Bob Carruthers - Ten Years at Hitlers Side: The Testimony of Wilhelm Keitel

TEN YEARS AT HITLERS SIDE

THE TESTIMONY OF WILHELM KEITEL

THE TESTIMONY OF WILHELM KEITEL

EDITED AND INTRODUCED BY BOB CARRUTHERS

This edition published in 2018 by

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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 Fhrer 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 Frontkmpferbund . 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 cowards 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 hangmans 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

[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 Fhrer , 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?