M. DUBOST: Keitel confirmed this order concerning hostages on 24 September 1941. We submit it as Exhibit Number RF-272, and you will find it in your document book as F-554. I shall read you the first paragraph:
“Following instructions by the Führer, the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces issued on 16 September 1941 an order concerning the Communist revolutionary movements in the occupied territories. The order was addressed to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs for the attention of Ambassador Ritter. It also deals with the question of capital punishment in court-martial proceedings.
“According to the order, in the future, most stringent measures must be taken in the occupied territories.”
The choice of hostages is also indicated thus in Document Number 877-PS, which has already been read to you and which is previous to the aggression of Germany against Russia. It is necessary to remind the Tribunal of this document because it shows the premeditation of the German Command and the Nazi Government to divide the occupied countries, to take away from the partisan resistance all its patriotic character, in order to substitute for it a political character which it never had. We submit this document under Exhibit Number RF-273:
“In this connection it must be borne in mind that, apart from other adversaries with whom our troops have to contend, there is a particularly dangerous element of the civilian population which is destructive of all order and propagates Jewish-Bolshevist philosophy. There is no doubt that, wherever he possibly can, this enemy uses this weapon of disintegration cunningly and in ambush against the German forces which are fighting and liberating the country.”
This document is an official document issued by the headquarters of the High Command of the Army. It expresses the general doctrine of all the German Staff. It is Keitel who presides over the formation of this doctrine. He is therefore not only a soldier under the orders of his government; but at the same time that he is a general, he is also a Nazi politician whose acts are those of a war leader and also those of a politician serving the Hitlerite policy. You have proof of it in the document which I have just read to you: A general who is also a politician, in whom both politics and the conduct of war are combined in one single preoccupation. This is not surprising for those who know the German line of thought, which had never separated war and politics. Was it not Clausewitz who said that war was only the continuation of politics by other means?
This is doubly important. This constitutes a direct and crushing charge against Keitel; but Keitel is the German General Staff. Now this organization is indicted, and we see by this document that this indictment is justified as the German General Staff dabbled in the criminal policy of the German Cabinet.
In the case of France, the general orders of Keitel were adapted by Stülpnagel in his order of 30 September 1941, better known in France under the name of “hostages code,” which repeats and specifies in detail the previous order, namely that of 23 August 1941. This order of 30 September 1941 is of major importance to anyone who wishes to prove under what circumstances French hostages were shot. This is why I shall be obliged to read large extracts. It defines, in Paragraph 3, the categories of Frenchmen who will be considered as hostages. I shall read this document 1588-PS, which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number RF-274. Paragraph I concerns the seizure of hostages. I read:
“1. On 22 August 1941, I issued the following announcement: