a junior officer on a cruiser in foreign waters as far as America and Canada. In 1911 I joined the submarine service and I remained there until 1919. Then I was given leave from the navy in the spring of 1919 and in the autumn of 1919 I was discharged as a Lieutenant (s.g.) During the war I was submarine officer in Flanders and during the last year, 1918, I was an officer in the Admiralty of the submarine units which were committed in Flanders waters. Q. Now, you received the highest German war medal very early. Will you give the Tribunal a short description of what you got it for, and will you also explain to the Tribunal how the enemy judged your attitude? A. I was the third one in the navy to receive the highest German war decoration, Pour Le Mérite, and that was in March 1916, in spite of the fact that my big successes only took place in the years 1916 and 1917. My achievements, as my defense counsel says, have been recognized even by the enemy. I have several times been invited by the Royal Navy to hold lectures in London and in Portsmouth concerning submarine warfare, in spite of the fact that, at that time, I was considered a so-called war criminal. Perhaps I may explain for the Tribunal that the verdict was not acquittal, but that the tribunal dismissed the case. A special distinction I received in Belgium, a country where I was active for 4½ years during the Second World War. Belgium gave me sort of a small memorial after the wa — after the First World War, that is — but I myself only saw it in 1928. It was in the British-Belgian Naval Museum. There they had put up a big naval map with the waters around England, and on this map there were correct silhouettes with the names of the 216 ships I had sunk with my submarine. Under the map there was a photograph of |
* Complete testimony is recorded in mimeographed transcript 30, 31 July; 1, 4-8, 11-13 August 1947, pages 4674-5460, 10320-10331. Further extracts from the testimony of the defendant Steinbrinck are reproduced later in section VI-E.
