Keitel believed the protestations of peaceful intentions, and saw their honesty confirmed also by official proposals of disarmament and treaties with England and Poland. He believed them all the more because, as has already been said, an aggressive war appeared to him an impossibility.
The Codefendant Von Neurath too, frequently declared here that all his information and knowledge of Hitler’s policy up to 5 November 1937 justified his firm conviction that Hitler did not want to realize his political aims by force or aggressive wars. It was only by the speech of 5 November 1937 that this conviction of Von Neurath’s was shaken.
In the arguments in Dr. Schacht’s defense to which I referred, those facts were presented which show a contradiction between the former conduct of the victorious powers and the thesis which the Prosecution advances on this question.
Through their official relations and beyond these, the victorious powers showed that, despite their knowledge of all the circumstances of which the defendants are now being accused, they, that is, the victors, did not believe in Hitler’s intentions, or did not recognize these intentions of realizing his aims by aggressive war.
The Prosecution now makes the accusation against the defendant that he knew, or ought to have known, such intentions of Hitler. This is not convincing, and I can leave it to the Tribunal to judge who—if all contingencies are taken into consideration—had better possibilities of obtaining information on Hitler’s true intentions. I believe the Defendant Keitel may claim for himself the same good faith and the same ignorance, unless such knowledge or participation itself results from other circumstances.
Such circumstances during the years 1933 through 1938 may have concerned Keitel’s activity in connection with rearmament and in the Reich Defense Committee. The charge of illegal rearmament includes two facts which have been summed up by the Prosecution:
(1) Secret rearmament by circumventing the Treaty of Versailles;
(2) Rearmament with the purpose of planning wars of aggression.
For a judicial consideration, however, these facts must be kept strictly apart; for they are different with respect to cause and effect, and they must also be legally assessed from different points of view.
The time between 1933 and 1938 is the fateful period, a period of development and conversion. The forces of the hitherto existing order are struggling against the new which have not yet taken definite shape. Everything is in fermentation. The aims remain obscure. They are camouflaged by the adoption of existing nationalistic tendencies. By clever propagandistic utilization of these tendencies, the psychological basis for the aims pursued by the new rulers is being created without being noticed by those whom it concerned. Here lies the problem of the Armed Forces leadership and of the Defendant Keitel during this period with which I am going to deal now.