KEITEL: Yes, I did sign a series of decrees issued by the Council of Ministers because they were submitted to me by the Secretariat, that is, the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Minister Lammers, with a request for my signature. When I questioned the necessity for doing this, I received a formal answer from Lammers to the effect that other Reich departments might see that the Wehrmacht was not excluded from these decrees or laws. That is why my signature is included. It means that the Wehrmacht must also obey these decrees and laws. That is why I had no misgivings in signing my name.
DR. NELTE: The Prosecution further accuse you of having been a political general. Undoubtedly you appeared at various special functions. Will you please answer this accusation and tell us how it came about?
KEITEL: I can readily understand the fact that functions of a ministerial nature which necessarily brought me frequently into contact with ministers of the Reich—in the course of a war everything is tied up with the Wehrmacht in some way or other—would seem to indicate that I had exercised a political function in these matters. The same conclusion can be drawn from other events. That is, my presence at State visits and similar functions as indicated by many documents might suggest that I was exercising political functions or in some way had been called to exercise such functions. Neither is true; neither in regard to internal German ministerial functions nor in regard to matters connected with foreign policy. There were naturally a great many things to be settled with the ministries, the technical ministries. The Wehrmacht had to participate and had a voice in almost all the decrees which were issued by the civilian ministries. This work was naturally done in Berlin. The fact that I had to remain with the Führer at his headquarters kept me away; and this meant that my offices, the offices of the OKW, had to settle these questions with the Reich departments and their experts rather independently on the whole. Thus it happened, naturally, that decrees of this kind were drawn up requiring my comments and the Führer’s consent, which was obtained through me and that in this connection I was the person who co-ordinated the various wishes and views of the High Commanders of the Wehrmacht branches and reduced them to a common Wehrmacht denominator, so to speak. Through these activities I was naturally drawn into the general apparatus of this work, but I do not believe that this would justify the application of the term “political general” to the Führer’s Military Chief of Staff.
DR. NELTE: What can you tell us with regard to foreign policy and the meetings at which foreign policy was discussed?
KEITEL: Concerning the sphere of foreign policy, I would merely like to emphasize what the former Reich Foreign Minister has already said about collaboration with the leaders of the Wehrmacht. If at all, two of the leading partners marched their own roads, then it was the foreign policy on one side and the Wehrmacht on the other, especially under the influence of the Führer himself, who did not desire collaboration and opposed the mutual exchange of ideas. He kept us in avowedly separate camps, and wished to work with each one separately. I must emphasize that most strongly. To conclude, this applied to all other departments who came to headquarters, that is, everything was discussed with them alone, and they also left the headquarters alone.
There were contacts with the Foreign Office, as State Secretary Von Steengracht has stated, with regard to all questions of international law or, in connection therewith, with questions affecting the prisoners of war, questions of communication with the protecting powers, and questions which Von Steengracht may have had in mind when he said, “With the Wehrmacht the whole field of an attaché’s work,” since all reports sent by military attachés in neutral and friendly countries to the Commanders-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht branches went through Foreign Office channels. They all arrived there and we received them from there. It was quite natural that during the war any news of special interest might call for special contacts in that we often had to complain that the reports did not reach us in time from the Foreign Office, and that our Ministry wanted to have them sent direct and not by a roundabout way. Otherwise, however, I must emphasize that there was no collaboration in any other field nor, I might say, any community of work in the field of strategics with the Foreign Office.
DR. NELTE: About ten days ago Document D-665 was submitted by the Prosecution. This document is headed “The Führer’s Ideas Regarding the Waffen-SS” dated 6 August 1940. In this document there is a passage by the OKW which states the following:
“The Chief of the OKW has decided in this connection that it can be only desirable for the ideas of the Führer to be given the utmost publicity.”
Do you know this document?
KEITEL: Yes, I read this document at the time it was submitted, and I remembered it. To explain the origin of this document I must say briefly: After the war in France Hitler planned to give an independent status to the SS units, the Waffen-SS units, or form them into complete military bodies of troops. Until that time they had been parts of infantry troops attached to different Army formations. Now these groups were to be made into independent and fully-equipped units and would thus become independent formations. This created extreme unrest in the Army, and caused acute dissatisfaction among the generals. It was said to denote competition to the Army and the breaking of the promise made to the army that “there is only one bearer of arms in Germany, and that is the Wehrmacht.” They asked: “Where would this lead to?”