Karl Donitz Quotes
By placing these people with foreign ideas in camps, German blood was saved. Would it have been better to have a civil war?
Many German officials, after the war, tried to justify the Concentration Camps. However, the argument has little historical merit as by the time the Nazis implemented them, they had complete control of the country and were in no danger of Civil War. And certainly the torture, medical experiments, and murders were not required to prevent civil strife. And using inmates as slave laborers in Donitz’s shipyards had nothing to do with civil war. After the war Donitz was found guilty of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and using thousands of slave laborers in his shipyards. He was sentenced to 10 years, one of the lightest sentences if the German War Crimes Trials. He himself was not only an enthusiast about the concentration camps but was a murderous anti-Semite as well. See {624978}. The thought that the Germans had to kill little children to avoid civil war is as absurd as any argument could be.
Karl Donitz, 1891–1980, Chief Admiral of the German Navy, Successor as Head of the German Government After Hitler Committed Suicide, Interview with Leon Goldensohn, "The Nuremberg Interviews", May 2, 1946
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After the war Donitz was found guilty of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and using thousands of slave laborers in his shipyards. He was sentenced to 10 years, one of the lightest sentences if the German War Crimes Trials.
He was shot in 1944 for his involvement in an attempt to kill Hitler
The German Generals talked him out of the idea, but the quotation gives an insight into the Character of the German Leader. It never occurred to him that the Russians might retaliate and murder German prisoners.
He was an intellectual precursor of the Nazi movement. He was also one of Hitler's favorite authors. See {77545}.
This statement caused great consternation. NcNutt did try to explain that he was speaking personally and not for the Government, but there was a small proportion of America who had concluded that all Japanese should be killed. Such an concept which was unthinkable 5 years earlier was considered as a result of several factors: The Japanese had murdered many American prisoners of war. Killed millions of civilians throughout Asia including doing medical and weapons experiments on live human beings. They had practiced torture, compulsory prostitution and mass rape of conquered territories. At the same time, the Germans had tried to exterminate all the Jews and, with some Japanese help, did kill two-thirds. The concept of genocide had been introduced to Americans as the concentration camps were liberated. And American casualties in the Pacific had been heavy. Vengeance was desired by many. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Americans never considered genocide seriously.
Eisenhower was then Supreme Allied Commander.
Kaltenbrunner was one of the major war criminals declared guilty at the Nuremberg Trials and hanged. In this message he reported that he personally saw to the murder of Italian Jews and political prisoners in custody. As his defense, he claimed that he was just following orders, and he personally did not kill anyone.
Germany had invaded and occupied much of Europe. These two fronts accounted for the majority of the German casualties. The Germans not only violated the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War repeatedly, but as you can see from this quotation, it was deliberate policy. Keitel was tried and hanged after the war. See {621438} .
The assassination was attempted in 1944 and after its failure, he was shot be a firing squad.
He was a viscious anti-Semite who attracted to his party extreme right wingers, Nazi Sympathers and apologists for the Vichey Franch government. The party was rejected by the majority of French voters, but when his daughter took over the party, she was not an anti Semite but foudn it hard to shake the party's image which was alaysa associated with her name even when she actually kicked her father out of the party.
Belsen was one of the largest German Death Camps where almost a million Jews, Gypsies, dissenters, and non conformists were gassed and burned in WWII.
“Lebensraum” was a German expansionist concept of the time which has no good English translation. Literally, it means “living room”. The Germans had this notion that the German race and nation had to have more land to accommodate the growth of the German people. And because the Germans were a superior race, they were entitled to the land surrounding Germany in which to have Germans grow and thrive. The “inferior” peoples who lived on the land could be exterminated so that Germany would have this expansion room. The “Death’s Head units” were special German elite troops who used the Death’s Head as a symbol on their uniforms. Some of the Generals were concerned that the rest of the world would condemn Germany and possibly interfere if they exterminated the Poles. Hitler pointed to the example of the Turks who had killed most of the Armenians in the Armenian Genocide in the early 20th century. They got away with it with no outside interference, and there were no international consequences for Turkey. Hitler, convinced that the Armenian genocide was the precedent, thought Germany could easily get away with murdering the Gypsies, seriously handicapped, homosexuals, Russians, Poles and Jews. For other quotations on the Armenian Genocide, see {51838}, {638251}, {620602}, {620603}, {620604}, {620605}, {620600}, and {620606}
- Born: September 16, 1891
- Died: December 24, 1980
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Karl Dönitz was a German admiral during the Nazi era who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as the German head of state in 1945. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II. He was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.
