JODL: These were questions—not points of view—questions which were raised in the Armed Forces Operations Staff as a result of the Armed Forces communiqué. Fortunately, the submission of all these documents proves the complete correctness of everything I said here 2 days ago. The staff, the Legal Department, and the Ausland department racked their brains and pondered how they could draw up the executive order implementing the Führer’s additions to the Wehrmacht communiqué. Neither they nor I came to any conclusion, and no proposal was made to the Führer; nothing was done. That is what I stated here the day before yesterday, and that is what, fortunately, you yourself have proved by submitting these documents.
MR. ROBERTS: You have said, I think, that part of the Führer’s order disgusted you?
JODL: Yes.
MR. ROBERTS: And you have said in your interrogation that circulating this order was one of the things which went against your inner conscience—one of the few things. “Your inner convictions”—to use your actual words.
JODL: In the preliminary interrogation I said that it was one of the few—or the only—order I received from the Führer which I, in my own mind, completely rejected.
MR. ROBERTS: You rejected it, but these young men went on being shot, did they not?
JODL: I have already described exactly how the commanding generals at the front, vigorously supported by me, interpreted this order in the mildest imaginable way in practice; actually, only very few such incidents occurred, and I believe that most—at any rate, nearly all that came to my knowledge—were highly justified, because the fighting methods of those people were not methods of honest soldiers.
MR. ROBERTS: You see, you talk about your “inner convictions.” I think Keitel spoke about his “inner conscience.” But should we have heard anything about these convictions and this conscience if Germany had not lost the war?
JODL: No, but then we might have heard of the strangled at Dieppe in a similar trial.
MR. ROBERTS: It is very late and—now, I just want to deal with a few examples, very very quickly, of the order being carried out, as you said it was only carried out a few times. I just, first of all, want to refer to UK-57, which is Page 309 of Document Book 7, the German copy Page 33—German copy Page 344. I am sorry, I had given you the wrong number. I can read this out. It is a report which is initialed by Keitel.