[Turning to the defendant.]
Field Marshal Keitel, you have just given us an explanation of the Reich Defense Council and the Reich Defense Committee. You probably realize that we are not and should not be so much concerned with whether decisions are made by a Reich Defense Council or a Reich Defense Committee. We are interested in what actually took place and whether or not these things justify the imputations of the Prosecution. In this respect I ask you to tell me if those things which you discussed and planned on the Reich Defense Committee justify the suspicion that you were considering aggressive war?
KEITEL: I realize fully that we are not concerned with the formality of whether it was the Council or the Committee, since the Council was a board of ministers while the Committee was a board of minor experts. We are concerned with what actually did take place and what was done. With the exception that in the year 1934 and until the autumn of 1935 I was not present at these discussions, and therefore cannot vouch for every word which was spoken at that time, I must state that nothing about the planning of wars, the preparing for wars, the operational, strategical, or armed preparedness for war, was ever discussed.
DR. NELTE: The Prosecution has labeled you as a member of the Three Man College, from which they have deduced that you had special powers to act within the German Reich Government. I am submitting to you Document 2194-PS. In this document in the Reich Defense Law of 1938, Paragraph 5, Subsection 4, you will find the source of this term which in itself is not official.
KEITEL: The Reich Defense Law of 1938 provided for a plenipotentiary general for administration in order to restrict the size of the body. The Reich Minister of the Interior was to have this office and further, according to Paragraph 5, Subsection 4, the Supreme Command of the Army was to have priority influence in regard to the State Railways and the State Postal Services, for in the event of mobilization, transports must run and the services for the transmission of news must be available, as is the case in all countries.
The Three Man College is a concept which I have never heard of until just now. It probably refers to the Plenipotentiary General for Administration, the Plenipotentiary General for Economy and the Chief of the OKW. It referred to these three. There is no doubt about it, because, in line with the Reich Defense Law, they were already supposed to have a number of decrees ready in the drawers which were to be published when this law was made public, and each one of the three had to make the necessary preparations in his own sphere. From the right to assume these functions by reason of these authorities the Three Man College concept originated.
DR. NELTE: The Prosecution then contended that according to Document 2852-PS you were a member of the Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich. Did you become a minister through this membership in the Reich Defense Council?
KEITEL: I might perhaps say a few words to begin with about the Council of Ministers, insofar as the Reich Defense Law, the Reich Defense Committee and the Reich Defense Council, disappeared as a result of the law regarding the Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich, that is, they were never made public and never put into effect. The Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich was newly created on 1 September 1939 and this made all these preparations on paper in the Reich Defense Council, Reich Defense Committee and the law null and void and put in its place a new thing, an institution. This institution, the Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich, was now the small war cabinet, which, if I may say so, should previously have been the Reich Defense Council with their limited number of members. Thus, a new basis was established, and new decrees which were necessary were put into effect by the Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich, after it had been created and officially confirmed.
I was called into this Council of Ministers or rather I received a chair in this Council of Ministers. I prefer not to give the reasons, because they were entirely private. It was a compensation for opposition against these things—I never became active in this Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich, but I was a member; it was not necessary to be active since in the purely military sphere, that is, things with which the Wehrmacht immediately was concerned, the Führer personally, without the Council of Ministers, issued the necessary decrees with his own signature and the detour via the Council of Ministers in Berlin was not necessary; and in my opinion I must deny that I became a minister by this appointment. The authority to exercise the functions of a minister was in no way given. I was only the representative of the Wehrmacht in this Council of Ministers.
DR. NELTE: However, your name is indisputably at the bottom of many laws and decrees which were issued. How do you explain the signature on these laws?