British navy was anxious about Nuremberg trials

LONDON, June 1 (Reuters) Britain told prosecutors after World War Two not to press war crimes charges against Nazis for sinking ships on sight because the British navy had practiced similar tactics, documents released today showed.

A senior civil servant at the Admiralty voiced the worries in an August 1945 letter to the foreign ministry marked ''secret'', while stressing that Britain had tried to respect neutral shipping and warned vessels of the danger they faced.

''We have, however, to bear in mind the fact that ultimately, by way of reprisal, we ourselves adopted a total sink-at-sight policy in prescribed areas,'' the note said.

''It is necessary to be careful to avoid a charge of hypocrisy,'' said the letter released by Britain's National Archives as part of a programme to publish once-secret files.

British Attorney General Hartley Shawcross advised prosecutors at the Nuremberg war crimes trials not to dwell on Germany's policy of attacking foreign ships on sight.

British naval officials were concerned about the trials of German naval commander Erich Raeder and his successor Karl Doenitz, who was also briefly German president after the death of Adolf Hitler.

Naval officials followed up their initial concerns with a letter from A.V. Alexander, the First Lord of the Admiralty -- the government minister responsible for the navy.

''We have been a little anxious concerning the possibility that the trials of Doenitz and Raeder might involve a controversy concerning legal principles of maritime warfare,'' Alexander wrote in a top secret letter to the attorney general.

''You will, I am sure, realise that important questions of Admiralty policy are involved in the presentation of such charges, and we hope that if the prosecution intend to develop them, the Admiralty will be consulted in good time,'' he wrote.

Shawcross, also officially Britain's chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, replied the next day assuring Alexander that no specific crimes on the high seas were included in the charges and promising to keep the navy's interests in mind.

Shawcross also wrote to David Maxwell-Fyfe, his chief assistant at Nuremberg.

''My own feeling is that in view of our own naval policy, it will be dangerous to make too much of the 'sink-at-sight' methods pursued by the Germans,'' he said in a top secret letter.

The navy's fears appear to have been well founded.

After hearing Britain had ordered all vessels to be sunk on sight off Scandinavia, and testimony from a US admiral that his force had conducted ''unrestricted submarine warfare'' in the Pacific Ocean, the judges ruled Doenitz would not be judged on breaches of the laws of international submarine war.

He was, however, found guilty on other war crimes charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Raeder was also convicted at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment.

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