It is quite clear that your office was deeply concerned in this business, was it not, Defendant?
KEITEL: I do not know exactly what it means, but it was obviously mentioned at that conference.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, before I put the next document, I want you to realize how we have been going. We started with the Nacht und Nebel Decree, which disappeared, and we went on to the Terror and Sabotage Decree. We then proceeded to acts which were less than terror and sabotage, but were criminal acts under the rules of the occupying power.
I now want you to consider what was done to people who simply refused to work. Would you look at Document D-769? That is Exhibit GB-304. That is a telegram from Luftwaffe General Christiansen, who was in the Netherlands, Commander of the Air Forces in the Netherlands, through his Chief of Staff.
Now listen to this:
“Owing to railway strike, all communications in Holland at standstill. Railway personnel does not respond to appeals to resume work. Demands for motor vehicles and other means of transport for moving troops and maintaining supplies are no longer obeyed by the civil population. According to the Führer’s decree of 18 August 1944”—that is the Terror and Sabotage Decree, which you have already had—“and the supplementary executive instructions of the Chief of the OKW”—which we have already seen—“troops may use weapons only against persons who commit acts of violence as terrorists or saboteurs, whereas persons who endanger the security or tactical preparedness of the occupying power in any other way than by terrorism or acts of sabotage, are to be handed over to the SD.”
Then General Christiansen comes in with this:
“This regulation has proved too complicated, and therefore ineffective. Above all, we do not possess the necessary police forces. The troops must again receive authority to shoot also, with or without summary court-martial, persons who are not terrorists or saboteurs in the sense of the Führer’s decree, but who endanger the fighting forces by passive resistance. It is requested that the Führer’s decree be altered accordingly, as the troops cannot otherwise assert themselves effectively against the population, which in its turn, appears to endanger the conduct of operations.”
Now, Defendant, will you agree that shooting, with or even without trial, railway men who will not work, is about as brutal and cruel a measure as could well be imagined by the mind of man? Do you agree?
KEITEL: That is a cruel measure, yes.