The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel

by Walter Gorlitz

  On his orders I was provided with ample victuals; as I partook of a bowl of pea soup before my departure, I went over the other measures to be taken with Jodl. He suggested to me that the supreme command should be safeguarded against the event that the Führer really did adhere to his plan as outlined to us in the emotional scene shortly before. We both at once agreed that in that case it would be impossible to command from the Führer’s Reich Chancellery bunker, but on the other hand that we would not go to Berchtesgaden and thereby give up both the Führer and contact with him; but we would under no circumstances remain at the Reich Chancellery or even in Berlin ourselves, as we would thereby lose all contact with the various fronts.

  On this basis, I authorised Jodl to make the necessary dispositions for the combined OKW and War Office command staff foreseen for Berchtesgaden to transfer all the remaining units still in Wunsdorf under the command of Lieutenant-General Winter (deputy-chief, OKW operations staff) immediately to Berchtesgaden, to safeguard the operational command in the south, while the Northern Command Staff should that same evening be assembled at Krampnitz barracks, near Potsdam, to which locality we two would also transfer with our immediate lieutenants. Overall command should remain for the time being with the Führer, keeping in contact with the Reich Chancellery all the time, and with the daily war conferences continuing as before. This left the way still open for the solution we had originally planned, for we were both firmly resolved to dissuade the Führer, come what may, from his mania for succumbing in Berlin. Jodl undertook to apprise General Wenck, possibly by radio, of my advent and of the order I intended to issue to him; then we separated.

  I drove straight from the Reich Chancellery, accompanied by my staff officer Major Schlottmann, and with my ever cheerful driver Mönch at the wheel. We wandered all round Nauen and Brandenburg in the greatest difficulty as they had recently been ploughed up by an air raid and only a desert of ruins remained; the direct street leading south to Wenck’s headquarters had been hopelessly blocked. I finally found Wenck shortly before midnight at a lonely forester’s house. Our finding the place at all was pure chance, because I met a despatch-rider who guided me to General Koehler’s headquarters first of all, and General Koehler provided me with a driver who knew the forest lanes leading to Twelth Army headquarters.

  In a tête-à-tête with General Wenck, I outlined the situation that had developed during the previous afternoon in the Reich Chancellery, and made it clear to him that my last hope of fetching the Führer out of Berlin rested solely on the success of his breaking through to the capital and linking up with the Ninth Army. I was thinking in terms of nothing less than abducting the Führer—if necessary by force—from the Reich Chancellery if we were to be unable to bring him to his senses, something which I hardly dared to hope after his calamitous performance during the previous afternoon. Everything depended, I told him, on the success of our operation, whatever the cost.

  Wenck called in his chief of staff; with a map, I sketched in the situation round Berlin as best I knew it from the previous day; then I left the men alone and set about my supper in the hall of the forester’s house, while Wenck dictated the new order to his army I had asked him for, to take back to the Führer. About an hour later, I drove off again with the army order in my pocket, having offered to hand Wenck’s order to General Koehler on the way back, and to brief him personally and visit his divisional commanders during the night as well. I wanted to bring my own personal influence to bear on all these troop commanders and bring home to them both the rough significance of the task lying ahead of them and the assurance that if things went wrong, it would augur ill for Germany. Wenck was—and stayed—the only one to learn my innermost thoughts and of my intention to abduct the Führer from Berlin before the capital’s fate was sealed.

  At dawn, after a tiresome search, I reached the command post of the closest division to the front; it had already issued orders to attack in line with the changed situation and our intentions. I found the divisional commander some way back in a village, while there were sounds of battle some way off in the distance. I demanded that he should accompany me immediately to his most advanced regiment, so that he could exert some personal influence on his troops and because I wanted to speak to the regiment’s commanding officer myself.

  It was a division that had recently been raised in the capital from units and unit leaders of the Reich Labour Service. Naturally, it was not a battle-hardened troop, but its officers and men were fired by a magnificent spirit; but their commanding officers, obviously energetic and war-hardened soldiers, belonged more than normally at the head of their troops and not to rearward command posts, for only their personal example could compensate for the lack of training and self-confidence of their subordinate officers. After I had brought home the importance of their task to the attacking officers, both by my own presence and by a speech to them, I called in briefly on General Holste’s headquarters on the way back to Krampnitz; he was responsible for safeguarding the line of the river Elbe against a crossing by the Americans from the West. I discussed the position in detail with Holste—an old regimental comrade from the 6th Artillery Regiment, whose enthusiasm and vitality I could vouch for—and stressed to him the importance of his rôle, which was the prerequisite for the success of Twelfth Army’s operations (to which formation I forthwith subordinated him): Holste was absolutely convinced by the burden of reports from the troops and enemy Intelligence that the Americans were making no preparations to attack eastwards over the Elbe.

  Towards eleven o’clock that morning [23rd April, 1945] I checked back into Krampnitz—dead tired, of course—and after consulting with Jodl called at the Reich Chancellery to report to the Führer. As we were ordered to report to him at two o’clock, I was able to get in a good hour’s sleep first.

  In contrast to the previous afternoon, I found the Führer very calm, and this kindled new hopes in me of bringing him to reason and persuading him to forget his unfortunate plan. After General Krebs had described the position on the Eastern Front, where things had not noticeably worsened, and Jodl on the other fronts, I confidentially reported to him—with only Jodl and Krebs in attendance—on my visit to the front.

  First of all, I handed to him the Twelfth Army order issued by Wenck; the Führer scrutinised it carefully and retained it. Although he passed no comment on it, I gained the impression he was completely satisfied. I outlined in detail the outcome of my talks with the troop commanders and gave him my own impression gained on the spot. In the meantime news had arrived of the progress of the attack being mounted by General Koehler’s Army Corps towards Potsdam to their north-east. The Führer enquired whether contact had already been established between them and the Ninth Army, which I was unable to answer. Nor did General Krebs have any reports to that effect from the Ninth Army, whose radio traffic was being monitored by the Reich Chancellery’s signals office. Krebs was again ordered to direct the Ninth Army to establish contact with the Twelfth Army and mop up the enemy forces between them.

  Finally I again requested a private interview. The Führer said he wanted Jodl and Krebs to be present too; it was at once clear to me that he intended to take the same stand as before, only in front of witnesses this time. My renewed attempt to move him to leave Berlin was categorically rejected. Only this time he gave me his explanation in perfect calm: he explained that the very knowledge of his presence in Berlin would inspire his troops with a determination to stand fast, and would keep the people from panicking. This was unfortunately now the pre-condition of success for the operations presently in hand for the relief of Berlin and for the battle that would follow for the city itself. One factor alone would offer any hope of realising this success, which was still possible: that was the people’s faith in him. He would therefore personally direct the battle for Berlin in a fight to the finish. East Prussia had been held only so long as he had kept his headquarters at Rastenburg; but the front had collapsed there as soon as he failed to support it by his pre
sence. The same fate would lie in store for Berlin; that was why he would neither modify his resolution nor break his pledge to the army and to the city’s population.

  This theme was put over without a trace of excitement, and in a firm voice. After he had finished, I told him I would drive out to the front at once and visit Wenck, Holste and the others, to harangue their troop commanders and tell them that the Führer expected them both to defend Berlin and to liberate him. Without a word, he extended a hand to me and we left him.

  On some pretext or other, I was able shortly afterwards to speak to Hitler once more, but quite alone, in his private chamber next to the conference room. I said that our personal contact with him might be severed at any moment, if the Russians were to come down from the north and cut the communications between Krampnitz and Berlin. Might I know whether negotiations had been commenced with the enemy powers, and who would be conducting them? At first he said that it was still too early to talk of surrendering, but then he began to insist that one could always negotiate better once one had achieved some local victory; in this case the ‘local victory’ would be in the battle for Berlin. When I said I was not satisfied, he told me that he had in fact been conducting peace talks with England via Italy for some time now, and that very day he had summoned Ribbentrop to discuss their next steps with him; he would prefer not to go into closer detail with me just then but he certainly would not be the one to lose his nerve. That, said the Führer, was all that there was to be said on the subject for the time being.

  I told him that I would return next day from my visit to the front to brief him on developments in the situation. Then I withdrew, not suspecting that we should never see each other again.

  I drove back to Krampnitz with Jodl. On the way we frankly agreed that we could not leave things as they were—we discussed the possibility of abducting the Führer from his bunker, possibly even by force. Jodl told me that he had been occupied with similar thoughts since the previous day, although he had not ventured to give voice to them. While they had been in the Reich Chancellery’s bunker today he had examined the prospects for putting such a plan into practice and had had a look round: the plan was quite out of the question in view of the strong SS guards and of the Security Service bodyguard who had sworn personal oaths of allegiance to Hitler; without their collaboration any such attempt was doomed to disaster. Men like General Burgdorf, the military adjutants, Bormann and the SS adjutants would all stand fast against us too. We gave the idea up.

  Jodl further thought that we ought to wait for the outcome of the steps he had undertaken with Göring; on the evening of the 22nd he had described the afternoon’s events in the Reich Chancellery in the closest detail to General Koller, the Chief of Air Staff, and stressed that the Führer had resolved to stay in Berlin either as victor or victim; Jodl had sent Koller to Göring in Berchtesgaden to put him rapidly in the picture on the crisis which had thus blown up. Only Göring could intervene now, as he was indeed competent to. I underwrote Jodl’s action at once, and was grateful that he had taken the initiative there in a direction which had not occurred to me myself.

  When we checked into Krampnitz, our whole organisation—that is the OKW operations staff plus War Office (North), which Jodl had combined into a Northern Command Staff under his own command—was on the point of moving off. Having received an unconfirmed report of Russian cavalry scouting down towards Krampnitz from the north, the commandant had already had the huge munitions dump blown up, without waiting for any orders to that effect, and had ordered the evacuation of the barracks. Unfortunately I had no time to call to account this hysterical gentleman who had just wiped out Berlin’s munitions supply. . . .*

  General Wenck had moved his Army headquarters considerably further to the north, and was occupying another forester’s house when I arrived shortly after dusk. He had endeavoured to establish contact with one of his armoured divisions on the other side of the Elbe, but without success. I urgently appealed to him to devote his operations now more than ever solely and entirely to Berlin, and to bring his own personal influence to play, for the Führer’s fate hinged upon the outcome of this last battle and not upon tank raids on the other bank of the Elbe.

  A telephone call from Jodl was waiting for me there; he broke the news to me that during the night he had unfortunately been obliged to evacuate Krampnitz because of the proximity of the enemy, against which he would have been able at that time to mount only two companies of tanks. He was therefore transferring the OKW’s headquarters—that is, our operational headquarters—to a forest encampment at Neu-Roofen, between Rheinsberg and Fürstenberg; the camp had originally been fitted out with signals and communications equipment for Himmler, but was lying empty and was 100 per cent available to us. I agreed at once, of course, with the added proviso that radio contact with the Reich Chancellery was to be maintained and that the Führer should be informed of our move.

  I realised at once that there was no guarantee that the daily war conferences in the Führer’s bunker would continue any longer, as the enemy would probably deprive us of the Krampnitz route to Berlin next day. But there was now no other course of action open to us.

  After I had tried to bring home to General Wenck the gravity of the situation and the importance of the task given to him, of reopening access to Berlin, and after I had ordered him to report in person to the Reich Chancellery to put the Führer in the picture, I drove out into the night to call on Holste’s headquarters, reaching it shortly before midnight. With Holste I went over the details of the task now facing him: by weakening his rear, which was confronting American forces which apparently had no plans to cross the Elbe, Holste was to gather all his forces together and screen the northern flank of Wenck’s Twelfth Army against any danger or actual interference from the Russians.

  At the time there was still some prospect of re-establishing access to Berlin through Potsdam and Krampnitz if:

  1. the Twelfth Army’s drive resulted in the complete liberation of Potsdam and its communications with Berlin;

  2. the Twelfth and Ninth Armies could link up south of Berlin; and

  3. the attack being made on the Führer’s personal orders by SS General Steiner’s Armoured Corps from the north could batter through to the Berlin–Krampnitz road in territory admittedly unfavourable for tank operations, cramped and easy as it was for the enemy to block.

  General Holste’s only problem was to establish contact with Heinrici’s Army Group and Steiner’s Armoured Corps to the northwest of Berlin: if he succeeded in doing that, then by exploiting the impassable Havelland marshes he could plug the gap with only moderate forces. I assured Holste that orders to this effect would go to Heinrici’s Army Group, and drove back out into the night; in the early light of dawn I passed through Rheinsberg, a quiet and peaceful town, and after a considerable search reached our encampment at Neu-Roofen, where Jodl and his immediate staff had just arrived themselves, towards eight o’clock. The camp was so well hidden in the forest, some way away from the village and the road, that only local guides could find it for us.

  The painful awareness of our physical detachment from the Reich Chancellery and of our dependence on wireless and telegraphic communications strengthened me in my resolve to assume responsibility myself for decisions—in contrast to earlier—as soon as I could no longer receive telephone messages from there; during the morning I telephoned the Reich Chancellery, and spoke first to one of the military adjutants and then to General Krebs, asking for a line to the Führer as soon as he was available.

  Towards midday that 24th April, I made a personal report to Hitler on my latest visits to the front; I mentioned the favourable progress being made by the Twelfth Army in its drive towards Potsdam and added that I intended to put in an appearance at the Reich Chancellery towards evening. He forbade me to drive to Berlin by car, as the access roads were no longer adequately safeguarded, but he raised no objection to my flying to Gatow, the Air Warfare School’s landing ground, and being co
llected from there. He turned the receiver over to Colonel von Below and I arranged my flight at once with him; I was to arrive shortly before dusk.

  I summoned my trusty Ju. 52 from Rechlin to the landing ground at Rheinsberg, where I planned to take off for Berlin. Directly after this telephone conversation, the first war conference under my direction was held: General Dethleffsen (General Staff) outlined the position on the Eastern Front, and Jodl the remaining theatres of war. We were still in touch with all our formations, so without exception the various reports from the fronts were all to hand as usual. Immediately afterwards, Jodl apprised the Führer by telephone of my proposals, and obtained his agreement to them. General Krebs, the Deputy-Chief of the Army General Staff, was at the Reich Chancellery end, and Jodl imparted his innermost thoughts to him.

  That evening I drove through Fürstenberg to the command post of SS General Steiner’s Armoured Corps just to the south, hoping to ascertain the situation there and the prospects of his attack. By that time, only one of the two armoured divisions which had been regrouping in New Brandenburg, had arrived; the second was still being moved up. While Steiner had succeeded in fighting his way out of the narrow lakelands and winning the space for his tank formations to deploy in, he had attracted the enemy’s attention by the thrust and as a result the chance of a surprise break through—which otherwise would beyond any doubt have succeeded—had been lost.

  Upon my return to the camp, it was time to depart for my flight to Gatow. My adjutant had already laid everything on, when a telephone call came from Colonel von Below, forbidding me to take off before dusk as enemy fighters were interfering with air movements at Gatow. I postponed my flight until ten o’clock that evening, but this plan was scotched as well: after a beautiful spring day, fog closed in and the flight was abandoned. I put it off again until the evening of 25th April.

  Very early on the 25th, I again drove out to the front, visiting General Holste’s headquarters first of all. After I had been briefed on his Corp’s situation, and had telephoned Wenck—who had again transferred his Army Headquarters—to be brought up to date by him, I dictated to Jodl my own appreciation of the situation for forwarding to the Führer: General Wenck had admittedly reached Potsdam with his battle group; but it was only on a narrow front forced like a wedge up between the lakes to the south of the town, and he lacked reserves, and above all extra strike-capacity, as considerable sections of his forces were tied down on the multiplying battles round the Elbe crossings (without any map I cannot give their exact locations) to the north of Wittenberg, so that he could not release them for an attack on Berlin itself or a joint movement with the Ninth Army, which latter was now apparently comprised only of remnants. To execute both operations properly, the Twelfth Army just was not strong enough.