The advisory body for these tasks and their execution was, up to 1933, the Committee of Experts. It consisted of experts coming from the different civil ministries, who after being accepted by the Minister of the Interior—Severing, up to the end of 1933—met for conferences at the Reich Defense Ministry. The Reichswehr Minister charged the then Colonel Keitel to direct these meetings. At these meetings the experts received and discussed the desires of the Reich Defense Ministry as regards the afore-mentioned tasks, which the individual ministers could take over in case of a mobilization.
During Minister Severing’s time this co-operation worked without friction with the idea of satisfying as far as possible the wishes of the Reichswehr Minister, and it continued in the same way after 30 January 1933. The scope and content of the tasks remained the same. When, on 4 April 1933, a Reich Defense Council was established by a resolution of Hitler’s new Reich Government, the committee was retained and only its name was changed: The Committee of Experts became the Reich Defense Committee. However, it did not change its field of action and was not given any new jurisdiction. It only grew in size as it went on developing, especially after the introduction of compulsory military service. Now, as before, the Reich Defense Committee was a body which had to give advice about those tasks of national defense concerning the civilian sector which had to be prepared and also partly taken over by the civil ministries. For this Count of the Indictment it must be made quite clear that after 4 April 1933 Keitel’s position did not change either, and especially that he was not a member of the Reich Defense Council.
The Reich Defense Council, which has taken up a lot of space in the statements of the Prosecution, may be considered as virtually nonexistent in the light of the evidence produced—later on I will come back to the time after 1938. In any case the Prosecution could not prove that there was any session of the Reich Defense Council during this period. The minutes submitted dealt without exception with the sessions of the Reich Defense Committee, and the members of this committee reported to their competent ministries, who in turn had an opportunity, within the framework of the cabinet, to translate into concrete form the suggestions and proposals discussed in the Reich Defense Committee. Thus there were never any sessions of the Reich Defense Council whose existence was merely formal, so that witnesses could rightly say that the Reich Defense Council existed only on paper.
Keitel, up to 30 September 1933, as colonel and section chief in the Reich Defense Ministry, and later from October 1935 as major general and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Department in the Reich War Ministry, was a member of the Reich Defense Committee. Therefore, from 30 September 1933 to 30 September 1935 he was not in the War Ministry, and thus had no function connected with this Count of the Indictment. Neither did he during this time participate in sessions of the Reich Defense Committee, the minutes of which have been presented by the Prosecution as having special probative value. The session of 22 May 1933, described as the second session of the working Committee of Experts, was the last session in which Keitel participated before being transferred to serve with the troops. The first session after his transfer to the Reich War Ministry was held on 6 September 1935. It is put down as the 11th session of the Reich Defense Committee. Although in the examination of Keitel’s responsibility one has to exclude the work done by the Reich Defense Committee during the two years between sessions 3 and 10, I will nevertheless make it the subject of my statements, as it is from these very minutes that one can see what the Reich Defense Committee was doing.
Only the knowledge of these minutes makes it clear why an institution, which in this or some other form exists in every country and which serves the purpose of national defense as deemed legitimate by every country, has now been presented as an important factor in submitting evidence on plans and preparations for aggression.
The minutes of the sessions of the Reich Defense Committee in 1933, 1934, and 1935 reveal the character of the work as that of preparations for the event of war. But it is likewise evident that it is a question of preparations intended to bring about a more perfect degree of readiness in national defense in case of mobilization. If the “political situation” is twice mentioned, these allusions indicate the fear of military sanctions from neighboring states. (Reference is made to the case of Abyssinia, which led to sanctions against Italy.) Everything is rooted in the thought of overcoming that state of military impotency which made it impossible to safeguard the open frontiers of the Reich.
The recurring idea of obligation to secrecy can only be attributed to fear arising from the situation at the time lest the revelation of measures, however defensive, might produce preventive measures on the part of the victorious powers.
That these suspicions were well-founded is shown by the intransigent attitude of certain states after the complete disarmament of Germany, and this question is important for Keitel’s attitude, for he affirms that the conclusion drawn from the obligation to secrecy, namely, that secrecy is a proof of bad conscience, and bad conscience is a proof of knowledge of illegality, is erroneous.
The Reich Defense Committee never passed resolutions; it was an advisory body on matters of national defense insofar as the civilian sector was concerned with mobilization. At no time did it ever indulge in deliberations concerning rearmament as regards manpower or material, or concerning plans of aggression. The Prosecution has tried in one instance to show that the Reich Defense Committee was involved in plans for aggression.
I do not wish to read the next few sentences. Here we deal with the well-known event of freeing the River Rhine for traffic, a question which was designated as the technical liberation of the Rhine River. This came up in Göring’s testimony.