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    Ten Years at Hitler's Side: The Testimony of Wilhelm Keitel
    Ten Years at Hitler's Side: The Testimony of Wilhelm Keitel
    Ten Years at Hitler's Side: The Testimony of Wilhelm Keitel
    Ebook345 pages4 hours

    Ten Years at Hitler's Side: The Testimony of Wilhelm Keitel

    By Bob Carruthers

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    In October 1946, Wilhelm Keitel was executed by hanging after being sentenced to death at the Nuremburg Trials. His road to this point was a long and controversial one, from the heady days of the surrender of France, to the eventual fall of Berlin and his subsequent arrest. There were few men better positioned to provide insight in to the minds and workings of the National Socialist Party, and of those a preciously limited amount were held accountable for their crimes. This renders the record of Keitels trial as published here an invaluable historical record that goes some way to providing an understanding of the near incomprehensible crimes committed during the Third Reich.Edited and introduced by esteemed historian Bob Carruthers, this unadulterated record of Wilhelm Keitels trial at Nuremburg is essential reading for all history enthusiasts and an important account of events that truly shook the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJul 30, 2018
    ISBN9781473868946
    Ten Years at Hitler's Side: The Testimony of Wilhelm Keitel
    Author

    Bob Carruthers

    Bob Carruthers is an Emmy Award winning author and historian, who has written extensively on the Great War. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Bob is the author of a number of military history titles including the Amazon best seller The Wehrmacht in Russia.

    Read more from Bob Carruthers

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      Book preview

      Ten Years at Hitler's Side - Bob Carruthers

      INTRODUCTION

      ‘I began my term as prisoner of war on 13 May 1945, at Mondorf. I was transferred to a prison cell at Nuremberg on the 13 August, and am awaiting my execution on 13 October 1946. I never dreamed that such a Via Dolorosa lay ahead of me, with this tragic end at Nuremberg.

      How often I have found myself seriously confronted with suicide as a possible way out, only to reject it because, as suicides have always demonstrated, nothing is changed and nothing bettered by such action. Quite the contrary, the armed forces, whose counsellor and mediator I had so often been, would have labelled me a deserter and branded me a coward.

      Hitler himself chose death rather than accept responsibility for the actions of the OKW, of Colonel-General Jodl and myself. I do not doubt that he would have done us justice and identified himself wholly with my utterances. But for him, as I learned only later, to have committed suicide when he knew he was defeated, shunning thereby his own ultimate personal responsibility, upon which he had always laid such great stress, and which he had unreservedly taken upon himself alone, instead of giving himself up to the enemy, and to have left it to a subordinate to account for his autocratic and arbitrary actions, these two shortcomings will remain forever incomprehensible to me. They are my final disillusion.’

      Those were the last written words of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff to the Führer and Chief of the OKW, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. How different they were from the heady days of late June 1940, when the jubilant crowds that flocked the streets of Berlin and Munich to celebrate the surrender of France hailed Adolf Hitler as a great German hero. The crowds ecstatically proclaimed Hitler as the architect of the most stunning victory the world had ever seen and the man who was then Generaloberst Wilhelm Keitel, who dubbed Hitler ‘the greatest general of all time’, elevated the febrile atmosphere further. With his enthusiastic endorsement of Hitler, General Keitel was feeding the Nazi propaganda machine. In the hands of Dr. Goebbels the full force of a modern media was harnessed to constantly bolster and reinforce the party line. The Nazi propaganda effort depicted Hitler as a bold front-line trench warrior, and the rightful leader of the Nationalsocializter Deutscher Frontkämpferbund. Hitler was keen to embrace this hardened military image, as he felt it would bring him closer to achieving acceptance into the ranks of the Frontgemeinschaft (the brotherhood of front-line fighters), a privilege his experience as a trench messenger had not afforded him.

      Ultimately, Hitler was to be thwarted and acceptance into the Kameradschaft would never be his to enjoy. Just five years after his triumphal visit to France he would die a coward’s death by his own hand, leaving the front-line fighters of the Wehrmacht to soldier on; fighting a war that he had brought about yet had no intention of seeing through. In 1945, many of the soldiers whose acceptance Hitler so valued were left with no option but to face the long march into captivity in Russia, where they would be forced into slave labour for ten years or more. That was the true nature of comradeship as practised by Adolf Hitler. Ironically, Field Marshal Keitel exhibited the genuine spirit of Kameradschaft. His sense of honour and duty compelled him to answer for his crimes and lead him to Nuremberg where, in October 1946, he would face the hangman’s noose.

      There is no notable evidence to suggest that Wilhelm Keitel did not tell the plain and unvarnished truth at Nuremberg. This is his sworn testimony.

      Bob Carruthers

      NUREMBERG TRIAL PROCEEDINGS

      NINETY-EIGHTH DAY WEDNESDAY, 3 APRIL 1946

      MORNING SESSION

      [The Defendant Keitel took the stand.]

      THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your full name?

      WILHELM KEITEL (Defendant): Wilhelm Keitel.

      THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me:

      I swear by God – the Almighty and Omniscient – that I will speak the pure truth – and will withhold and add nothing.

      [The defendant repeated the oath in German.]

      THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down if you wish.

      DR. NELTE: Please describe your military career briefly.

      KEITEL: In the year 1901, in the beginning of March, I became an officer candidate in an artillery regiment of the Prussian Army. At the beginning of the first World War, in 1914, I was the regimental adjutant of my regiment. I was wounded in September 1914, and in the beginning of November I became chief of a battery of my regiment. Since the spring of 1915 I served in various general staff capacities, first with higher commands of the field army, later as a general staff officer of a division. Towards the end I was the first general staff officer of the Naval Corps in Flanders. Then I joined the Reichswehr as a volunteer. Beginning with the year 1929 I was Division Head (Abteilungsleiter) of the Army Organizational Division in the Reichswehrministerium. After an interruption from 1933 to 1935 I became, on 1 October 1935, Chief of the Wehrmacht Department (Wehrmachtsamt) of the Reichskriegsminister, that is Chief of Staff with the Minister of War. While on active service I became Generalmajor. At that time I was chief of an infantry brigade. On 4 February 1938 to my surprise I was appointed Chief of Staff of the Führer, or Chief of the OKW – Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. On 1 October 1939, I became General of the Infantry and after the campaign in the West in 1940 I became Field Marshal.

      DR. NELTE: Were you a member of the National Socialist German Labour Party?

      KEITEL: No, I was not a member. According to military law I could not be or become a member.

      DR. NELTE: But you received the Golden Party Badge. For what reason?

      KEITEL: That is correct. Hitler presented this Golden Badge of the Party to me in April 1939, at the same time that the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Von Brauchitsch, received it. The Führer said it was to be in commemoration of the march into Czechoslovakia. The Golden Badge had 16 and 17 March engraved on it.

      DR. NELTE: In the year 1944 the Military Service Law was changed so that active soldiers could also become members of the Party. What did you do at that time?

      KEITEL: That is correct. In the late summer or autumn of 1944 the Military Service Law was changed so that active soldiers could also be Party members. At that time I was invited to submit personal data for the Party in order to be listed as a member of the Party. At the same time I was asked to send in a donation of money to the Party. I submitted personal data to Party headquarters and also sent in a donation, but as far as I know I never became a member. I never received a membership card.

      DR. NELTE: To what extent did you participate at Party functions?

      KEITEL: Owing to my position and to the fact that I accompanied the Führer constantly, I participated at public functions of the Party several times, for example, at the Party rallies in Nuremberg, also each year when the Winter Relief Work campaign was launched. Finally, according to orders, each year on 9 November, I had to attend, together with a representative of the Party a memorial service at the graves of the victims of 9 November 1923. It took place symbolically in memory of the fight on 9 November, between the Party and the Wehrmacht. I never participated in internal conferences or meetings of the Party directorate. The Führer had let me know that he did not want this. Thus, for example, every year on 9 November I was in Munich, but never participated in the gatherings of the so-called Hoheitsträger (bearers of power) of the Party.

      DR. NELTE: What decorations did you receive during the war?

      KEITEL: During the war – it must have been in the winter of 1939-1940 – I received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. I did not receive any other German war decorations.

      DR. NELTE: Do you have any sons?

      KEITEL: I had three sons, all of whom served at the front as officers during this war. The youngest one died in battle in Russia in 1941. The second was a major in Russia and has been missing in action, and the eldest son, who was a major, is a prisoner of war.

      DR. NELTE: Field Marshal Keitel, beginning with essential matters, I would like to put the following basic questions to you: What basic attitude did you, as a soldier, an officer, and a general, have toward the problems with which you had to deal in your profession?

      KEITEL: I can say that I was a soldier by inclination and conviction. For more than 44 years without interruption I served my country and my people as a soldier, and I tried to do my best in the service of my profession. I believed that I should do this as a matter of duty, labouring unceasingly and giving myself completely to those tasks which fell to me in my many and diverse positions. I did this with the same devotion under the Kaiser, under President Ebert, under Field Marshal Von Hindenburg, and under the Führer, Adolf Hitler.

      DR. NELTE: What is your attitude today?

      KEITEL: As a German officer, I naturally consider it my duty to answer for what I have done, even if it should have been wrong. I am grateful that I am being given the opportunity to give an account here and before the German people of what I was and my participation in the events which have taken place. It will not always be possible to separate clearly guilt and entanglement in the threads of destiny. But I do consider one thing impossible, that the men in the front lines and the leaders and the subleaders at the front should be charged with the guilt, while the highest leaders reject responsibility. That, in my opinion, is wrong, and I consider it unworthy. I am convinced that the large mass of our brave soldiers were really decent, and that wherever they overstepped the bounds of acceptable behaviour, our soldiers acted in good faith, believing in military necessity, and the orders which they received.

      DR. NELTE: The Prosecution, in presenting evidence regarding violations of the laws of war, Crimes against Humanity, repeatedly point to letters, orders, et cetera, which bear your name. Many so-called Keitel orders and Keitel decrees, have been submitted here. Now we have to examine whether and to what degree you and your actions are guilty of and responsible for the results of these orders. What do you wish to say to this general accusation?

      KEITEL: It is correct that there are a large number of orders, instructions, and directives with which my name is connected, and it must also be admitted that such orders often contain deviations from existing international law. On the other hand, there are a group of directives and orders based not on military inspiration but on an ideological foundation and point of view. In this connection I am thinking of the group of directives which were issued before the campaign against the Soviet Union and also which were issued subsequently.

      DR. NELTE: What can you say in your defence in regard to those orders?

      KEITEL: I can say only that fundamentally I bear that responsibility which arises from my position for all those things which resulted from these orders and which are connected with my name and my signature. Further, I bear the responsibility, insofar as it is based on legal and moral principles, for those offices and divisions of the OKW which were subordinate to me.

      DR. NELTE: From what may your official position and the scope of your legal responsibility be inferred?

      KEITEL: That is contained in the Führer’s decree of 4 February 1938 which has been frequently cited.

      DR. NELTE: I am submitting this decree to you so that you can have the text before you. In this Führer decree, Paragraph 1, you will find:

      From now on I will directly and personally take over the Supreme Command of the entire Wehrmacht.

      What did that mean compared with the conditions that had existed until then?

      KEITEL: Until that time we had a Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht, Field Marshal Von Blomberg. In addition there was the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht who, according to the constitution, was the head of the State – in this case, Hitler. With the resignation of the Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht, Von Blomberg, there was only one Supreme Commander and that was Hitler himself. And from that time on he himself exercised command of all three arms of the Wehrmacht: the Army, Navy, and Air Force. It also says from now on directly. That should establish unequivocally that any intermediary position with authority to issue orders was no longer to exist, but that Hitler’s orders as Supreme Commander were issued directly to the three arms of the Wehrmacht and their Commanders. It also says here directly and personally. That, too, had its meaning, for the word personally was to express the fact that there was and would be no, I would say, deputizing of this authority.

      DR. NELTE: I assume therefore that you never signed your orders acting for?

      KEITEL: No, I do not remember a single instance in which I signed acting for. According to our military principles, if the question had arisen to appoint a deputy, it could have been only one person, the Commander-in-Chief of the three arms of the Wehrmacht, namely the one highest in rank.

      DR. NELTE: In Paragraph 2 of the decree of 4 February 1939 it says:

      … the former Wehrmacht office in the Ministry of War, with its functions is placed directly under my command as OKW and as my military staff.

      What does this signify in regard to the staff which was thereby formed?

      KEITEL: The Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht had his military staff in the Wehrmachtsamt, that is to say, the Wehrmachtsamt in the Ministry of War. Hitler, as Supreme Commander, took over the Wehrmachtsamt as his military staff. Thus, this staff was to be his personal working staff. At the same time that the post of Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht was eliminated, that of Reich Minister of War was also removed. There was no War Ministry and no Minister of War as heretofore. Thus one could clearly see what Hitler wanted, namely, that between him and the Wehrmacht divisions there was to be no one holding office with any authority either in command channels or in ministerial functions.

      DR. NELTE: When this decree was issued you were installed as holder of a new office with the title of Chief OKW. Will you please clarify whether this term Chief OKW is correct; that is, whether it really was what the title seems to indicate.

      KEITEL: I must add that I realize only now that this term in its abbreviated form is not quite apt. To be exact one should have said, Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, and not the abbreviation, Chief OKW. From the case presented by the Prosecution I gathered that the idea of Chief was interpreted as if that were a commander, chief of an office, with authority to issue orders. And that, of course, is an erroneous conclusion. It was neither a position of a chief in the sense of a commander, nor, as might have been assumed or has been assumed, was it a position as chief of a general staff. That too, is incorrect. I was never Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht. It was Hitler’s unmistakable wish to concentrate in his own person all the authority, all the power of command. That is not merely a retrospective statement. He clearly expressed this desire to me on several occasions, partly in connection with the fact that he told me repeatedly, I could never put this through with Blomberg.

      DR. NELTE: I have here a statement made by Field Marshal Von Brauchitsch and submitted by the Prosecution.

      KEITEL: Perhaps I might add something further. I was discussing the fact that it was not a position of Chief of the General Staff, since it was Hitler’s basic view that commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht branches each had his own general staff, or operations staff, and that he did not want the High Command of the Wehrmacht, including the Wehrmacht Operations Staff, to take over the functions of a general staff. Therefore, in practice the work was done by the general staffs of the Wehrmacht branches, while the Wehrmacht Operations Staff of the OKW, which was purposely kept small, was a working staff for Hitler, a staff for strategic planning and for special missions.

      DR. NELTE: Then Field Marshal Von Brauchitsch’s statement in his affidavit, of which I have already spoken, is correct? It says here:

      When Hitler had decided to use military pressure or military power in attaining his political aims, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, if he participated, received his instructions first orally, as a rule, or by an appropriate order. Thereupon the OKW worked out the operation and deployment plans. When they had been submitted to Hitler and were approved by him, a written order from the OKW to the branches of the Wehrmacht followed.

      Is that correct?

      KEITEL: Yes, in principle it is correct insofar as the final formulation of the order to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army took the form of a directive, as we called it, based on the general plans which had already been submitted and approved. This work was done by the Wehrmacht Operational Staff (Wehrmachtführungsstab); thus the Wehrmacht Operational Staff was not an office which became independently active and did not handle matters concerning the issuing of orders independently; rather the Wehrmacht Operational Staff and I took part in the basic determination or approval of these proposals and formulated them in the manner in which they were then carried out by Hitler as Commander-in-Chief. To speak technically we then passed these orders on.

      DR. NELTE: Then I have an affidavit by Generaloberst Halder which deals with the same subject. You know this affidavit Number 1. I believe I can dispense with the reading of it and as evidence refer only to Halder’s affidavit Number 1, which has been submitted by the Prosecution (Document Number 3702-PS).

      In addition the Prosecution submitted another treatise without a special number. The title of the treatise is Basis for the Organization of the German Wehrmacht.

      THE PRESIDENT: Is this the document which you say the Prosecution offered in evidence but did not give a number to?

      DR. NELTE: Mr. President, this document was given to us by the Prosecution, I believe by the American Prosecution, on 26 November 1945. I do not know…

      THE PRESIDENT: You mean it never was deposited in evidence by the Prosecution?

      DR. NELTE: I do not believe I can decide that. I assume that a document which has been submitted to the Defence Counsel was submitted to the High Tribunal at the same time, if not as evidence, then at least for judicial notice.

      THE PRESIDENT: What is the document? Is it an affidavit or not?

      DR. NELTE: It is not an affidavit; it is really a study by the American Prosecution. And, I assume, it is a basis for the indictment of the organization OKW, and so forth.

      THE PRESIDENT: Have you got it in your document book or not?

      DR. NELTE: No, I do not have it in the document book, because I assumed that was also at the disposal of the High Tribunal. Besides, Mr. President, it is a short document.

      THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps, Mr. Dodd can tell us what it is.

      MR. DODD: If I could see it I might be able to be helpful. I am not familiar with it. It is probably one of the documents which we submitted to the Defence but which we did not actually introduce in evidence, and that happened more than once, I think, in the early days of the Trial.

      THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

      DR. NELTE: I refer to a single short paragraph of this study which I would like to read. Perhaps we can thus obviate submitting the document.

      THE PRESIDENT: Are you offering in evidence the whole of the affidavit? I do not mean at this moment, but are you proposing to offer it?

      DR. NELTE: I assume that the Prosecution have already submitted it. I am only referring to it.

      THE PRESIDENT: The whole affidavit? What is the number of it, if it has been submitted?

      DR. NELTE: This affidavit also does not have a number. The Prosecution…

      THE PRESIDENT: It has not been submitted if it has not a number on it then.

      It suggested to me that possibly the Halder affidavit was offered and then rejected.

      DR. NELTE: No. At that time a series of affidavits was submitted: By Brauchitsch, Halder, Heusinger, and many other generals who are in Nuremberg. None of these affidavits had an exhibit number.

      MR. DODD: This affidavit was put in by the United States as an exhibit. I do not have the number handy, but I think it was submitted at the time Colonel Telford Taylor submitted the case on behalf of the Prosecution against the High Command and the OKW. This Halder affidavit, the first document which Doctor Nelte referred to, is not an affidavit. It was a paper submitted to the Tribunal and to the Defence by Colonel Taylor. It set out some of the basic principles of the organization of the High Command and the OKW wholly before he presented his part of the case. It is really just the work of our own staff here in Nuremberg.

      THE PRESIDENT: Doctor Nelte, as the document you are referring to, not the Halder affidavit, appears to be a mere compilation, the Tribunal thinks it should not go in as an exhibit, but you can put a question to the witness upon it.

      DR. NELTE: [Turning to the defendant.] In the essay which you have before you, the Prosecution asserted the following: After 1938 there were four divisions: The OKW (High Command of the Wehrmacht); the OKH (High Command of the Army); the OKL (High Command of the Air Force); the OKM (High Command of the Navy); and each had its own general staff. What can you tell us about that?

      KEITEL: I can say only that this is not correct, and also contradicts the description which I have already given of the functions of the High Commands of the Wehrmacht branches and of the OKW. There were not four such departments. There were only three: The High Command of the Army, the High Command of the Navy, and the High Command of the Air Force.

      As I have just stated, the High Command of the Wehrmacht as a personal, direct working staff, was in no way an independent authority in that sense. The commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht branches were commanders, had the authority to issue orders and exercised this power over troops which were subordinate to them. The OKW had neither the power to issue orders, nor subordinate troops to which orders could have been issued. It is also not correct, if I recall the speeches of the Prosecution, to use the expression Keitel was Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht. I am mentioning it only to emphasize this point. Further, I would like, briefly, to call attention to the diagram on the last page of the document which has been shown to me.

      DR. NELTE: This sketch is the diagram which is called The Wehrmacht. It is an exposition, a diagrammatic exposition of the entire Wehrmacht and its branches.

      KEITEL: I believe I should point briefly to the fact that it is this diagram which was the

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