The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel

by Walter Gorlitz

  It was probably in connection with his eastern ambitions—and eastern anxieties as well—that Hitler decided in September to meet Pétain and Franco. We had, since the armistice, maintained active contact with the Pétain regime which was settled in the town of Vichy in the unoccupied half of France; among other things, Pétain had expressed a desire to transfer his seat of government to Paris. The Führer had postponed a decision on this for the time being, probably with the intention of seeing what his encounter with Pétain would bring forth.

  Early in October I travelled to France with the Führer in his special train. His meeting with Pétain and Laval took place at Montoire railway station, to the south of Paris. I received the elderly Marshal in front of the station building, and saluted him standing at one end of the guard of honour drawn up for him, as he left his closed car. He wore the uniform of a general; he saluted me, and walked past the guard of honour without looking at the soldiers, while Ribbentrop and Laval followed on his heels. Silently we walked through the station building to the Führer’s saloon railway coach drawn up just across the platform from the barrier.

  As the Führer saw Pétain emerging from the ticket hall, he left the train and came out to meet him; he shook his hand and personally guided him back into his coach. I did not take any part in their conference—I never did in political matters—but after their talk and an almost too affectionate farewell from the Führer to the Marshal, I led the latter back out of the station, and retracing our steps past the guard of honour presenting arms, we walked over to his motor car. Before the Marshal climbed in, he thanked me briefly for the way I had dealt with General Huntziger’s armistice delegation. Then, without offering me his hand, he climbed into his car and drove off.

  Of the course of their talks I can relate only what I learned from Hitler myself: the Marshal had behaved very properly but with the greatest reserve. Pétain had inquired what form France’s future relations with Germany would take and what were, by and large, to be imposed as peace conditions. Hitler, on the other hand, had tried to learn from Pétain the extent to which France would be prepared to accept the cession of certain territories to Italy, if Germany was to guarantee France her colonial empire, with the exception of Tunis. It was obvious that the results of the talks were very meagre: the decisive questions remained unresolved.

  We continued our journey to the Spanish border, passing through Bordeaux to the frontier station at Hendaye; Franco arrived there soon after with his Foreign Secretary and lieutenants. In addition to myself, Brauchitsch was also there with an Army guard of honour to receive our guests with the usual formalities. Naturally, we soldiers took no part in the very lengthy discussions in the Führer’s coach. Instead of dinner both sides took a break for consultations, and after the Spanish defender of the Alcazar [General Moscardo], who was on Franco’s staff, had run out of stories with which to regale us we were all getting bored to tears. I spoke briefly with the Führer: he was very dissatisfied with the Spaniards’ attitude and was all for breaking off the talks there and then. He was very irritated with Franco, and particularly annoyed about the rôle played by Suñer, his Foreign Secretary; Suñer, claimed Hitler, had Franco in his pocket. In any event, the final result was very poor.

  On our return journey there was a further private interview between Hitler and Laval, probably a continuation of their first discussion a few days earlier. I always understood that the French statesmen were fighting for a clarification of our demands for reparations from their country, and that they were baffled by our additional insistence on representing the demands of Italy, a country to which they insisted they owed nothing.

  The news reached us on our return journey through France that Mussolini was planning to attack Greece by force of arms, because the Greeks had rejected his demands for them to cede certain territories to Albania. Count Ciano, his Foreign Secretary, was the instigator of the whole dispute. Both of these Italian statesmen had been lulled by the belief—in which they had been reassured by the governor of Albania—that it would only take a little sabre-rattling for the Greeks to give way without further ado.

  The Führer described this ‘encore’ by our Ally as downright madness, and at once decided to go down through Münich for a meeting with Mussolini. As I had a number of urgent matters to attend to, I left the Führer’s train and flew back to Berlin, so as not to miss the Führer’s train when it left Münich on the following evening. The train was already slowly pulling out as I jumped aboard at the last moment.

  The meeting took place next morning in Florence. Mussolini greeted the Führer with the memorable words, ‘Führer, we are on the march!’ It was too late to stave off the disaster. Obviously Mussolini had learned of Hitler’s intention to restrain him from his project, during the diplomatic preliminaries with our Ambassador, and that was why he had acted so quickly—to confront us with a fait accompli.

  For several hours the four-cornered discussions dragged on in Florence, between the two leaders and their Foreign Secretaries. I dispelled my boredom by talking with our military attaché and the Italian General Gandin (chief of the operations division of their General Staff), the only one of the Italians to speak German. At noon lunch was served in private to Hitler and the Duce, and I was invited to join them; the conversation was free and informal. Just before the meal, a military despatch arrived from Albania, bringing details of the first victories in the campaign, which had begun early that morning. Mussolini read out the despatch to Hitler and myself, in German of course: German was always the working language for our talks with Mussolini.

  We left for home immediately after lunch. I had meanwhile ordered our military attaché there to send us daily telegrams on the war in the Albanian-Greek theatre; I had sworn him to tell only the unvarnished truth. Hitler did not really lose his temper until we were in the train; then he began to fulminate about this new ‘adventure’ as he was already terming it. He had sternly warned the Duce of the folly of taking it all so lightly: and it was a folly, he said, to invade at this time of year, and with only two or three divisions, advancing into the mountains bordering Greece where the weather alone would very shortly call a halt to the whole operation. In his view, as he had told Mussolini, the only possible outcome was a military catastrophe; but Mussolini had promised to send more divisions into Albania should these weak forces be inadequate to smash the attack through. By Mussolini’s own account, however, it would take several weeks for even one extra division to disembark in Albania’s [two] primitive harbours. If he had wanted so much to pick a fight with poor little Greece, Hitler continued, why on earth had he not attacked Malta or Crete: that would still have made some sense in the context of our war with Britain in the Mediterranean, especially in view of the unenviable position of the Italians fighting in North Africa. The only positive result had been that the Duce had now asked for a German armoured division to be sent to North Africa after all, after our General von Funck had satisfied him that Marshal Graziani was pressing very urgently for one, and that it would be possible to make some use of it after all.

  I very much fear that Hitler probably did not in fact speak to Mussolini as bluntly as he afterwards described to me, for he hesitated—as I subsequently discovered several times—to say anything likely to injure this military dilettante’s vanity. Only later did I realise that Mussolini exploited the Führer whenever he could, but that their friendship was a very one-sided one—Hitler regarding the Duce very much as a golden boy.

  Within a very few weeks everything had happened just as Hitler had predicted: the feeble Italian offensive, launched without sufficient reserves, had not only become hopelessly bogged down in the heavy going but ended up in a parlous situation as a combined result of a counter-offensive by the Greeks and the foul weather. That was when the requests for aid began to come, as the poor dockyard facilities in Albania were causing a bad enough botdeneck in the supply organisation for the Italian fighting units, let alone enabling the Italians to make provision for the injec
tion of reserves into the fight. Hitler was willing to send a mountain division, but there was no hope of sending it either by sea or across Yugoslavia; we lent a hand with our last Mediterranean-based German troopships and with Air Force transport squadrons. Had the advent of winter not equally mitigated the Greek counter-offensive and blunted its impact, the sorry end of the adventure would have come six weeks later.

  In recognition of this and inspired by the feeling that he ought not to leave his Ally to find his own way out of the predicament—an honourable instinct which Mussolini, had the tables been turned, would have felt able to ignore at any time—Hitler evolved the plan of sending an army across Hungary and Bulgaria into Greece in the following spring, in the hope that at least in Albania Italy would be able to hold out until then. It would of course have been more propitious to approach Yugoslavia about the possibility of moving up German troops for the ‘rescue’ of Mussolini by means of the shortest overland route [i.e. across Yugoslavia]; but the Führer categorically refused even to contemplate this military proposal: in no circumstances did he want to jeopardise Yugoslavia’s position as a neutral, which was equally in Italy’s own interests.

  It would require a whole volume if I were to describe the military history of the preparation and execution of the Balkan campaign in the spring of 1941. The political opposition to our plans displayed by Hungary, Bulgaria and Roumania was inspired by several motives: Hungary’s attitude was ostensibly pro-British, but in view of Germany’s assistance in securing in the Vienna Award a considerable alteration of Hungary’s frontiers with Roumania—to the latter’s disadvantage—Hungary’s Imperial Administrator [Admiral Nikolaus von Horthy] was obliged to show his gratitude in some way. Roumania had adopted a Germanophile foreign policy after her King had been exiled and General Antonescu had assumed office as Head of State; at Antonescu’s own request we had kept a strong military mission and a staff of technical advisers in Roumania since 1940; like Hitler he was both Head of State and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Our relations with King Boris of Bulgaria were always most cordial: he was an admirer of Hitler and proud of his service in the German Army during the 1914–1918 war.

  As far as the purely military measures themselves were concerned, I conducted the initial talks with the Hungarian War Minister [General von Bartha] and with Antonescu and the Bulgarian War Minister [Lieutenant-General Daskaloff]; later on the respective military attachés in these countries acted as intermediaries and—as in Italy—were given the powers of Generals of the German armed forces, with all the enlarged duties and prerogatives that flowed from them; the only exception was in the case of Roumania where—in addition to the military attaché—the head of the military mission, General Hansen, acted as general in command.

  My personal relations with Administrator Horthy and King Boris of Bulgaria were particularly good and, one might almost claim, affectionate; there were several instances of this, and it undoubtedly eased many of my difficulties. I never enjoyed an intimate association with Antonescu: he was a capable soldier, dedicated to his mission in life, openhearted and forthright, but uncommunicative and often blunt: it was obvious that he was having a difficult time politically with the Iron Guard and militarily by reason of the corrupt and rotten body of the State—the Civil Service and the Army. He showed an iron determination for ruthless reform but it is open to doubt whether, particularly in the political sphere, he was meeting with any success. He sought the Führer’s counsel, but did not heed it; as a result he stood by himself as a politician trying to buttress his position with a worthless Army. He was incorruptible and a fine soldier, but he lacked the time to carry his reforms through.

  Preparations for a war with Greece—a campaign which as the Führer repeatedly told us he deeply regretted—preoccupied the War Office and the OKW operations staff all winter.

  At the end of October we left Berchtesgaden and I finally had a united OKW in Berlin again. Even so, the War Ministry building was so cramped with the now expanded operations staff that I resolved to transfer my office to Krampnitz, near Potsdam, where there was adequate office space for us in the Cavalry and Armoured Troops’ School. In order to be able to live with his wife once more, General Jodl had moved his quarters into the little command post built some years before by Blomberg at Dahlem. During the day, he used to work either at home or in the rooms placed at our disposal next to the old Cabinet Chamber in the Reich Chancellery building.

  It was in any case high time for me to be reunited under one roof with all my Command’s departments and sections, as the work and my own personal influence on it had been markedly wanting as a result of my absence since May; admittedly I had schooled the heads of the various departments over a period of years, but during my absence they had been obliged to rely almost entirely on correspondence or telephone communication with me. It should not be overlooked that my purely operational rôle, in concert with the Führer and with Jodl, was a very minor part of my duties; and that even if my Ministerial functions did assume a rather lesser importance during the military campaigns, sometimes falling into complete abeyance, they nevertheless did still exist and the backlog of work had to be caught up with. Many matters used to arise which could not be dealt with without my active consent. Although I never regarded it as particularly burdensome, the job gave me no respite: I took no leave at weekends or on public holidays the whole year round; I sat at my desk from early morning until far into the night. I sought recreation in my numerous flights and in my journeys in the Führer’s special train—so long as he made no demands upon me—and in the various missions on which the Führer sent me to Italy, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria and so on: when I was under way, nobody could reach me by telephone (although my wireless car did receive signals during the journeys). Often I took some of my heavier work with me, because I could devote my undivided attention to it, which was impossible in my office with the innumerable conferences and inevitable interruptions there.

  Early in November 1940 the Russian Foreign Secretary Molotov arrived in Berlin at the Führer’s request to discuss the political situation. I was present as the Führer received the Russian guests at the Reich Chancellery; the reception ceremony was followed by a banquet in the Führer’s chambers, with myself seated next to Molotov’s aide, M. Decanosov [the Soviet ambassador] but unable to converse with him as there was no interpreter near at hand. Subsequently the Foreign Secretary held a banquet in his hotel, where I was again seated next to M. Decanosov; this time with the help of an interpreter I was able to speak with him on a number of general subjects: I told him of my visit to Moscow and of the manoeuvres I had seen in 1931, and I asked him a question or two about the recollections I had of my visit then, so there was a degree of laboured conversation between us.

  I heard nothing of the diplomatic discussions themselves, except once when I was summoned to be present as the Russians came to take their leave of the Führer after what was the last and obviously the most important conference: of course, I asked Hitler what their outcome had been, and he replied that they had been unsatisfactory; even so, he was not going to decide yet to prepare for war, as he wanted first of all to wait for Stalin’s reaction in Moscow. Nevertheless it was at once clear to me that we were heading for war with Russia, and I am not at all sure that during the talks Hitler himself had left no stone unturned to prevent it, even though to have done so would probably have necessitated giving up his representation of the interests of Roumania, Bulgaria and the Baltic states. But it is apparent that here too Hitler was again absolutely justified, for within one or two years, as soon as Stalin was ready to attack us, the Russians would certainly have stepped up their demands; Stalin was by 1940 already strong enough to realise his aims in Bulgaria, and in the Dardanelles and Finnish questions; but our finishing France off in only six weeks had thrown his whole programme out of joint and now he wanted to play for time. I would not venture to set up such a hypothesis, had our preventive war on Russia in 1941 not shown the advanced stage t
hey had reached with their preparations to attack us.

  Of course one can only muse on what might have been, had things only worked out differently: even if it was too much to ask of our good fortune that Italy should have stayed out of the war altogether as a benevolent neutral, just consider the difference if Hitler had been able to prevent their irresponsible attack on Greece. What would we not have saved by way of aid to Italy for her senseless Balkan war? In all probability there would not have been any uprising in Yugoslavia in an attempt to force her entry into the war on the side of the enemies of the Axis, just to oblige Britain and the Soviet Union. How differently things would then have looked in Russia in 1941: we would have been in a far stronger position, and above all we should not have lost those two months. Just imagine: we would not just have frozen to a standstill in the snow and ice, with temperatures of minus forty-five degrees just twenty miles outside Moscow, a city hopelessly encircled from the north, west and south, at the end of that November; we should have had two clear months before that infernal cold weather closed in—and there was nothing like it in the winters that followed anyway!

  How true was the saying that a permanent alliance can never be forged with the powers of fate! The most daunting imponderables await the statesman and warlord who takes risks; and that was what happened in my view when Yugoslavia’s participation in the Tripartite [Axis] Pact was ratified in Vienna. Otherwise there would have been only one other solution open to us, to have sued for peace with Britain at any price, and to have relinquished all the fruits of our victories to date. Would that have been acceptable to Britain? After the loss of her French ally, she had once again put out the strongest feelers towards Moscow. In view of her traditional policy of opposition to whichever force in central Europe was most powerful, I will never believe that Britain would ever have let us out of the trap in which she and her American ally now had us and confident as she rightly was of Moscow’s intentions.