Donitz was the first head of state to be tried for war crimes
Donitz remained President until May 23, 1945 when the Flensburg Government was dissolved. He was amazed to be immediately arrested and put on trial at Nuremberg.
“The trial can only end in a mistake because it is founded on one, ” said Donitz “How can a foreign court try a sovereign government of another country? Could we have tried your President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Secretary Henry Morgenthau, or Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, if we had won the war? We could not have done so and would not have. The trying that went on would have to be done by the nation itself and the courts set up there.”
Donitz was indicted on 3 counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace and humanity; waging wars of aggression; and finally crimes against the laws of war. Donitz countered by claiming he was merely an officer obeying orders. He denied all knowledge of the Holocaust and used his aid to Admiral Bernhard Rogge when he was subjected to Nazi persecution for having a Jewish grandparent as an example of his non-bigotry. “I never had any idea of the goings-on as far as Jews were concerned, ” Donitz told Leon Glodensohn, an American psychiatrist. ” Hitler said each man should take care of his business, and mine was U-boats and the Navy.”
When accused of planning the war with Hitler he claimed: “I ask them in heaven’s name, how could an admiral do otherwise with his country’s head of state in a time of war?” It was arguments like this that led to Donitz’s acquittal on the first charge. But, despite the protests of allied military commanders who claimed that they had also waged unrestricted warfare at sea, he was found guilty on the other two charges and sentenced to ten years in Spandau Prison. He was, until the conviction of Liberia’s Charles Taylor in 2012, the only head of state convicted by an international tribunal.