rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

SITZKRIEG IN THE WEST 573dock in home waters until September 27. It was met by Admiral Karl Doenitz,commander of submarines, who years later at Nuremberg described the meetingand finally revealed the truth about who sank the Athenia.I met the captain, Oberleutnant Lemp, on the lockside at Wilhelmshavenas the boat was entering harbor, and he asked permission to speak to me inprivate. I noticed immediately that he was looking very unhappy and he toldme at once that he thought he was responsible for the sinking of the Atheniain the North Channel area. In accordance with my previous instructions hehad been keeping a sharp lookout for possible armed merchant cruisers in theapproaches to the British Isles, and had torpedoed a ship he afterward identifiedas the Athenia from wireless broadcasts, under the impression that she was anarmed merchant cruiser on patrol . . .I dispatched Lemp at once by air to report to the Naval War Staff (SKL)at Berlin; in the meantime I ordered complete secrecy as a provisional measure.Later the same day, or early on the following day, I received an order fromKapitaen zur See Fricke that:1. The affair was to be kept a total secret.2. The High Command of the Navy (OKM) considered that acourt-martial was not necessary, as they were satisfied that thecaptain had acted in good faith.3. Political explanations would be handled by OKM. ∗I had had no part whatsoever in the political events in which theFuehrer claimed that no U-boat had sunk the Athenia. 752But Doenitz, who must have suspected the truth all along, for otherwise hewould not have been at the dock to greet the returning U-30, did have a partin altering the submarine’s log and his own diary so as to erase any telltaleevidence of the truth. In fact, as he admitted at Nuremberg, he himself orderedany mention of the Athenia stricken from the U-30’s log and deleted it from hisown diary. He swore the vessel’s crew to absolute secrecy. †The military high commands of all nations no doubt have skeletons in theirclosets during the course of war, and it was understandable if not laudable thatHitler, as Admiral Raeder testified at Nuremberg, insisted that the Atheniaaffair be kept secret, especially since the Naval Command had acted in goodfaith in at first denying German responsibility and would have been greatlyembarrassed to have to admit it later. But Hitler did not stop there. On theevening of Sunday, October 22, Propaganda Minister Goebbels personally tookto the air – this writer well remembers the broadcast – and accused Churchillof having sunk the Athenia. The next day the official Nazi newspaper, theVoelkischer Beobachter, ran a frontpage story under the headline Churchill sankthe ”Athenia” and stating that the First Lord of the Admiralty had planteda time bomb in the ship’s hold. At Nuremberg it was established that the∗ The italics are the Admiral’s.† The officers, including Lemp, and some of the crew were transferred to the U-110 andwent down with her on May 9, 1941. One member of the crew was wounded by aircraft fire afew days after the sinking of the Athenia. He was disembarked at Reykjavik, Iceland, underpledge of the strictest secrecy, later taken to a POW camp in Canada, and after the war signedan affidavit giving the facts. The Germans appear to have been worried that he would ”talk,”but he didn’t until the war’s end. 753