Our losses have reached an intolerable level. The enemy air force played a decisive role in inflicting these high losses.

The reason that the American Navy does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis.

I accept responsibility for U-boat warfare from 1933 onward, and of the entire navy from 1943 on, but to make me responsible for what happened to Jews in Germany, or Russian soldiers on the east front it is so ridiculous all I can do is laugh.

The north German does not go in for extremes. He has broader horizons than the men from the mountains of Bavaria and Austria.

Only ... from personal experience [can a man] take the necessary measures without a preliminary process of trial and error.

I was fascinated by the [operation] of a U-boat ... where every single man was an indispensable part of the whole. Every submariner, I am sure, has experienced in his heart [the joy of] the task entrusted to him [and] felt as rich as a king.

Certainly inside my heart I know degrees of difference. But I can't blame any of these men who share a common fate with me. The big folly of this trial is that it lacks the two men who are to blame for anything which is criminal, namely Hitler and Himmler.