SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: And you cannot answer my question. You cannot give us any reason as to why the Wehrmacht and these other offices were sending the 24,000 people, who had been sentenced by ordinary courts, over to the SD? You cannot give us any reason for that?
KEITEL: No; I may say that up to a point I can. I think “SD” is a misinterpretation. I think police custody was meant. That does not mean the same thing.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Certainly not.
KEITEL: I do not know if it might have been the same thing.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Surely you have been at this Trial too long to think that handing people over to the SD means police custody. It means a concentration camp and a gas chamber usually, does it not? That is what it meant in fact, whether you knew it or not.
KEITEL: I did not know it, but it obviously led to the concentration camp in the end. I consider it possible; in any case, I cannot say that it was not.
THE PRESIDENT: Sir David, the last paragraph but one refers to the OKW.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, My Lord, I am just coming to that.
[Turning to the defendant.] If you will notice that, Defendant, two paragraphs below the one I put to you it states:
“As the OKW is not particularly interested in trying the minor matters still remaining for the military tribunals, they are to be settled by decrees to be agreed upon by local authorities.”