Dönitz's control makes ignorance of U-boat forced labor implausible

Could Karl Dönitz genuinely have been unaware that forced labor was used to build U-boats?

That is implausible given Dönitz's obsessive control of the submarine arm, and ignorance itself would represent a failure of command.

It is physically implausible that Karl Dönitz was unaware of the forced labor used to build U-boats. He micromanaged submarine operations and treated the U-boat arm as his central institutional project. A leader exercising that degree of control should also know how the fleet's boats were being produced and why workmanship or schedules changed. If Dönitz truly did not know, that ignorance would itself represent a severe dereliction of duty. Command responsibility extends beyond operations to the industrial system that supplies the force.