The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel

by Walter Gorlitz

  1. During the Polish campaign the infantry had been shown to be over-cautious and insufficiently attack-minded; it also lacked training, it showed little command of the tactics of attack and its NCOs lacked proficiency.

  2. Discipline had unfortunately become very lax and there were at present conditions reminiscent of those in 1917—there had been drunken orgies and bad behaviour in troop trains and on railway stations. He had been sent reports on all this by the stationmasters, and there was a series of affidavits on hand which had led to reprimands for bad breaches of discipline.

  He concluded that the Army needed intensive training before there was any possibility of unleashing it on a rested and well-prepared enemy in the west.

  After the Commander-in-Chief had finished speaking, the Führer jumped up in a rage and shouted that it was quite incomprehensible to him that just because of a little lack of discipline a Commander-in-Chief should condemn his own Army and run it down. None of his commanders had said anything to him about any lack of verve in the infantry when he had been at the front, but he had to listen to such criticisms now after the Army had won a unique victory in Poland. As Supreme Commander he, personally, would have to reject out of hand such charges against his Army. He concluded by demanding to see all the legal papers concerned so that he could read them for himself. Then he left the room, slamming the door behind him, leaving all of us just standing there. Brauchitsch and I separated at once without another word, each going our own ways. It was plain to me that this signalled the break with von Brauchitsch and that what little confidence there had been between them was finally shattered.

  Every day I was asked for the legal papers he had demanded; I only ever saw one that Hitler threw onto my desk.

  Afterwards I learned from Schmundt that von Brauchitsch had asked to be relieved of his office after this disturbing scene, that he had been called in alone to see Hitler, and that his request had been categorically refused him.

  Some days earlier—it was probably in the first half of October—General Halder had been summoned to the Führer to brief him on the plan of campaign for the West; Jodl and I were also in attendance. While Hitler several times interrupted Halder’s address with frequent questions, he kept his views to himself at the end, although he did ask Halder to turn the map with its entries over to him. After he had gone, Hitler turned to us and said something like: ‘That is just the old Schlieffen plan, with a strong right flank along the Atlantic coast; you won’t get away with an operation like that twice running. I have quite a different idea and I’ll tell you (i.e. Jodl and myself) about it in a day or two and then I’ll talk it over with the War Office myself.’

  Because I have not much time left, I will not go in detail into the strategic questions arising from all this, as they will be dealt with by others anyway; I will only go so far as to make it quite plain that it was Hitler himself who saw the armoured break-through at Sédan, striking up to the Atlantic coast at Abbeville, as the solution; we would then swing round [northwards] into the rear of the motorised Anglo-French army, which would most probably be advancing across the Franco-Belgian frontier into Belgium, and cut them off.

  I had some misgivings, as this stroke of genius could go awry if the French tank army did not do us the favour of automatically driving through Belgium towards our northern flank, but held back instead until they recognised Hitler’s planned break-through operation. General Jodl, on the other hand, was as little inclined to share my fears as was Hitler himself.

  It should be mentioned that one day some time later the Führer told me with some great pleasure that on this particular strategic issue he had had a long personal discussion with General von Manstein, who had been the only one of the Army’s generals to have had the same plan in view, and this had greatly pleased him. Von Manstein had, at the time, been Chief of Staff to von Rundstedt’s Army Group A, which was, in fact, to bring the planned operation to a triumphant and crushing conclusion.

  The consequence of the stubborn resistance put up by the War Office was a change in the character of our dealings with Hitler: what had been accomplished hitherto by verbal directives and instructions was now performed by the issue of written orders. The OKW operations staff elaborated the Führer’s instructions for him, acting as his military bureau; they were then issued to the Commander-in-Chief [of the Army] signed either by Hitler or by myself on his behalf. In this way the OKW operations staff now edged into the saddle. Previously the Führer had dealt verbally with his commanders-in-chief often to the total exclusion of the OKW—an arrangement upon which the Commander-in-Chief of the Army had laid the greatest value; but after their serious contretemps the latter appeared in person only when called for.

  The date for the attack [on France] had provisionally been fixed as 25th October [1939], but Hitler doubted that it could be met; the fact was that he wanted to build up sufficient pressure to exploit to the full what little time there was for the preparation and concentration of his troops. In fact, even the necessary overhaul of the tank units was not complete by then: spare engines, gears and tank tracks were in particularly short supply. Besides, the weather was wholly unfavourable. The result was that we were obliged to put up with a series of delays, for on one thing Hitler was quite firm: he would launch his attack only when there was a forecast of several days of good flying weather, so that our Air Force could be exploited to maximum purpose.

  The next dates in November came and went in the same way, and Hitler decided to wait for a lengthy period of clear, frosty weather during the winter instead. During the days that followed, Diesing, the Air Force Meteorologist, sweated blood for every one of the daily weather forecasts he had to make either before or after the main war conferences, painfully conscious of his responsibility should his forecast prove wrong. During January 1940 Hitler realised that there seemed little further prospect of any definite period of clear and frosty weather, and he resolved to postpone his attack on the western front—which had by now virtually frozen solid—until May.*

  Discussions had been taking place since October 1939 with the Navy on the vital importance of Norway as a naval and air base for the further conduct of the war, should the British manage to get a foot-hold there: they would be in a position to dominate the Bay of Heligoland and the exit channels for our fleet and submarine forces as well as confronting our naval ports and the passage from the Baltic out into the Atlantic with a serious threat from their Air Force.

  During December 1939, after contact had been established with the former Norwegian Defence Minister Quisling, a bold plan began to take shape for seizing the Norwegian ports from seaward. The OKW operations staff established a special bureau for this purpose, and staff studies were initiated with the German Navy’s co-operation. In view of the great distance from Narvik—more than 1,250 miles—and of the vast superiority of the British fleet, the plan can only be called audacious; the Führer was well aware of this, as was Raeder, the Navy’s Commander-in-Chief; Hitler accordingly intervened personally in the plan to a very great extent, while at the same time totally concealing his intentions from the Army and the Air Force. For the first time the OKW began to function as a working headquarters for Hitler’s overall command of the armed forces, as it took over the unified command of a theatre of combined operations by the Navy, Army and Air Force.

  It proved an ideal example of how well a joint and centralised command could be concentrated in the hands of the OKW operations staff, to the total exclusion of the Army General Staff and the Air Force: it was clearly laid down that all actual war transactions, including troop transports and logistics, were the sole responsibility of the navy, while such Army and Air Force units as were landed there were directly controlled by the OKW. The real invasion operation was launched on gth April [1940].*

  Of course the winter of 1939–1940 was not only extremely arduous for myself and the OKW, but also highly fertile in internal crises. The daily war conferences and midday briefing sessions in the Reich Chancellery
took place in Hitler’s presence with almost monotonous regularity. Jodl and I each had a study and an office for our adjutants and secretariats next to the former Reich Cabinet Chamber; I never arrived from the War Ministry until about noon, and then I sometimes came back in the evening again for an hour; Jodl himself never really worked anywhere but in the Reich Chancellery, because of the absence of any study for him in the operations staff’s quarters in Bendlerstrasse; thus he was always on hand for the Führer should he be required for anything. In this way his relationship with Hitler became more intimate, as did the latter’s recognition of his ability, which was all very pleasing for me. I do not deny that I would have preferred to have been kept more thoroughly briefed all the time on everything that was happening but, as it was, my co-operation with Jodl was never once in the least impaired. Although nothing was more foreign to my nature than jealousy, nothing would have been less feasible than for me to have insisted on retaining control in my own hands: I was never permitted to make decisions; the Führer had reserved that right to himself even in seemingly trivial matters.

  It was on the 19th and 20th April that I had my second serious contretemps with Hitler, because he was planning to detach the administration of occupied Norway from the military leaders—which, in my view, was the principal task of our commander-in-chief there—and transfer civil authority to Gauleiter Terboven.

  I declared myself firmly opposed to this and walked out of the conference chamber when Hitler began to rebuke me in front of all the other participants. On 19th April Jodl wrote in his diary:

  Renewed crisis; chief of OKW walks out of chamber. . . .

  Although I endeavoured once again, as soon as I had a few calm moments alone with Hitler next day, to convince him of the impropriety of the appointment, I made no headway with him; Terboven became the ‘Reich Commissioner for Norway’. The consequences are well known.

  On 8th May, as all the expert opinion was that a period of fine weather seemed to be in the offing, the order to launch the attack [on the western front] was issued for the 10th. At six o’clock on the morning of 10th May, a courier was to hand the Queen of the Netherlands a personal note from the Reich government, explaining that developments had made it inevitable for German troops to cross Dutch territory; the Queen was invited to direct her army to permit the troops to march through unmolested to avoid any bloodshed; she herself was invited to remain in the country. Despite the most minute preparations for this Mission and a visa issued by the Dutch Embassy in Berlin, our Foreign Office courier was arrested on crossing the frontier on 9th May, and his secret letter was seized from him. The outcome was that The Hague was thus apprised of the imminent outbreak of war and had all the confirmation that might be needed—the courier’s letter—in their hands. At the time Canaris steered suspicion towards Herr von Steengracht in the Foreign Office, but he [Canaris] approached me wringing his hands and entreating me to say nothing of this to the Führer or von Ribbentrop. Today it is clear to me that Canaris himself was the traitor.

  We had been kept well briefed on the attitude of Belgium and Holland, who for some months had merely been posing as neutrals; we knew about Belgium because of the kinship of her Royal household with that of Italy, and about Holland thanks to our security service’s cunningly-contrived capture of a member of the British secret service at Venlo. In actual fact both countries had forfeited any claim to neutrality by turning a blind eye on the Royal Air Force’s flights over their sovereign territories.

  Under conditions of maximum secrecy we left Berlin at noon on 9th May, departing from a small station at Grunewald and heading as long as the daylight lasted for Hamburg, where the Führer was supposed to arrive next day; as soon as dusk fell the train’s direction was reversed, and we arrived at Euskirchen, not far from Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), at three o’clock that morning. While it was still dark, and beneath a beautiful canopy of stars we drove out by car to the command post at the Führer’s new headquarters, Felsennest; this latter had been built by the Todt Organisation far from any village, a bunker installation blasted out of a wooded mountain-top.

  In the Führer’s bunker I had a windowless air-conditioned concrete cell next to his; Jodl’s cell was next to mine, while the military adjutants were quartered on the far side of the Führer’s room. Sound carries extraordinarily clearly in concrete rooms like these; I could even hear the Führer reading newspapers.

  Our office quarters were five minutes’ walk away down a forest track: they were wooden barracks with good windows, a small conference room, three adjoining rooms and an attractive bedroom for Jodl’s General Staff officer (adjutant) who lived there all the time. [This was Major (G.S.) Waizenegger.] I was very envious of his airy room: he was much better off than we were in the bunker. The headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army was half an hour’s drive away along the forest lanes, again in barracks clustered round a forester’s house which was where the C.-in-C. himself lived. Both encampments were so well concealed and so remote that they were never detected by the enemy air force, nor were they ever compromised. One or two air attacks were executed on the railway station at Euskirchen, but they were not meant for us.

  In the first communiqué issued by the High Command, at noon on ioth May, I was responsible for the sentence:

  In order to direct the overall operations of the armed forces, the Führer and Supreme Commander has moved to the front. . . .

  I fought with him for probably half an hour to get him to consent to this disclosure; he explained that he preferred to remain anonymous in order not to lessen the glory of his generals. I did not relent, however, for I knew it had to be made known some time that he really was exercising the Supreme Command and that he was the warlord behind the operation. Finally he gave in to me.

  The fact was that Hitler was familiar with every last detail of our tasks and operations, he knew the targets set for each day and the plans of attack, and he often exercised a close personal influence on them. Late in October [1939] every one of the Army-Group and Army commanders had been summoned individually for Hitler to brief him in detail on the final offensive and on the planned direction of the operation. With each one he had discussed all the details, sometimes asking awkward questions and showing himself to be remarkably well-informed on terrain, obstacles and the like, as the result of his penetrating study of the maps. His critical judgment and suggestions proved to the generals that he had immersed himself deeply in the problems inherent in executing his basic orders, and that he was no layman. Afterwards he was furious about the superficiality of his friend Reichenau, who made a public fool of himself, while on the other hand he particularly praised the detailed preparation and war-game practice that had gone into the planning of the most formidable task confronting von Kluge’s [Fourth] Army, the breakthrough in the Ardennes.

  His greatest interest was reserved for von Kleist’s armoured group, largely because it was this group that was to put this planned breakthrough toward Abbeville into effect. Again and again he remarked how favourable the terrain was for a tank battle; their first and foremost task was to win that as quickly as possible, without any sidelong glances. The careful work that Zeitzler had put into the logistical build-up as the group’s chief of staff met with great approval.

  Most of all, he occupied himself with the task assigned to Busch’s [Sixteenth] Army, and he personally went over with him every stage in the provision of a flanking cover to the south, to shield the armoured group’s smooth breakthrough; and he particularly stressed how vital it was for the armoured thrust to succeed.

  In this way Hitler had already brought to bear his own personal influence as Supreme Warlord without thereby detracting in any way from the magnificent work of the General Staff; it accordingly seemed important that he should admit to the German people that he was in command in the military sense as well, and that the responsibility was his. That was after all how things were.

  During the whole of the campaign in the west, which lasted for fo
rty-three days from 10th May to 22nd June [1940] Hitler flew out to visit his front-line commanders only four or five times. In that fine weather and in view of the enemy air activity there was no sense in flying over the actual theatre of operations in a transport aircraft. All the more frequent as a result were his meetings with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army for purely tactical and strategic conferences; they passed peacefully and without open differences of opinion. Hitler had every reason to acknowledge the achievements of the Army’s command, closely as it had adhered to his fundamental requirements, but he gave voice to his satisfaction regrettably seldom. The result was that I myself went out in my trusty Junkers 52 to pay increasingly frequent visits to the Army and Army-Group commanders, particularly during the first phase up to the middle of June, when there was not much air activity. We kept pretty low altitudes most of the time, so that enemy spotter planes and fighters were less of a danger to us.

  THE INVASION OF FRANCE, 1940

  That first morning in the Felsennest headquarters the atmosphere was electric with tension: among us there was nobody who was not exercised by the question of whether we had succeeded in taking the enemy tactically by surprise or not. Hitler himself was waiting feverishly for the first reports on special operations he had had mounted against the Belgians’ strong modern block-fortifications at Eben-Emael, which was to be captured by a surprise combined airborne and ground-forces assault involving the use of gliders. Hitler had personally briefed and exercised the participating commanders and NCOs of the Air Force units and Engineer battalions involved in this operation; he had gone into the smallest imaginable detail and used a scale model for the purpose.

  I venture to mention this only as an example of how the Führer liked to immerse himself in every detail of the practical execution of his ideas, so wide was the sweep of his unparalleled inventiveness. I was unable to avoid the effects of this again and again on every facet of my own office functions; for as a result, the senior commanders and those of us on his own staff were equally obliged to adopt this exceptionally minute modus operandi; there was no end to his questioning, intervening and sifting of facts, until with his fantastic imagination he was satisfied that the last loophole had been plugged. In view of this it can probably be seen why we often had conferences and briefings that lasted for hours on end with him: it was a natural consequence of his working ritual, which represented a marked divergence from our traditional military dogma in so far as we had been accustomed to leave it to lower echelons and commanders to interpret how the orders given to them were to be carried out. But now, whether I liked it or not, I had to learn to adapt myself to his system.