GEN. RUDENKO: This order, issued on Reichenau’s initiative and approved by Hitler, was distributed as a model order among all the army commanders.
KEITEL: I did not know that; I heard about it here for the first time. To my knowledge I never saw the order either.
GEN. RUDENKO: Of course you would, quite obviously, consider such orders as entirely insignificant. After all, could the fate of Soviet prisoners of war and of the civilian population be of any possible interest to the Chief of the OKW, since their lives were of no value whatsoever?
KEITEL: I had no contact with the commanders at the front and had no official connection with them. The Commander-in-Chief of the Army was the only one who had.
GEN. RUDENKO: I am finishing your cross-examination. When testifying before the Tribunal you very often referred, as did your accomplices, the Defendants Göring and Ribbentrop, to the Treaty of Versailles, and I am asking you, were Vienna, Prague, Belgrade and the Crimea part of Germany before the Treaty of Versailles?
KEITEL: No.
GEN. RUDENKO: You stated here that in 1944, after the law had been amended, you received an offer to join the Nazi Party. You accepted this offer, presented your personal credentials to the leadership of the Party, and paid your membership fees. Tell us, did not your acceptance to join the membership of the Nazi Party signify that you were in agreement with the program, objectives, and methods of the Party?
KEITEL: As I had already been in possession of the Golden Party Badge for three or four years, I thought that this request for my personal particulars was only a formal registration; and I paid the required Party membership subscription. I did both these things and have admitted doing them.
GEN. RUDENKO: In other words, before this formal offer was ever made, you already, de facto, considered yourself a member of the Nazi Party?
KEITEL: I have always thought of myself as a soldier; not as a political soldier or politician.