Sauckel was appointed Plenipotentiary General for Manpower by a decree of 21 March 1942, signed by Hitler, Lammers, and Keitel. (1666-PS)
On 8 September 1942 Keitel initialled a Hitler order requiring citizens of France, Holland, and Belgium to work on the “Atlantic Wall”. The order was to be enforced by the withdrawal of food and clothing ration cards (556-2-PS). Keitel was informed of the quotas of foreign laborers which Sauckel and his agents were to fill. Sauckel requested the assistance of the Army, and asked that pressure be used to obtain the quotas, if necessary. (3012-PS)
At a conference with Hitler on 4 January 1944, at which Keitel was present, it was determined that Sauckel should obtain 4,000,000 new workers from occupied territories. (1292-PS)
(3) Murder and ill treatment of prisoners of war, and of other members of the armed forces of the countries with which Germany was at war, and of persons on the high seas. On 18 October 1942 Hitler ordered that commando troops, even if in uniform, should be killed, not only in battle, but in flight or while attempting to surrender (498-PS). An order regulating the treatment of paratroopers had been issued by Keitel about a month earlier. It provided that captured paratroopers were to be turned over to the SD. (553-PS)
A supplementary explanation of the commando order, signed by Hitler, was distributed to commanding officers only, with a covering memorandum dated 19 October 1942, signed by Jodl (503-PS). Several cases are known in which the order was carried out (508-PS; 509-PS). Three specific instances were mentioned by the G-3 of the C-in-C, Norway, where captured members of sabotage units were executed after interrogations which resulted in valuable intelligence. These occurred at Glomfjord, Drontheim, and Stavanger. (512-PS)
On 23 June 1944 the Supreme Command West requested instructions redefining the scope of the commando order. In view of the extensive landings in Normandy, it had become difficult to decide which paratroops should be considered sabotage troops under the terms of the order, and which should be considered as engaged in normal combat operations. The question was answered by an order of 25 June 1944, one copy of which was signed by Keitel, reaffirming the full force of the original order (531-PS; 551-PS). Keitel extended the application of the commando order to members of Anglo-American and Russian “military missions” taken in the fighting against the partisans in the southeast and southwest. (537-PS)
When allied fliers were forced to land in Germany, they were sometimes killed by the civilian population. The police had orders not to protect the fliers, nor to punish civilians for lynching them. A proposal was considered to order the shooting without court-martial of enemy airmen who had been forced down after engaging in specified “acts of terror”. Whether or not the order was ever issued is immaterial, for it is certain that Keitel and Jodl knew of the lynchings, did nothing to prevent them, and in fact considered giving them official justification.
(See also “F”, 8, infra, in which the joint responsibility of Keitel and Jodl for the lynching of Allied airmen is discussed.)
Keitel’s criminal activities against Soviet prisoners of war are shown by the following. On 8 September 1941 Keitel’s OKW issued a regulation for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. It stated that Russian soldiers would fight by any methods for the idea of Bolshevism and that consequently they had lost any claim to treatment in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Stern measures were to be employed against them, including the free use of weapons. The politically undesirable prisoners were to be segregated from the others and turned over to “special purpose units” of the Security Police and the Security Service. There was to be the closest cooperation between the military commanders and these police units. (1519-PS)
Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr considered this order in such direct violation of the general principles of International Law that he addressed a memorandum of protest to Keitel on 15 September 1941. He pointed out that, while the Geneva Convention was not binding between Germany and the USSR, the usual rules of International Law should be observed; that such instructions, particularly those concerning the use of weapons, would result in arbitrary killings; and that the disposition of politically undesirable prisoners would be decided by the SIPO and the SD according to principles of which the Wehrmacht was ignorant. (As to this argument, Keitel wrote in the margin “Very efficient” and “Not at all.”) Keitel received and considered this memorandum, for on its first page there is the following comment in his handwriting, dated 23 September and initialled “K”: