Far from all political considerations, as all the generals and admirals have testified here, the leaders of the Armed Forces believed in the legitimacy of Hitler’s Government. It looked upon itself as the instrument of a legal government, as it did when the Kaiser, Ebert, and Von Hindenburg were Germany’s representatives.
Like all tendencies, all forms of expression of feeling, the feeling of patriotism and of a soldierly attitude bears in itself a tendency to become more radical and thereby to degenerate, if external circumstances create an actual basis for it. We have experienced the exaggeration of sound national ideas into national chauvinism, and we can observe retrospectively how the sound soldierly idea was exaggerated by influences foreign to its nature into the militaristic form of expression. All these developments are not desultory, which would make them easily recognizable and regulated. The driving forces are mostly not apparent to those whom they concern. They are like a poison which acts slowly and unnoticed and the effect of which results one day in a horrible eruption. It needs no special explanation that a component part of the soldierly and military person who is being geared to a possible war is ruggedness, and in its intensification it turns into brutality. One often finds on the part of famous—and not only German—war leaders the view that the brutal war is frequently the kindest if it leads to a quick ending. This, of course, is desired by every war leader. Once peaceful restraint is removed by war, all that remains is brutality. It reveals the causes of total war and the source of the terrible disaster which resulted from it.
The Defense has a difficult task in this Trial. The German people look to Nuremberg, disunited in themselves. Some are skeptical and partly hostile toward the Defense because they believe the Defense is favoring those whom they consider as war criminals and believe that the Defense wishes to prevent that just punishment be meted out to the defendants. Others say the Trial is just a show, at which the Defense Counsel act as dummies to give the Trial the appearance of a judicial procedure. Accordingly, in the view of these Germans we would make ourselves guilty of favoring the enemy.
We have no reason to justify our actions because by our participation at this Trial we are fulfilling a task in line with the precept of our calling, the importance of which needs no justification. It consists of co-ordinating our efforts in the interest of clarifying the truth—the importance and effects of which is today incalculable for our German people—of getting to the bottom of the causes and of answering the question as to how all this could have happened.
Only the clear recognition of the cause, the forces, and the people which brought about the disaster which has come over this world will create the possibility for the future of our people to find the way back again to the rest of the world.
The task of this Tribunal is not to search for the political, economic, and metaphysical reasons for this second World War and not even to examine the course of events in its entirety, but rather only to determine whether and what part these defendants played in that which the victor nations made the object of these proceedings.
The task of the Defense, within the framework of their co-operation in finding the truth, consists of examining which factual and legal points could be stated in favor of the defendants. It should be said here that with all the co-operation on the part of the Tribunal shown to the Defense in producing their evidence, the actual possibility of producing defense material for the defendants was limited. Justice Jackson said in his basic prosecuting speech...
THE PRESIDENT: You seem to be coming back to further attacks upon the way in which this case has been tried and that is not what you are here to do now. What you are here to do now is to present the case on behalf of the Defendant Keitel.
I see that further on here you go on to complain about alleged noncommunication to you of various documents and you refer to a discussion on the subject which took place as long ago as February of 1946. On that occasion I expressed the view on behalf of the Tribunal that the French Prosecution might properly show to you or give you the opportunity to look at their documents. From that day to this, that is to say from February until July, you have made no application to the Tribunal or made any complaint to the Tribunal that that has not been done; and now, in your final speech, you make this complaint that you have not been allowed to see the documents in spite of the fact that in February I expressed, on behalf of the Tribunal, the opinion that you might see such documents.
Well, it seems to me that it is a waste of time, a waste of our time now to make these complaints after all these months, apart from the fact that you have already spent time which has been involved in reading 11 pages of your speech without coming to anything which really affects the Defendant Keitel.