JODL: Unfortunately not.
DR. EXNER: I do not understand.
JODL: I can only say, unfortunately not. There were endless ways through which the Führer was informed about military matters. Every individual and every office could hand in reports direct to the adjutant’s department. The photographer sent out by the Führer to take pictures at the front, found it expedient to use this opportunity to report to the Führer on military matters also. When I objected to this, the Führer answered, “I do not care from whom I hear the truth; the main thing is that I hear it.” These reports, however, were not reports of atrocities, but just the opposite. Unfortunately, through many channels hostile to the Wehrmacht, inciting reports against the correct and chivalrous attitude of the Wehrmacht reached the Führer. It was these reports which brought about these decisions which led to brutal proceedings. A tremendous amount of damage would have been avoided if we soldiers had been in a position to hold the Führer back.
DR. EXNER: What role did Canaris play in this connection?
JODL: Canaris saw the Führer dozens of times. Canaris could report to him what he wanted and whatever he knew. It seems to me that he knew far more than I, for I was concerned exclusively with the operational conduct of the war. But he never said a word. He never said one word to me, and it is quite clear why; this witness was on the best of terms—this man, who is now dead, was on the very best of terms with Himmler and with Heydrich. It was necessary that he should be so that they would not become suspicious of this nest of conspirators.
DR. EXNER: The witness Gisevius said a great deal about revolts and intentions to carry out a Putsch. Did you personally ever learn anything about such plans?
JODL: I never heard a single word or intimation about any revolt or about any intentions to carry out a Putsch.
DR. EXNER: At any time, before or during the war, would you have considered a revolt possible or promising?
JODL: The witness spoke of revolts as casually as of washing his hands. That alone proves to me that he never thought about it seriously. The results of the Kapp Putsch in 1921, of the Hitler Putsch of 1923, are well known. If more proof is necessary, there is the result of 20 July 1944. At that time no one any longer hoped for victory in the true sense of the word. Nevertheless, in this revolt, in this attempt, not one soldier, not a single arm of the Wehrmacht, not one worker, rose up. All the perpetrators and all the members of the Putsch were alone. To overthrow this system a revolution would have been necessary, a mightier, a more powerful revolution than the National Socialist one had been. And behind such a revolution there would have had to be the mass of the workers and the majority of the Wehrmacht as a whole, and not simply the commander of the Potsdam garrison of whom the witness spoke.
But how one could wage a war for life or death with other countries and at the same time carry on a revolution and expect to gain anything positive for the German people, I do not know. Only geniuses who lived in Switzerland can judge that. The German Wehrmacht and the German officers were not trained for revolution. Once the Prussian officers struck the ground with their swords—that was the only revolutionary deed of the German Armed Forces that I know of. That was in the year 1848. If today people who co-operated actively to bring Hitler to power, who had a part in the laws which we soldiers with our oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler were bound to support, if these people demanded revolution and mutiny of the Wehrmacht when they no longer liked the man, or when reverses occurred, then I can only call that wicked.