“The OKW is requested to inform the prisoner-of-war camps that in the interest of camouflage the recaptured officers are not to be turned over directly to Mauthausen but to the local State Police authority.”
Did you ever in your activity in the OKW know anything of such a request or such an order?
WESTHOFF: That is not familiar to me. That also took place at a time when I was not chief.
DR. NELTE: But on taking over on 1 April 1944 you must have known of all important events or must have taken note of them?
WESTHOFF: Yes.
DR. NELTE: Did you ever find out in this connection that such a document had been presented?
WESTHOFF: No, I do not know of it.
DR. NELTE: And now the last question. Look at the first page of this document. It is a teletype from the Chief of the Sipo and SD, of 4 March ’44. It reads in the first part as follows:
“The OKW has ordered the following: Every recaptured escaped prisoner-of-war officer”—et cetera—“is, after his recapture, to be turned over to the Chief of the Sipo and SD with the code word ‘Stufe III’....”
The Defendant Keitel has stated here that he does not know of such an OKW order.