GISEVIUS: Yes.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: In other words, from the point of view of the German Constitution, the war was illegal, by German law, as declared and carried out by Hitler, in your view.
GISEVIUS: According to our firm conviction, yes.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I think we found out yesterday the position you were to have if there was a successful overthrow of the Hitler regime. Schacht was under consideration for Chancellor, was he not, if that movement was successful?
GISEVIUS: No. It is only correct as to the first offer that Halder made in August of 1938, or perhaps July 1938, when he visited Schacht for the first time. At that time, according to the information which I received, Halder asked Schacht whether, in the case of an overthrow, he would be ready to take over a position like that. Schacht replied that he would be ready for anything if the generals would eliminate the Nazi regime and Hitler.
As early as the year 1939 individual opponents formed a group, and at the last, when Beck was the acknowledged head of all conspirators from the left to the right wing, Goerdeler emerged in the foreground together with Beck as the leading candidate for the position of Reich Chancellor, so that after that time we need speak only of Goerdeler in that regard.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Now, I want to ask you some questions about the Defendant Keitel. Of course, we have heard that Hitler was the actual head of the state, but I want to ask you whether Keitel occupied a position of real leadership and power in the Reich.
GISEVIUS: Keitel occupied one of the most influential positions in the Third Reich. I would like to say at this point that I was a very close friend of four of the closest collaborators of Keitel. One was the Chief of the Ordnance Office in the OKW, the murdered General Olbricht; the second was the Chief of the Counterintelligence Service, Admiral Canaris, who was also murdered; the third was the Chief of the Army Legal Department, Ministerial Director Sack—he was also murdered—and finally there was the chief of the armament economy department, General Thomas, who escaped being murdered as though by a miracle. A close friendship, I might say, bound me to these men, and thus from these men I found out exactly what tremendous influence Keitel had over the OKW and in all Army matters, and thereby what influence he wielded in representing the Army in the eyes of the German people.
It may be that Keitel did not influence Hitler to a great extent. But I must testify here to the fact that Keitel influenced the OKW and the Army all the more. Keitel decided which documents were to be transmitted to Hitler. It was not possible for Admiral Canaris or one of the other gentlemen I mentioned to submit an urgent report to Hitler of his own accord. Keitel took it over, and what he did not like he did not transmit, or he gave these men the official order to abstain from making such a report. Also, Keitel repeatedly threatened these men, telling them that they were to limit themselves exclusively to their own specialized sectors, and that he would not protect them with respect to any political utterance which was critical of the Party and the Gestapo, of the persecution of the Jews, the murders in Russia, or the anti-Church campaign, and, as he said later, he would not hesitate to dismiss these gentlemen from the Wehrmacht and turn them over to the Gestapo. I have read the notes in regard to this which Admiral Canaris made in his diary. I have read the notes of General Oster in regard to this from the conferences of commanders in the OKW. I have talked with the Chief Judge of the Army, Dr. Sack, about this, and it is my strong wish to testify here that Field Marshal Keitel, who should have protected his officers, repeatedly threatened them with the Gestapo. He put these men under pressure, and these gentlemen considered that a special insult.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: In other words, whether Keitel could control Hitler or not, he did have a very large control of the entire OKW underneath him. Is that not true?