Questions regarding the Kriegsmarine and the Holocaust

[atg]

Having recently read a book on the Nuremberg Trials (the title of the book escapes me at the moment - I shall try to post it when I get back home). I noticed that it appears that Raeder and Doenitz were not charged or questioned regarding the Holocaust. Rather the charges against them appear to have been relating to launching aggressive war, unrestricted u-boat warfare, and the Commando Order killings of Allied POWs.

I was wondering if anyone has any further information regarding how much those two leaders, or any other members of the Kriegsmarine knew or participated in the holocaust? For that matter how much involvement did the Luftwaffe have (certainly Goering was tried over his involvement)? I would find it hard to believe that Raeder or Doenitz did not at the very least have some knowledge of what was going on, whether they actively participated in or approved or not.

I've been looking for the full transcript of the trials on line without success (the Harvard Law Nuremburg Trials page looked promising but is not yet complete), as what I've read so far has only had partial transcripts.

[thejester]

A quick scan of the literature shows that Raeder was told by Hitler in mid-1940 of the proposed Madagascar settlement plan, but beyond that I haven't seen anything obvious.

TBH I'd be surprised if either knew anything beyond the noxious culture of anti-semitism and perhaps the deportation of German Jews into the General Government/East. There's two issues at play - one is the compartmentalisation and obstruction of the reality of the Holocaust, the other is the proximity of the two to the regime. Raeder was an old-school monarchist who had a deteriorating relationship with Hitler, resigned in January '43 (so about 18 months after the start of the mass violence against Jews in the East), had deteriorating health and whose administrative/combat domain did not really extend to the areas in which the genocide took place. Doenitz was a Nazi but for much of the initial period would have been in Paris, physically distant from the genocide, and again his responsibilities wouldn't have overlapped in the same way Army commanders would have.

Secondly the upper echelons of Nazi leadership kept the actual physical destruction of the Jews on the down low - the decision to accelerate to total destruction of European Jews was made in stages, apparently on the basis of verbal understandings between key players such as Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. As has been well-documented the issue of who knew what when troubled the investigators in the lead-up to Nuremberg and has remained contentious ever since. Then again, there's always this:

Many of them admitted openly that they had been anti-semitic, though few were willing to confess that they were still convinced anti-semites once the evidence of grotesque atrocities began to pile up. The surviving British was difficult to conceal. One British diplomat came away from a visit to 'Ashcan' with the strong impression that the prisoners wanted it 'tacitly understood' that Germany's Jews had been all but annihilated 'and were good riddance'.

[Sea Skimmer]

They had to be aware of it, no one that high in the Nazi military machine could have been less then totally aware of a murder campaign of such high scale that its transportation requirements actually became a serious burden on the German economy. Major arguments took place over how many trains to assign to the job.

However as far as I can tell in the limited instances when Jews were moved by ships, from Norway and along the Baltic coast mainly, along with a plan to kill jews by scuttling ships in 1945 (ended when the British accidentally sank them all at anchor killing thousands) the manpower involved was all SS. Which figures, because the Kriegsmarine was scraping around heavily for manpower throughout the war. It wasn’t able to come close to meeting all the demands for more U-boat crews and coastal artillery units as it was, while the SS was murder squad first, combat force second.

[atg]

Pretty much what I was thinking was that they might have knowledge of what was going on, even if no actual 'participation'. Interesting the point about using ships to move Jews around the Baltic. Wonder if naval officers were used in the running of the ships (captain, etc) or if it was civilian ships used, then the civilian crew served aboard. Premumably they would fall under naval command with the outbreak of war though?

[Spoonist]

(ended when the British accidentally sank them all at anchor killing thousands)

Accident?
Wasn't this one of those contested things in that it was clear that the british had been informed about the prisoners on those ships, but that the RAF bombed them anyway?
The crux being that according to the trial RAF had not been informed. Which led to lots of bad press with the jewish community at the time. So it was one of those points that led to the jewish relocation to Israel.

Or are you refering to some other incident?