The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel

by Walter Gorlitz

  Hitler’s final decision to prepare for war with the Soviet Union came early in December 1940; preparations were to be such that at any time onwards from the middle of March 1941 he could issue the final orders for the programme of troop movements to our eastern frontier, which was consonant with launching the actual attack early in May. The main prerequisite was that the railways had to be able to operate all their available routes at maximum capacity and free of breakdowns. Even if these orders did seem to leave the final decision open until the middle of March, I was now in no doubt whatsoever that only some quite unforeseen circumstance could possibly alter his decision to attack.

  Over Christmas, I was my own master for ten whole days, a circumstance I had not enjoyed for several months. Just as the year before the Führer had travelled to the western front to inspect the West Wall, this year he visited the channel coast and our Atlantic Wall, in order to be among his troops this Christmas too, spending his mornings on the inspection of war installations, battery-emplacements and other features of the Atlantic Wall.

  So this year too I was able to spend Christmas and the New Year of 1940–1941 with my family. It was not only the last time I would ever spend Christmas at home; it was to be the last time my proud little flock of children would ever come together under my own roof. . . .*

  From the beginning of December 1940 we had energetically thrown ourselves into the planning of a combined land and air attack on the Rock of Gibraltar, from the Spanish hinterland. The Spaniards, and especially the Spanish General Vigon—a close friend of Field-Marshal von Richthofen (of the Air Force) and of Admiral Canaris—and a general who enjoyed both Franco’s confidence and the actual authority of a field-marshal, had not only given us permission to carry out a tactical reconnaissance of the Rock from the Spanish side of the frontier, but had in fact accorded us the greatest assistance in doing so. The plan of attack was elaborated with all the frills and in close detail by a general of our mountain warfare troops and outlined to Hitler in my presence early in December.

  The necessary troops for the operation were already standing by in France; the German Air Force had prepared advanced air bases in southern France; the critical point was to persuade neutral Spain—nervous as she rightly was of Britain—to turn a blind eye on the movement across Spanish territory of German troops of about Army Corps strength, together with their heavy artillery and anti-aircraft batteries, preliminary to the attack. On my own suggestion, Admiral Canaris was despatched to see his friend Vigon early in December, to negotiate Franco’s agreement for the execution of the operation; General Franco had up to then turned a blind eye on the various General Staff and Intelligence preliminaries. We naturally agreed that once we had succeeded in seizing Gibraltar we would return the Rock to Spain just as soon as the war no longer required us to bar the Straits of Gibraltar to British naval traffic, a military responsibility which we would naturally take care of ourselves.

  Some days later Canaris returned to report to the Führer, who had personally entrusted him with and briefed him for the mission: Franco had refused to co-operate, pointing out that such a grave breach of neutrality might result in Britain’s declaring war on Spain. The Führer listened calmly and then announced that in that case he would drop the idea, as he was not attracted by the alternative of transporting his troops through Spain by force, with Franco then suitably publicising his wrath about it. He feared that that might lead to a new theatre of operations, because Britain might then with equal justification land troops in Spain, perhaps through Lisbon, just as in the case of Norway.

  Whether Canaris was the right man for that mission, I would now be inclined to question, in view of the treachery he now seems to have condoned for several years. I now assume that he did not make a serious effort to win Spain over for the operation, but in fact advised his Spanish friends against it. I myself am in no doubt whatsoever that we would have succeeded in seizing Gibraltar, had Spain so allowed, in view of the vulnerability of the fortress from the landward side, and that in consequence the Mediterranean would have been barred to the British: it would be worthwhile to devote special consideration elsewhere to the consequences thereof for the rest of the war in the Mediterranean. It was Hitler who had recognised the difference it would make not only to Britain’s lines of communication with the near and far East, but above all to the ailing Italy.

  After the Gibraltar operation had been written off, all thoughts reverted to the eastern question again. I think it was probably in the second half of January 1941 that Halder, the Chief of General Staff, outlined to the Führer in the presence of Jodl and myself the Army’s operational plan for the attack on Russia, describing in close detail the Intelligence so far gathered on the enemy, on the series of border incidents reported along the demarcation line and on the planned railway troop movements preliminary to the invasion. On the latter score the Führer was particularly interested in arrangements for moving up in the last wave of troop concentrations the armoured units being brought up from the garrisons in central Germany where they had wintered and re-equipped, and where new units had been raised for them. For me, Halder’s address was startling in as much as it gave me a first insight into the extent of Russia’s war preparations and a disturbing picture of the steadily increasing concentration of Russian divisions on the other side of the frontier, as the reconnaissance efforts of our frontier guards had established beyond all possibility of error. At that stage it was still not possible to determine whether the Russians were actually girding themselves for an attack, or whether they were themselves only massing to ward one off; but the German invasion was soon to tear that veil of doubt aside.

  At the end of March 1941, Hitler addressed the first all-service conference of senior commanders earmarked for the eastern front at the Reich Chancellery building in Berlin. I had managed to arrange for all the OKW’s departmental heads to hear the Führer’s address as well. I recognised at once that he intended to lay down a programme of action for us: in the small Cabinet chamber, rows of chairs and a speaker’s lectern had been set up, just as though it were a public lecture. Hitler addressed us very gravely, in a well-organised and elaborately prepared speech.

  Starting with the military and political situation of the Reich, and with the intentions of the Western Powers—Britain and America—he elaborated on his thesis that war with the Soviet Union had become inevitable, and that to sit back and wait for it would only worsen our prospects of victory. At the time he openly admitted that any hesitation would tilt the balance of strength against us: our enemies disposed over unlimited resources, which they had not even begun to strain, while we were not in the position to add to our manpower and material resources much more. Thus he had reached the decision that Russia must be forestalled and anticipated at the earliest possible moment; the danger, latent yet palpable, that she represented for us would have to be eliminated.

  Then followed a weighty exposition on the inevitability of such a conflict between two diametrically opposed ideologies: he knew that it was bound to come sooner or later and he preferred to take it upon himself now than to turn a blind eye on this threat to Europe and bequeath this inescapable problem to his successor. He did not want to postpone its solution until later. For nobody who succeeded him would exercise sufficient authority in Germany to accept responsibility for unleashing the preventive war which alone would suffice to halt the Bolshevik steamroller in its tracks, before Europe had succumbed to it. There was nobody in Germany who knew the face of Communism and its destructive powers better than he from his fight to save Germany from its clutches.

  After a lengthy harangue on the experience he had gained and the conclusions he had drawn, he finished with a declaration that war was a fight for survival and demanded that they dispense with all their outdated and traditional ideas about chivalry and the generally accepted rules of warfare: the Bolsheviks had long since dispensed with them. The communist leaders had given clear proof of this by their behaviour in the Baltic states, F
inland and Bessarabia, as well as by their arbitrary refusal either to recognise the Hague Rules on Land Warfare or to consider themselves bound by the Geneva conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. He followed this up by insisting that [Soviet] political commissars should not be regarded as soldiers, or treated as prisoners of war: they were to be shot down in the course of battle or executed out of hand. They would be the hardcore of any attempt at putting up a fanatical resistance; the commissars, said Hitler, were the backbone of the communist ideology, Stalin’s safeguard against his own people and against his own troops; they had unlimited power over life and death. Eliminating them would spare German lives in battle and in the rearward areas.

  His further statements on the liability to courts martial of German troops suspected of excesses against the civilian population, whether or not suppressing armed resistance, were inspired by the same motives, although the re-institution of such courts martial was to be left to the discretion of each commander as soon as he regarded his territory as pacified. Finally, Hitler announced that he was forbidding the transport of Russian prisoners of war into Reich territory, as in his view they represented a danger to the labour force, not only because of their ideology, of which he had already liberated the German industrial labour scene once, but because of the danger of sabotage. The impression he had made with his speech upon his audience was not lost to him, although nobody openly raised his voice in protest; he rounded off this unforgettable address with the memorable words: ‘I do not expect my generals to understand me; but I shall expect them to obey my orders.’

  It was now that in line with Hitler’s statements the ‘special regulations’ for the administration of the former Soviet territories were drawn up, as a supplement to the basic directive for the preparation of the war in the east [the Barbarossa contingency]. In addition to the warrants of Göring and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army as bearers of the executive authority, it contained the clause I had so stubbornly contested relating to the authority of the S.S.-Reichs-führer [Heinrich Himmler] as Chief of Police in the rearward operational areas. In view of our experiences in Poland and Himmler’s not unknown megalomania I read into this a serious danger that he would only abuse the power Hitler had accorded to him for the maintenance of peace and order behind the front lines. My opposition was to no avail and, despite several protests and support from Jodl throughout, I was overruled.

  It was not for some days that I was able to discuss our opinions of Hitler’s speech with Brauchitsch. He was quite frank: deep down inside themselves, his generals wanted no part of this kind of war. He asked whether any written orders were likely to follow along those lines. I assured him that without clear directions from Hitler I would certainly neither prepare nor ask for such orders in writing; I not only considered written orders to that effect superfluous, but indeed highly dangerous. I said that I for one would be doing all I could to avoid having them. In any case, everybody had heard with their own ears what he had said; that would suffice. I was firmly opposed to putting anything down on paper on so questionable a matter.

  Unfortunately, Brauchitsch was probably unconvinced by me, for in May the War Office circulated draft orders for Hitler’s approval, prior to their issue to the Army’s troops on the eastern front. That was how the notorious ‘Commissar Order’—which is certainly known to all the commanders, but appears not to have survived in a verbatim text*—and the order on ‘Liability for Court Martial in Soviet territories’ came into being.

  The former was apparently issued by the War Office after Hitler had approved its terms. The latter was issued by the High Command’s legal department after it had rephrased the War Office draft; it bears my own signature, as being on behalf of the Führer. Both these orders were accepted as prime exhibits against me at the Nuremberg Trial, especially as they had been issued six weeks before our attack and there was thus never any possibility of justifying them in retrospect by circumstances obtaining during the Russian campaign. As their sole author—Hitler—was dead, I alone was called to answer for them by that Tribunal.

  In the middle of March we began to move troops eastwards in preparation for the attack; D-day had been set for 12th May [1941] although no actual implementation order had been issued. This was the way Hitler worked; he would keep the final date for storming the frontier as open as possible until the very last moment, for one never knew what unforeseen circumstance might crop up in the final weeks or even the very last hours, demanding the greatest freedom of action.

  At the same time, we were engaged with the crossing of the Danube and Field-Marshal List’s march on Bulgaria; the latter’s army made only slow progress in the winter weather, the roads being as bad as they were. At the same time we were also occupied with the diplomatic negotiations for Yugoslavia’s participation in the Tripartite [Axis] Pact. At the same time, a new disaster was threatening the Italian troops in Albania. And all the time, Hitler was demanding the strengthening of our Army occupying Norway and the provision of 200 more coastal gun batteries of every calibre. I could extend this catalogue still further, if time was not pressing for me now. It will suffice for me to stress the extent to which our military organisation—even during this interlude between our victory over France and our attack on the Soviet Union—was preoccupied with all kinds of investigations to ensure that nothing that might just lead to a reverse had been overlooked. Day and night, even when it appeared that nothing much was happening, the High Command was consumed by intense activity. It was Hitler who kept us at it with his restless spirit and the fantastic imagination with which he not only thought out everything for himself but which constrained him to provide the most elaborate safeguards should the improbable materialise.

  At the end of March I accompanied Hitler to Vienna, where the new Four Power Pact with Yugoslavia was signed in Castle Belvedere, with all the customary pomp and circumstance . . .* When I was summoned to attend the Führer later that afternoon, he expressed his deep satisfaction and relief that there was no prospect of unexpected surprises in the Balkan theatre. He read to me a letter he had just dictated for Mussolini, containing several proposals, and particularly a demand for some degree of order to be introduced into his maritime communications with North Africa. To this end, he had suggested that some elderly destroyers and cruisers should be disarmed and stripped, and converted into fast transport ships less vulnerable to enemy submarine attack. Hitler invited me to tell him whether I had any objections about his having made such radical suggestions to the Duce; I shook my head firmly. If anybody was to tell Mussolini anything, then he, Hitler, was the man to do it; it had to be brought home somehow to Mussolini that things could not be allowed to go on like that, especially if Germany’s troops were also dependent on seaborne supplies. That night we returned to Berlin in our special train.

  Two days later, the Zvetkovic regime was overthrown in Belgrade, together with the Regent, Prince Paul, an admirer of the Führer’s and a supporter of their foreign policy hitherto; the Four Power Pact had (ostensibly) caused an officers’ revolt. I had already been called to see the Führer in the Reich Chancellery building and I reached it at the same time as Jodl. The Führer appeared in our conference chamber and showed us the telegram, bursting out spontaneously that he had no intention of standing for that: now he would smash Yugoslavia for once and for all; never mind what the new government might tell him, he had been disgracefully betrayed, and a declaration of loyalty now would only be a feint, a ploy to win time. He had sent for Ribbentrop and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army (Brauchitsch) as well, and as soon as they were all there he would give them his orders: there was only one way, and that was an immediate, concentric attack both from the north and, with List’s army, from Bulgaria in the east; the Hungarian Minister Sztojay was to be sent for at once and told that Hungary would have to assist; she would get back her precious Banat territory in reward; we would all see how old Horthy would be behind us breathing fire and brimstone for that prize.

  I i
nterjected that our eastern front deadline could not be postponed, as troop movements were already proceeding according to our planned maximum railway-capacity programme and we could not reduce that programme to any further extent; Field-Marshal List’s army was too weak to pit against Yugoslavia, and we could not rely on the Hungarians. That, rejoined Hitler, was the very reason why he had called in Brauchitsch and Halder; some solution would have to be found. Now he intended to make a clean sweep in the Balkans—it was time people got to know him better. Serbia had always been a State prone to Putsche, so he was going to clean her up; and so he stormed on—he was, one might say, properly under way.

  After everybody had turned up, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the Foreign Secretary, and so on, Hitler announced the situation to us in his now familiar manner, and outlined his intentions. As always, it was just a stream of orders: an attack on Yugoslavia as early as possible; List’s army was to encircle her to the right and, invading from the east, march on Belgrade from the south-east with a strong northern flank, while German and Hungarian units captured Belgrade from the north across the Danube and a new army comprising the rearward units of the troops massing to attack Russia made a lunge from Austria. Appropriate proposals by the War Office and Air Force High Command were to be tabled without delay. He himself would undertake the necessary negotiations with the Hungarians, he would send their Minister Sztojay off to Budapest that very day. Jodl’s interjection that the new Yugoslav government should be confronted with an ultimatum with a fixed time limit was categorically rejected by the Führer. Hitler did not let the Foreign Secretary even get so far as opening his mouth. Brauchitsch was authorised to moderate the tempo of our troop movements, in order not to interfere so much with public transport. There was no further discussion; Hitler walked out of the chamber accompanied by the Foreign Secretary for an interview with the Hungarian Minister in Berlin who was already waiting below. After a brief exchange of views between Halder and Jodl there remained only one thing for all of us, and that was: ‘Back to work!’