I have to refer to some documents which the French Prosecution have submitted to incriminate the OKW and Keitel on account of active participation in deportation. These are Documents 1292-PS, 3819-PS, 814-PS, and 824-PS.
The first document is a marginal note by the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Dr. Lammers, on a conference with Hitler, at which the question of procuring labor for 1944 was discussed. The Defendant Keitel took part in this discussion. Annexed to this report is a copy of a letter from the Defendant Sauckel dated 5 January 1944, in which he sums up the results of the conference of 4 January and proposes a Führer decree. I quote the following passages:
“5. The Führer pointed out that all German offices in occupied territories and countries within the Tripartite Agreement must become convinced of the necessity of taking in foreign labor, in order to be able to give uniform support to the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor in carrying out the required organization, propaganda, and police measures.”
I quote from the penultimate paragraph:
“In my opinion the decree should in the first place be sent to the following offices ...
“3. The Chief of the OKW, Field Marshal Keitel, for the information of the Military Commanders in France and Belgium, the Military Commander Southeast, the General accredited to the Fascist Republican Government of Italy, the chiefs of the army groups in the East.”
The document therefore proves that Field Marshal Keitel took part in a conference, without, however, stating his point of view on the problem of labor procurement; and that he was to be informed of the Führer decree so that the military commanders might be informed. This confirms what the Defendant Keitel stated in the passages which I have not read as to how he came to be concerned with this question. The second and third documents refer to a conference in the Reich Chancellery on 11 July 1944, in which Field Marshal Keitel did not take part.
Now the French prosecutor has made the statement that the teletype is an order issued by Field Marshal Keitel to the military commanders to carry out the decisions of the conference of 11 July. M. Herzog has said in this connection that Keitel’s order was dated 15 July 1944. A brief examination of the document, a photostat, shows it to be a teletype dated 9 July, containing an invitation from the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Dr. Lammers, to a conference on 11 July, which invitation Keitel transmitted to the military commanders.
This was, therefore, an error. The conclusions based by the Prosecution on this document are therefore also invalid, but the document is interesting from another point of view as well. It contains the following statement:
“The following directives will govern the attitude of military commanders or their representatives: