GISEVIUS: Canaris was the senior officer of the OKW. Formally he even had to represent Keitel when Keitel was absent. Keitel was only concerned that someone else should take his place at such times, usually his Party general, Reinecke; and Oster, as the representative, Chief of Staff for Canaris, was also in close association with Canaris. Keitel could not have wished for closer contact with reality and truth than through this connection with the Chief of his Wehrmacht Counterintelligence Service.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: So these reports which were sent to Keitel came from the highest men in his own organization under himself?
GISEVIUS: Yes.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Now, what did they report to Keitel? Let me ask you if they reported to him that there was a systematic program of murder of the insane going on.
GISEVIUS: Yes, indeed. On these subjects, too, records were completed in detail including the despairing reports of the directors of the lunatic asylums. I recall this exactly because here, too, we had great difficulties in giving a reason for these reports, and we actually put them through as reports of foreign doctors who had heard of these things with indignation.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Did he report to him the persecution and murder of the Jews and the program of extermination of the Jews that was being carried out?
GISEVIUS: From the first Jewish pogroms in 1938 on Keitel was minutely informed of each new action against the Jews, particularly about the establishment of the first gas chamber, or rather, the establishment of the first mass graves in the East, up to the erection of the murder factories later.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Did these reports mention the atrocities that were committed in Poland against the Poles?
GISEVIUS: Yes, indeed, here I would say again that the atrocities in Poland, too, started with isolated murders which were so horrible that we were still able to report on single cases, and could add the names of the responsible SS leaders. Here, too, Keitel was spared nothing of the terrible truth.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And did that condition of informing Keitel also prevail as to the atrocities against nationals in other occupied countries?