The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel

by Walter Gorlitz

  Early that afternoon, the encounter with Colonel-General Heinrici took place, with General von Manteuffel present. Our discussion was strained, as I could not rebuke Heinrici savagely enough for having concealed his plan to retreat from the High Command and myself. He did not admit that it had amounted to so much as a retreat but talked only of the necessity of withdrawing his southern flank through the Schorf heath to the other side; besides all the troop movements and operations designed to shorten his front had been firmly under control. The plan that had been shown to me at the headquarters of the 7th armoured division had only been a guide prepared for the engineer-troop headquarters for road-blocks and demolitions, if it should come to a collapse, and so forth. After I had outlined to these gentlemen the overall situation and the position of Wenck’s Twelfth Army, SS General Steiner’s command and Holste’s Corps, and described the already critical situation resulting north and north-west of Berlin from their arbitrary withdrawal of their southern flank which had gravely endangered the rear of Steiner’s armoured corps, Heinrici gave his word to heed my orders from now on, and promised to knuckle down under the overall command. We parted at least superficially properly, with me appealing to him to abide by our long-standing friendship and by his pledge.

  That evening, I did not get back to camp until after dusk. In Jodl’s view, the position north of Berlin, on that southern flank, was more acute than ever. I had a long telephone conversation with General Krebs in the Reich Chancellery after the Führer had referred my call to him, so that I was unable to speak with Hitler personally. It was a very bad telephone line, and it kept breaking down. The chief of military signals who was in our camp with us explained to me that our only radio contact now was established between a wireless aerial suspended by a captive balloon near our camp, and the Radio Tower in Berlin; all the telephone lines had broken down. As long as the Radio Tower remained in German hands for transmitting and receiving signals, and the captive balloon stayed in one piece, our communications with the Reich Chancellery were assured. In addition, we still had radio contact with the radio office in the Führer’s bunker.

  Jodl proposed to me that we should evacuate our operational headquarters next day [29th April]. At first I rejected this proposal, as I had no desire to risk the further separation from the Führer which the implicit loss of radio [speech] communication would involve, unless it was absolutely necessary. That our stay there was approaching its end was admittedly becoming obvious from our own artillery: a heavy battery had begun to open fire right by us soon after dusk, and kept up a sporadic barrage all night. During the course of the evening, Jodl had been lucky enough to get through to Hitler by radio, and he had reported our discoveries about Heinrici’s front to the Führer, and received his complete agreement to all my dispositions against any further retreat by Heinrici’s Army Group, and to my order for a counter-attack by the 7th armoured division, and so forth.

  At about midnight, Colonel-General Heinrici telephoned me complaining bitterly about Jodl’s rebukes to his chief of staff [von Trotha], and announcing that in view of the continued worsening of the situation of which he had learned during our conversation, he had ordered his Army Group to resume its retreat. I told him that his attitude—for which there was no valid justification whatsoever—was flagrant disobedience. He countered that in that case he would no longer accept responsibility for the command of his troops, for whom he claimed he alone was responsible. I replied that in my view he was no longer suitable to command an Army Group, and that he was to consider himself dismissed: he was to relinquish his command to the senior Army commander, General von Tippelskirch. I told him I would inform the Führer that I had relieved him of his command, and terminated the conversation.

  At that moment, Jodl came in and began to inveigh against the Army Group’s chief of staff, whom he considered totally incompetent; I would have to intervene with Heinrici, as we could not put up with methods like these any longer. I told him I had sacked Heinrici, and he told me he thought my action fully justified. By wireless telegraphy I informed the Führer I had dismissed Heinrici, and why; General Krebs acknowledged the signal that night on behalf of the Führer.

  On the morning of 29th April, the noise of fighting to the east of our operational headquarters grew louder. During the night Jodl had already made the necessary preparations for evacuation, with the chief of military signals; it was only a question of one move to Himmler’s former operational headquarters in Mecklenburg, which was already equipped with an adequate signals installation. Himmler had willingly declared his readiness to vacate the headquarters for us, and to accommodate our advance party; we were at liberty to follow when we pleased.

  As a result of the rain during the night of 28th to 29th April, we had had to haul in the captive balloon, so that for a time our radio communication with Berlin was interrupted. We were unable to send it aloft again until about midday, as its canopy had become heavy with rain. On the 29th, however, there was a scorching sun and a clear sky, and the enemy’s air force was out in unusual strength over our camp and the front, now only about seven miles away.

  As soon as the balloon was aloft, I asked for a telephone line to the Reich Chancellery. First there was a conversation between me and the commander of Greater Berlin, who was apparently there in the Reich Chancellery. General Weidling, the artillery general who had formerly commanded the Oder front near Küstrin at the time of its collapse there, came on the line; this was the same general of whom distorted reports had reached the Führer from SS quarters to the effect that he and his staff were in full flight to the Döberitz camp, while their troops were fighting fierce battles between the Oder and Berlin. Hitler had such little confidence in his generals that he had furiously ordered General Krebs to see that the general was arrested and shot out of hand for cowardice in the face of the enemy. As soon as he had learned this, General Weidling had none the less immediately presented himself at the Reich Chancellery and demanded to speak to the Führer. As General Krebs afterwards told me, an interview had forthwith taken place with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery, with the result that the Führer had sacked the officer who had been city commandant up to then and appointed Weidling commander of Greater Berlin, with unlimited powers; he had assured him of his supreme confidence in him.

  I have mentioned this instance only to show how easily the Führer’s confidence in his Army generals was shaken, and how he almost invariably reacted without any reservations upon receiving unfavourable aspersions on them from his obscure Intelligence sources in the SS. In this particular instance, only the firm resolve of the general concerned had avoided a grave and imminent miscarriage of justice.

  Shortly after my conversation with Weidling, a radio-telephone conversation did take place between Jodl and the Führer himself, and I listened in with an earphone. The Führer was very calm and objective, acknowledged once again the steps I had taken, and said he would like to speak with me as soon as Jodl had finished making his war report to him. Even as Jodl was still conferring with him, there was a loud bang outside, and the conversation was completely interrupted. A few moments later the chief of military signals came into our room and announced that the balloon had just been shot down by Russian aircraft: there was no spare, so plain-language communication could not be restored.

  Devastating though this revelation was for me, it did help me decide to order the evacuation of our headquarters immediately after lunch: there was no question now of restoring the plain-language radio link, but telegraphic signals could be transmitted by wireless from anywhere. I was furious not to have spoken with the Führer myself, although Jodl had been able to discuss the most vital points with him. We sent a last signal reporting that we were moving out, and requested them to send all further signals on to our new operational headquarters, which we should have reached by that evening.

  Towards midday, the sounds of battle grew louder, and enemy air activity increased, with bombing attacks particularly on the Rheinsberg bottleneck an
d strafing of the retreating convoys blocking the streets. We split the OKW up into a number of road parties, and gave each one a different route to follow. Jodl and I stayed with our immediate staffs at the encampment until the very last moment; my adjutant had that morning reconnoitred a forest lane specially for us, taking us in a wide detour round the villages round Rheinsberg and the choked highways. At seven o’clock we moved off, leaving only the last signals troops and the wireless station to follow. As we learned from them next day, Russian patrols combing through the forest would unquestionably have surprised us in the camp barely an hour later had we still been there; as it was, only one signals truck and some telephone sets fell into their hands, before they could be dismantled.

  In beautiful spring weather we drove along the narrow, hidden lanes through the dense forest, circling the villages and hamlets, towards Waren, to meet General von Tippelskirch and discuss with him his Army Group’s further operations.

  I was obliged to order him to assume command, as he repeatedly begged me not to confer it on him; I disclosed to him that I had already summoned Colonel-General Student from Holland as the new commanding general, but that he was to remain in command until the former arrived. I learned from him that SS General Steiner had taken over command of his Army (for the time being!) having transferred his armoured corps’ command in turn to Colonel Fett of the OKW, who had originally been allocated to him as an Intelligence Officer.

  After I had briefed Tippelskirch thoroughly on how I wanted him to operate the Army Group, he asked to be rid of his Group’s chief of staff; Jodl willingly agreed after his scene with von Trotha, so I ordered the latter’s dismissal as well.

  We drove on to our new operational headquarters at Dobbin, the estate of the famous Dutch oil magnate Deterding (who had died in 1939).

  When we arrived we met Himmler; he planned to move out with his staff early next day, so the sleeping quarters provided for us were cramped and crowded. But at least we were in wireless communication again, and we at once took over the radio office, which almost immediately began furnishing us with signals. A signal had arrived for me from the Führer, signed by him; it contained five questions:

  1. Where are Wenck’s spearheads?

  2. When will they renew their attack?

  3. Where is the Ninth Army?

  4. Where will the Ninth Army break through to?

  5. Where are Holste’s spearheads?*

  Over dinner, I conferred with Jodl on our reply, and myself wrote out a first draft. Only after a lengthy discussion did we hand in our reply to the radio office for despatch during the night.

  I had been brutally frank, and made no attempt to gloss over the seriousness of the situation now and the impossibility of liberating Berlin any more. The southern flank of the Vistula Army Group had swung round so far to the west as a result of their retreat-movement that Steiner’s armoured corps had been obliged to call off its attack and take over the screening of the Group’s southern flank to the north-west of Berlin together with Holste’s Corps; otherwise they would find themselves being attacked from the rear or even cut off. All that we knew of the Ninth Army was that about ten thousand men had battled their way through the forests with no heavy artillery at all and joined up with the eastern flank of the Twelfth Army. They were no real reinforcement for General Wenck, as his attack had become hopelessly bogged down among the lakes just south of Potsdam. I wrote at the end of the signal, ‘Relief of Berlin and reopening of access to it from the west impossible. Suggest a breakout through Potsdam to Wenck, or alternatively that Führer should be flown out to the south. Am awaiting decision.’

  Towards midnight Field-Marshal von Greim the new commander-in-chief of the German Air Force arrived at Dobbin, his right ankle heavily bandaged; he had taken off from Berlin with his chief pilot, Hanna Reitsch, on the 28th and had landed safely at Rechlin; he had driven out to me from there direct, to report on events in the Reich Chancellery. He had spent several days there with the Führer; he told me about Göring’s dismissal and the reason for it—as I described earlier—and added that the position in Berlin was very grave, although the Führer was confident and composed. He said he had had long talks with him, but despite their old friendship had been unable to persuade him to leave Berlin. Greim added that he had been commissioned to contact me and confer with me on the situation. He would be flying to Berchtesgaden on the 30th, and taking over command of the Air Force there.

  On 30th April, we remained at Dobbin. My hope of receiving a reply from Hitler was not realised; the correct reception of my signal was acknowledged word-by-word to our radio office, so it had been correctly picked up at the Reich Chancellery and passed on to the Führer. I could only construe the lack of any reply to my final sentence as being tantamount to a refusal.

  At four o’clock in the morning, on 1st May, we moved out of Dobbin. I had had a hot bath and I had been able to sleep in a bed with clean white linen for a few hours. On the day before, the estate management had evacuated the estate, leaving it to one of the stewards: the modern villa where we lived next to the old château—which had been converted into a barracks for foreign workers—was being run by a publican’s wife even after our departure; each evening she had handed round a few bottles of wine, but the Russians would have drunk the whole cellarfull afterwards, I suppose.

  I had laid on a war conference for ten o’clock in the barracks at Wismar, where the actual working party, comprising both War Office and OKW, had been accommodated since the 29th already. Afterwards, I received Colonel-General Student in the mess; he had arrived by plane at noon. I briefed him on the position, and went over with him the tasks which would lie to him now, stressing the importance of keeping open the Baltic ports for the shiploads of refugees and troops pouring in from East Prussia. Finally, Jodl discussed with him which orders were to be issued first and the light in which his staff saw their new and various tasks.

  Student took over command with a genuine resolve to clarify the situation and to damp down the unwarranted mood of panic that was prevailing. During our drive to Wismar, we had unfortunately witnessed terrible scenes of the disorderly flood of refugees, convoys of vehicles and supply columns, which we had ruthlessly to drive through. Twice we ourselves had to jump out of the car because British aircraft were strafing the columns with machine-gun and cannon-fire. For hours on end we were jammed in these queues of vehicles, two and three abreast, and all getting in each other’s way. I had a marvellous military policeman in an open car who managed again and again to inject some degree of order into this chaos, and to pilot us through.

  At midday that day, 1st May, we drove in several separate groups to the headquarters building that had been provided in northern Neustadt for the northern OKW group in a naval barracks where there was space for everybody to work, and where a complete signals network had been installed. I expected to find Grand-Admiral Dönitz there, but I was disappointed: he had set up headquarters with his staff at a naval hostel near Plön. I drove out of Neustadt alone to see him: it was about an hour’s drive away.

  At Plön, the Grand-Admiral was in the middle of a conference with Field-Marshal Busch, who was commander of the coastal front from about Kiel right down to Holland as far as I recall. Apart from Busch, I met Himmler there as well; he had tried to join forces with Dönitz there. I have no idea what his real intentions were, but it seemed that he wanted to place himself at our disposal for further duties and brief himself on the situation.

  Towards evening, Field-Marshal von Greim called on Dönitz in Plön with his chief pilot, Hanna Reitsch. He had postponed his flight to southern Germany for a day to discuss with Dönitz any requests the navy had to make of the air force. From Hanna Reitsch I learned that SS Lieutenant-General Fegelein had been shot on the Führer’s orders, after he had been arrested by a police patrol, drunk and in civilian clothes, in a Berlin night-club.

  I had a lengthy conversation with Dönitz about the hopeless situation. He showed me a signal from Borm
ann, to the effect that according to his testament, the Führer had designated Dönitz as his successor, and that an officer with the testament itself was on his way out to us by plane. I realised at once that my signal from Dobbin on the night of 29th to 30th April had removed any doubts the Führer might still have entertained about the hopelessness of his position, and that the testament, and Bormann’s advance notice of it to Dönitz, had been the consequence.

  Both of us were convinced that in Berlin the final scene could come at any moment, although Field-Marshal Greim judged the progress of the Battle for Berlin considerably more favourably, from what he had personally seen and heard in Berlin up to the evening of the 28th. Deeply disturbed, I drove back to Neustadt, being unfortunately badly delayed on the way by several heavy British air raids on the villages around the naval headquarters just before dusk. I was terribly worried that my signal might have drawn too black a picture, with the result that the wrong conclusions had been drawn. But I finally accepted that it would have been irresponsible to varnish over the unpalatable truth; my frank signal had been the only correct course of action. Jodl expressed the same opinion when I talked things over with him upon my return and told him all that I had learned at Dönitz’s headquarters.

  During that same night, 1st to 2nd May, I was telephoned by Dönitz to come for an interview with him at eight o’clock that morning; I accordingly left Neustadt in good time. Dönitz received me at once, and privately showed me two new signals:

  (a) from Goebbels with a list of members of the new Reich Cabinet, allegedly drawn up by the Führer, in which Goebbels was to be ‘Reich Chancellor’. It began with the words, ‘Führer deceased yesterday, 3.30 p.m. . . .’

  (b) from Bormann, that the case in question had occurred, and Dönitz thus took over as successor.

  So that was it! Goebbels’ wording made it obvious that Hitler had taken his own life, otherwise it would certainly have read, ‘killed in action’ and not ‘deceased’. The testament, which was supposed to have been flown out to us by an officer, had not arrived.