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Wilhelm Keitel

The International Military Tribunal trials at Nuremberg [Nuernberg] in 1946 charged the defendants with four crimes. Count One charged all of the defendants with being "leaders, organizers, instigators, or accomplices in the formation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit, or which involved the commission of, Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity." Count Two charged the defendants with crimes against peace by their participation "in the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression." Count Three charged the defendants with war crimes. Count Four charged the defendants with crimes against humanity. Keitel was indicted on all four counts.

Wilhelm Keitel was Chief of Staff to the then Minister of War von Blomberg from 1935 to 4 February 1938; on that day Hitler took command of the armed forces, making Keitel Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was a competent enough administrator but completely dominated by Hitler. Keitel did not have command authority over the three Wehrmacht branches [ie, Heer, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe] which enjoyed direct access to the Supreme Commander. OKW was in effect Hitler's military staff.

Keitel attended the Schuschnigg conference in February 1938 with two other generals. Their presence was a "military demonstration" ~ but since he had been appointed OKW chief just on week before, he had not known why he had been summoned. Hitler and Keitel then continued to put pressure on Austria with false rumors, broadcasts, and troop maneuvers. Keitel made the military and other arrangements and Jod1's diary noted "the effect is quick and strong." When Schuschnigg called his plebiscite, Keitel that night briefed Hitler and his generals, and Hitler issued "Case Otto" which Keitel initialed.

On 21 April 1938, Hitler and Keitel considered making use of a possible "incident," such as the assassination of the German minister at Prague, to preface the attack on Czechoslovalria. Reitel signed many directives and memoranda on "Fall Gruen," including the directive of 30 May containing Hitler's statement: "It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future." After Munich, Keitel initialed Hitler's directive for the attack on Czechoslovakia, and issued two supplements. The second supplement said the attack should appear to the outside world as "merely an act of pacification and not a warlike undertaking." The OKW chief attended Hitler7s negotiations with Hacha when the latter surrendered.

Heitel mas present on 23 May 1939 when Hitler announced his decision "to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity." Already he had signed the directive requiring the Wehrinacht to submit its "Fall Weiss" timetable to OKW by 01 May. The invasion of Norway and Denmark he discussed on 12 December 1939 with Hitler, Jodl, and Raeder. By directive of 27 January 1940 the Norway plans were placed under Keitel's "direct and personal guidance." Hitler had said on 23 May 1939 he would ignore the neutrality of Belgium and the Netherlands, and Keitel signed orders for these attacks on 15 October, 20 November, and 28 November 1939. Orders postponing this attack 17 times until spring 1940 all mere signed by Keitel or Jodl.

Formal planning for attacking Greece and Yugoslavia had begun in November 1940. On 01 March 1941, Keitel heard Hitler tell Raeder complete occupation of Greece was a prerequisite to settlement, and also heard Hitler decree on 27 March that the destruction of Yugoslavia should take place with "unmerciful harshness."

Keitel testified at Nuremberg that he opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union for military reasons, and also because it wonld constitute a violation of the nonaggression pact. Nevertheless he initialed "Case Barbarossn," signed by Hitler on 18 December 1940, and attended the OKTV discussion with Hitler on 3 February 1941. Keitel's supplement of 13 March established the relationship between the military and political officers. He issued his timetable for the invasion on 6 June 1941, and was present at the briefing of 14 June when the generals gave their final reports before attack. He appointed Jodl and Warlimont as OKW representatives to Rosenberg on matters concenling the eastern territories. 0n 16 June he directed all army units to carry out the economic directives issued by Goering in the so-called "Green Folder," for the exploitation of Russian territory, food and raw materials.

On 4 August 1942, Keitel issued a directive that paratroopers were to be turned over to the SD. On 18 October Hitler issued the commando order which was carried out in several instances. After the landing in Normandy, Keitel reaffirmed the order, and later extended it to Allied missions fighting with partisans. He admitted at Nuremberg he did not believe the order was legal but claimed he could not stop Hitler from decreeing it.

When, on 8 September 1941, OKW issued its ruthless regulations for the treatment of Soviet POW'S, Canaris wrote to Keitel that under international law the SD should have nothing to do with this matter. 0n this memorandum in Keitel's handwriting, dated 23 September and initialed by him, is the statement: "The objections arise from the military concept of chivalrous warfare. This is the destruction of an ideology. Therefore I approve and back the measures." Keitel testified at Nuremberg that he really agreed with Canaris and argued with Hitler, but lost. The OHW chief directed the military authorities to cooperate with the Einsatzstab Rosenberg in looting cultural property in occupied territories.

Lahousen testified at Nuremberg that Keitel told him on 12 September 1939, while aboard Hitler's headquarters train, that the Polish intelligentsia, nobility and Jews were to be liquidated. On 20 October, Hitler told Keitel the intelligentsia would be prevented from forming a ruling class, the standard of living would remain low, and Poland would be used only for labor forces. Keitel testified at Nuremberg that he did not remember the Lahousen conversatidn, but admitted there was such a policy and that he had protested without effect to Hitler about it.

On 16 September 1941, Keitel ordered that attacks on soldiers in the east should be met by putting to death 50 to 100 Communists for one German soldier, with the comment that human life was less than nothing in the east. On 01 October he ordered military commanders always to have hostages to execute when German soldiers were attacked. When Terboven, the Reich Comniissioner in Nozway, wrote Hitler that Keitel's suggestion that workmen's relatives be held responsible for sabotage, could work only if firing squads were authorized, Keitel wrote on this memorandum :"Yes, that is the best." On 12 May 1941, 5 weeks before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the OKW urged upon Hitler a directive of the OKW that political commissars be liquidated by the army. Keitel admitted at Nuremberg that the directive was passed on to field commanders. And on 13 May, Keitel signed an order that civilians suspected of offenses against troops should be shot without trial, and that prosecution of German soldiers for offenses against civilians was unnecessary. On 27 July all copies of this directive were ordered destroyed without affecting its validity. Four days previously he had signed another order that legal punishment was inadequate and troops should use terrorism. On 7 December 1941, the so-called "Nacht und Nebel" decree, over Keitcl's signature, provided that in occupied territories civilians who had been accused of crimes of resistance against the army of occupation would be tried only if a death sentence was likely; otherwise they mould be handed to the Gestapo for transportation to Germany. Keitel directed that Russian POW'S be used in German war industry. On 8 September 1942, he ordered French, Dutch, and Belgian citizens to work on the construction of the Atlantic Wall. He was present on 4 January 1944 when Hitler directed Sauckel to obtain 4 million new workers from occupied territories.

In theory, the German chain of command in the west was an example of good order. Adolf Hitler served as supreme commander of the Wehrmacht, the nation's armed forces. The High Command (OKW), led by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, ran the war everywhere except in the Soviet Union. Navy Group West and the Third Air Fleet, in turn, managed Germany's naval and air forces in Western Europe while the ground force, some 58 divisions, came under the Oberbefehlshaber West (OB West), headed by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. So logical on paper, those arrangements masked conditions in the field that were close to Byzantine. the operations staff of OKW as an intermediary, Hitler exercised direct control over Rundstedt's OR West.

VE Day, Victory in Europe day, when the Germans surrendered to the Allies in Germany, occurred on a different day in Europe than in America because of the International Date Line. The military surrender agreement for the German armed forces was signed at a schoolhouse in Reims, France, at 2:41 a.m. local time on May 7, 1945, by Colonel General Gustav Jodl, chief of staff of the German army. the document signed at Reims was followed by another surrender ceremony in Berlin the next day -- because the Soviet Union regarded the Reims document as a surrender only on the Western Front. German Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel submitted the capitulation of the Wehrmacht to Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov in the Red Army headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst.

In the face of the documentary evidence at Nuremberg, Keitel did not deny his connection with these acts. Rather, his defense relied on the fact that he is a soldier, and on the doctrine of "superior orders," prohibited by Article 8 of the Charter as a defense. There was nothing in mitigation at Nuremberg. Superior orders, even to a soldier, cannot be considered in mitigation where crimes as shocking and extensive had been committed consciously, ruthlessly, and without military excuse or justification.

The Tribunal found Keitel guilty on all four counts.