The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel

by Walter Gorlitz

  K. 29th September

  [1946]

  At this point Field-Marshal Keitel’s early memoirs are interrupted. Two days later the death sentence was pronounced upon Field-Marshal Keitel and he devoted his next ten days to feverishly describing the events in and around the Führer’s headquarters in April 1945 as the final collapse of Germany began—the last eighteen days of the Third Reich. Keitel himself was hanged on 16th October, 1946, before he had time to revise any of his original manuscript.

  * In Keitel’s original manuscript there follows a description of the conferring of the Order of King Michael on him, and details of various society functions during his visit; these have been omitted by the Editor.

  * In Keitel’s original manuscript there follows an incomplete and fragmentary sentence on the theme of Stalingrad, which could not be reconstructed; it has been omitted by the Editor.

  6

  Extracts from Keitel’s Wartime Letters

  to his Wife

  EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Lieutenant-Colonel K.-H. Keitel, Lisa Keitel (née Fontaine), the widow of the field-marshal, burned all the letters she had received from her husband. But among the papers of Dr. Nelte, Keitel’s defence counsel, there are seven letters written by Keitel to his wife during 1943 and 1944, some in pencil and some in ink, letters which for some no longer ascertainable reason were filed with his other correspondence dating from the period of the Nuremberg trial. It can be noted how the field-marshal’s typically correct military upbringing prevented him from going into service matters in greater detail in these, his private letters:

  Führer’s Headquarters,

  3rd August, 1943.

  The telephone is not safe enough for me to discuss tlie war and the dangers of the air offensive against our cities. Hamburg has been a catastrophe for us, and last night there was yet another very heavy air raid on it. The same must be expected for Berlin as soon as the nights are long enough for the longer flying time involved. That is why I want you to leave Berlin as soon as possible in view of the enormous danger there now is of fires breaking out; fires are far more dangerous than high explosive. [Keitel added a number of personal instructions for his wife, which she disobeyed; she stayed in Berlin, despite a heart complaint, even after her home at No. 6 Kielganstrasse had been bombed out in November 1943.] I am afraid of vast conflagrations consuming whole districts, streams of burning oil flowing into the basements and shelters, phosphorus, and the like. It will be difficult to escape from the shelters then, and there is the danger of tremendous heat being generated. This will not be cowardice, but the sheer realisation that in face of phenomena like these one is completely powerless; in the heart of the city you will be quite powerless. . . . Apart from this there is not much to report: there is a state of flux and we can only wait and see what will happen with the new developments in Italy. Badoglio has reassured us that they will go on fighting, and that it was only on this condition that he accepted office. Nobody knows where Mussolini is. . . .

  Führer’s Headquarters,

  29th August, 1943.

  Nobody can tell when there will be any respite for peaceful contemplation in our lives again; for the time being we have war—we have already been at war for four years now! Nobody knows when the Bolsheviks will crumple to their knees, but before then there can never be peace! Anyway, you have more than enough leisure now to reflect on things, while I am stunned by the burden of my work and the much bigger burden of worries and vexations. On top of that, we are coming into the winter again now, something that is very evident to us, cold and rainy as it is today. At present all hell is loose on the eastern front, but I am counting on a respite when the mud begins to soften, probably in four to six weeks at the earliest, in the middle of October. When that happens I expect we will shift camp to the south again [i.e. to the Berghof at Berchtesgaden]. In the middle of this week there is the state funeral in Sofia; I have to represent the German Armed Forces, I’ll probably be flying down there. . . .

  On the eastern front it was the period of the desperate fighting retreats all along its southern sectors, with the German troops of Army Group South, including those under the command of Field-Marshals von Manstein and von Kleist falling back on the line of the River Dnepr. On 28th August, King Boris II of Bulgaria—the champion of maximum collaboration with the Axis powers in the Balkans—had met a mysterious end in Sofia; officially it was announced that he had died of cerebral apoplexy, but it was more probably caused by poisoning: certainly he died very conveniently for the Soviets! A regent took over the government as King Simeon II, his father’s successor, was still under age. On 22nd September, 1943, Field-Marshal Keitel celebrated his 61st birthday.

  Führer’s Headquarters,

  25th September, 1943.

  Despite everything there was no shortage of letters and congratulations for me on the 22nd, and the nuances in them are not uninteresting: one is forced to notice how several, in fact I can say how many have been of a particularly cordial and pleasant character, as opposed to those who are satisfied with mere formalities. . . . First I had an early breakfast with the adjutants and the train commandant, with eggs, roast duck and a cold meat salad, altogether very sumptuous. At eleven o’clock I called on the Führer privately to receive his birthday greetings; he invited me to dine with him during the evening, when I had returned from my hunting expedition. At eleven-thirty I drove off by car through Wehlau to Pfeil, a forestry station east of Königsberg, in the Labiau district. I was very well looked after: Master of the Hunt Scherping [of the Reich Forestry Commission and the Prussian Provincial Forestry Department] was there to meet me, in fact he was the one who had got me the invitation from Göring to go elk-hunting. After about half an hour’s chatting, we set off for the hunting grounds, about another ninety minutes’ drive out towards Tilsit.

  Our hunt was quite dramatic. There were two elk that were fair game in the Tavellenbrück game area at Ibenhorst. I could not get near the elk, which I caught sight of soon after we began our stalk. There was nothing to be seen amongst the giant hydroceles and the dense alder and pastureland, and the going was very heavy. I finally took a pot shot from a thousand feet away and, of course I missed at such a range. We carried on patiently stalking and two hours later the elk showed up only five hundred feet away and collected its first bullet from me; I immediately fired again, and the elk just dropped to the ground. It is an enormous beast, about seven feet high and weighing about nine hundred pounds; in any event, my enterprise was rewarded. A very nice Master, and very charming women. I got back here only late in the evening, and was able to change quickly into uniform for dinner with the Führer.

  26th September, 1943.

  I don’t suppose I have ever had so much work to do as in the last few weeks and the last few days, even my adjutants found it indescribable and can only goggle at the way I eat my way through it. Every evening it takes me until very late, or even early next morning, to clear it all away. But as long as my sleep does not suffer, short though it now is, it makes no difference. Felix Bürkner [formerly Inspector of Riding and Driving, who had lost his job because of difficulties caused by his non-Aryan background] wrote me at great length! There is a completely incomprehensible opposition to him from Schmundt, who refuses to give him a job under any circumstances. It is impossible for me to protest to the Führer about it.

  There is no doubt that Keitel was weighed down with work in the weeks following 8th September, 1943, when Italy had withdrawn from the Axis Pact, involving considerable re-dispositions in Italy and the Balkans. During 1942 and 1943 Keitel began to suffer from blood-circulation difficulties, and it seems that this was the result of the overwork as much as of a previous lung disorder.

  On 17th July, 1944, Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B on the invasion front in Normandy, was badly injured during a strafing attack on his car while returning from a front-line tour of inspection. He was implicated in the 20th July conspiracy, and on 14th October, 1
944, he was called upon by the Chief of Army Personnel, General Burgdorf, accompanied by his official expert on officer questions, Lieutenant-General Maisel, and obliged to commit suicide by swallowing poison. Hitler had given him the choice of either committing suicide or facing the People’s Court. By the time the following letter, with its oblique reference to Rommel, had been written, the situation on the eastern front was relatively stable, with an autumn defensive campaign in the Gumbinnen and Goldap areas of East Prussia, and the Fourth Army (General Hossbach) meeting a renewed attack by the Second White Russian Front.

  Führer’s Headquarters,

  24th October, 1944.

  How far I will get with this letter I cannot predict, but at least I ought to make a start on it. All that there is to report is that my health is good, and the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Lieberle, was satisfied with my blood pressure yesterday and is unable to do anything with my struggling and nervous heart because organically there is nothing wrong with it. . . .

  In the meantime quite a lot has been happening: Rommel has died after all from the multiple skull injuries he received on a car journey, through a blood-clot; it is a heavy blow to us, the loss of a commander well favoured by the Gods. And now yesterday Kesselring has also been injured in a motor accident. I don’t know anything in detail about it yet, but in any case he will be out of action for some months even if he does pull through. They drove into the back of a gun in the dark; he has head injuries and was unconscious for a time. I hope he gets over it all right.

  There is fighting now on East Prussian soil, where the Russians have broken through on both sides of Rominten heath. I think we are going to be able to iron things out, but first we have to bring more troops up, and that is in hand. Our presence here [i.e. at the Führer’s headquarters in East Prussia] has a very soothing effect on the population, I am certain of that. The Russians certainly won’t dream that we are still here, which is an added safeguard for us. There are more than enough troops around us to protect us!

  By early November, Keitel had, according to the testimony of his family, lost all hope of a favourable outcome to the war; indeed, as early as August 1941, after the death of his youngest son at Smolensk, he confided to Karl-Heinz his eldest son (according to the latter’s recollection), that the war could not now be won ‘with normal means’. According to Keitel’s own memorandum on the ‘Blame for the German Collapse’, dated 8th June, 1945 (papers of Dr. Nelte), the Field-Marshal saw the attack on Russia in 1941 as a risk hard to justify. Questioned whether the attack had been necessary, he answered only ‘It is for a politician to answer that’. The war could have ended in 1941, he added, only if a quick victory had been won in the east; after Stalingrad there remained only the hope of preventing the invasion in the west and thereby avoiding a war on two fronts ‘which would be the end of us sooner or later’. Keitel further added, ‘If despite all this the Führer still carried on fighting, then the only reason can have been that he thought that there was nothing else awaiting the German people anyway than the annihilation with which it had been threatened.’ The following letter was written to his wife on the occasion of her birthday on 4th November, 1944.

  Führer’s Headquarters,

  1st November, 1944.

  Tonight I am driving to Torgau for the Reich Military Tribunal where I am to appoint the new President [General Hans Karl von Scheele] and have a talk with the gentlemen as their chief. I will only be touching the outskirts of Berlin on my way back, inviting people to meet me there to confer with me, and putting them down again at Fürstenwalde. . . .

  After all the vicissitudes of our last years, we must always hope that happier days are ahead. Really, we have a thirty-year war behind us, lasting from 1914 with only very few carefree interludes. Our generation and our children’s generation have deserved to be able to live their lives in such a hard-won peace. . . .

  7

  The Bomb Plot

  20th July 1944

  EDITOR’S NOTE: On 20th July, 1944, a suitcase bomb exploded in the Führer’s headquarters in East Prussia. Hitler himself survived, but several officers were killed. The bomb had been planted by Colonel Count von Stauffenberg, Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army. The plan was to establish Colonel-General Ludwig Beck as a ‘Reich Administrator’, after Hitler’s death, with Field-Marshal von Witzleben, who had been on sick leave since 1942, as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces; others involved at the Berlin end were the Chief of the General Army Office, General Olbricht, the City Commandant, General von Hase, and numerous General Staff officers. In addition Field-Marshals Rommel and von Kluge (C.-in-C. West) were aware of the conspiracy. After the bomb blast, a Top Secret signal went out at 4.45 p.m. containing the codewords ‘Internal Unrest’, according to which Field-Marshal von Witzleben transferred executive authority in all occupied areas to the front-line commanders-in-chief (i.e. West, South-west and South-east) and on the eastern front to the various Army Group commanders. At 6.0 p.m. a further signal went out to the German military districts numbered I to XIII and XVII, XVIII, XX, XXI and to military district Bohemia-Moravia, according to which executive authority was transferred to the commanding generals. The order was completely obeyed only by the deputy commanding general of defence district XVII (Vienna) apart from the military governor of France in Paris, while in military districts XI (Kassel) and XIV (Nuremberg) steps were put in hand to comply with the order. But during the evening Keitel telephoned the military districts from the Führer’s headquarters announcing that the orders from Berlin were forged, and the uprising was crushed. Von Staufenberg, Olbricht and Beck were shot that same night, while von Witzleben was executed on 8th August, and von Kluge committed suicide upon his recall as C.-in-C. West on 8th August, fearing that he was to be called to account for his complicity; the military governor of France, General von Stülpnagel, was hanged (after a vain suicide attempt) on 30th August and Rommel himself was forced to commit suicide in October 1944.

  Dr. Otto Nelte, Field-Marshal KeiteVs defence counsel at Nuremberg, prepared a questionnaire for him to answer as a preliminary for the hearing, and the part of the questionnaire dealing with the bomb plot of 20th July, 1944, is reproduced here to throw light on the Field-Marshal’s attitude to the conspiracy, which he himself had no time to deal with explicitly in his memoirs.

  What in your view were the deeper motives behind the Putsch?

  Dissatisfaction with Hitler, both with his political system and with his direction of the war. As it seemed quite out of the question that Hitler would go of his own accord, the conspirators resolved to eliminate him. By this they hoped to release the soldiers and officials of their oath of allegiance to Hitler at the same time. What kind of political system—if any—was intended to take his place I don’t know. I never heard of any so-called government programme; as for the military side, I do not believe it was intended to end the war by surrender. There was an order signed by Witzleben as ‘Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces’, but it was rejected by all its recipients. Finally, there were similar orders issued to the military districts, which were not obeyed.

  Were there any indications, or had Intelligence been received indicating that a revolutionary movement was in existence?

  Not that the OKW or I knew of. Hitler had received no reports or warnings and he did not speak with me about it either before or after the murder attempt. During the investigations it was established that some officers in the War Office and in military Intelligence had known of the planned murder attempt, but they had not reported it.

  I would like to refrain from asking you for details of the Putsch, as they are of no consequence for your defence. Would you just tell me one thing: did any front-line commanders take part in the Putsch?

  No. Which front-line commanders—if any—had any cognisance of the planned Putsch was not established. As far as I know, none of them. General Beck’s attempt at establishing contact [with Army Group North] failed and was thrown out.

&nbs
p; What part did you play in the affair?

  I was present when the bomb exploded, and on the orders of the Führer—who was not deprived of his governmental or executive authority for one instant—I issued all the necessary instructions to all the fighting services and to the subordinate military district commanders.

  I have brought up this subject of the 20th July, 1944 plot in this examination of you only because during an earlier hearing someone has accused you of being guilty of, or an accessory to, the death of Field-Marshal Rommel.

  Rommel was heavily incriminated by the testimony of one of the main conspirators, a lieutenant-colonel on the staff of the military governor of France, von Stülpnagel. The Führer showed me the protocol of the testimony and ordered the Chief of Army Personnel to summon Rommel to his presence; Rommel refused to come, as he was too ill to travel. Thereupon the Führer ordered his chief adjutant and the Chief of Army Personnel, Burgdorf, to go and see him, taking with them the incriminating protocol and a letter which I wrote at Hitler’s dictation. In this latter it was submitted to Rommel that he should report to the Führer if he believed himself innocent; if he could not, then his arrest was inevitable, and he would be obliged to answer for his actions before a court. He might like to consider what the consequences of that would be; on the other hand there was another way out for him to take.

  Having perused the protocol and the letter, Rommel asked whether the Führer was aware of the protocol’s existence; then he asked General Burgdorf for time to think. Burgdorf had personal orders from Hitler to prevent Rommel committing suicide by shooting himself; he was to offer him poison, in order that the cause of death could be attributed to the brain damage he had suffered in the motor accident; that would be an honourable demise and would preserve his national reputation.