I do not want to ask any questions which have previously been asked and answered; but there are questions which have been previously answered in various ways—as you have heard—and only a person like you can answer them, a person who worked with the Field Marshal for more than a decade. Therefore, please tell me briefly—making your sentences short—what the official relations were between Keitel and Hitler.
JODL: The official relations between the Führer and Field Marshal Keitel were exactly the same as between the Führer and me, but on a somewhat different level. They were purely official, especially in the beginning. They were interspersed, just as in the case of all other higher officers, by constant clashes between a revolutionary and a Prussian officer bound by tradition.
DR. NELTE: Then, these clashes, the result of differing opinions, were a daily occurrence?
JODL: They were a daily occurrence and in effect led to extremely unpleasant scenes, such scenes as made one ashamed, as a senior officer, to have to listen to such things in the presence of young adjutants. The entry in my diary proves that on 19 April 1940, for instance, Field Marshal Keitel threw his portfolio on the table and left the room. That is a fact.
DR. NELTE: May I ask what the reason was?
THE PRESIDENT: No, Dr. Nelte. If you want him to confirm the evidence which the Defendant Keitel has given, why don’t you ask him whether he confirms it?
DR. NELTE: These are questions, Mr. President, which I have not submitted to Field Marshal Keitel. My line of questioning became necessary because between the questioning of the defendant...
THE PRESIDENT: The question you put to him was: What were his relations with the Führer? You could not have put it any wider than that, and you certainly covered that with the Defendant Keitel.
DR. NELTE: I discussed it with Keitel.
THE PRESIDENT: You have put the question to Keitel, and Keitel answered it at great length.