The 1st of October 1946, Nuremberg, Germany. After more than 10 months on a trial, 21 defendants
who are among the most important political, military, and economic leaders of Nazi Germany,
hear their sentences read. These high-ranking representatives of the criminal Nazi regime
have to finally take responsibility for their crimes and answer before an International Military
tribunal who would punish them for unspeakable atrocities committed during the Second World War.
It is only the first of many war crimes trials held after the Second World War and would become a
warning to war criminals and dictators everywhere. Once the true extent of the German atrocities,
especially against Jews, are revealed, 12 defendants out of the 21
are sentenced to death by hanging. One of them is a German field marshal Wilhelm Keitel.
Wilhelm Keitel was born on the 22nd of September 1882 in the village of Helmscherode,
then part of the German Empire. His father was a landowner and Wilhelm wanted to take
over his estates. However, because his father did not want to retire,
Wilhelm joined the Prussian army as an artillery officer in 1901.
During the First World War, Keitel served on the western front as a battery commander
and then staff officer. He was seriously wounded by a shrapnel grenade in Flanders in 1914.
After recovery, thanks to his organizational skills, he served in the Army General Staff.
Following World War I, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles reduced the Reichswehr – the German
Army - to 100,000 men. In 1924, Wilhelm Keitel was transferred to the Ministry of the Reichswehr
in Berlin. Keitel, then a colonel, served in the Truppenamt – an agency which concealed
the existence of the proscribed German Army General Staff. He played a crucial role in the
German rearmament as in this capacity, Keitel was responsible for secretly planning, reorganizing,
and eventually enlarging the German army in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
After the Nazis came into power in January 1933, Wilhelm Keitel became Hitler’s
loyal “ yes-man “ willing to do everything the Führer demanded of him. Keitel became known as
"blindingly loyal toady" of Hitler as his peers used to call him behind his back.
In 1935 Wilhelm Keitel was appointed the head of the Armed Forces Office at the Reich Ministry
of War overseeing the army, navy, and air force. After the Ministry of War was abolished in 1938,
it was replaced by the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces with Adolf Hitler
becoming Commander-in-Chief and Keitel its Chief of Staff.
This came as a surprise not only to the General Staff but also to Wilhelm Keitel himself as
everybody knew that he was not suitable for the job. Keitel’s peers did not respect him. They
only considered him a sycophant and “a stupid follower of Hitler “, as they often called him,
and frequently bypassed him going directly to their Führer.
Adolf Hitler did not value Keitel for his capabilities
but because he was “as loyal as a dog “ as the Führer once said. Hitler knew of Keitel’s
limited intellect and nervous disposition but appreciated his diligence and obedience.
World War 2 started on the 1st of September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Wilhelm Keitel
was involved in planning of the invasion and was fully aware of its criminal nature
as mass arrests, population transfers and mass murders had been planned long before.
When the officer corps started to complaint about
the atrocities committed in Poland and other countries conquered by Nazi Germany,
Keitel ignored them until the local commanders and their soldiers became morally numbed
to the horrible events they were witnessing. After the invasion of Poland,
Wilhelm Keitel received a “bonus” of 100,000 Reichsmarks for his loyalty.
The German invasion of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands
started on the 10th of May 1940 and became known as the Battle of France.
These countries, along with France were conquered within 6 weeks. In order to humiliate France,
Hitler ordered the document of armistice to be signed in the same railcar in which the
representatives of then defeated Germany signed the armistice at the end of the First World War.
Hitler had this railcar removed from the museum where it had been stored, and brought
to Compiègne Forest, the same place where the 1918 Armistice with Germany had been signed.
In this manner, the location of Germany's 1918 humiliation became the symbolic site
of the Third Reich's victory over France. The document was signed on the 22nd of June
1940 by General Keitel for Germany and General Huntziger for France.
Shortly after, Wilhelm Keitel was promoted to the rank of field marshal.
However, this did not change the way the high-ranking Nazis would look down on him
and despise him. Hermann Göring - the head of German air forces – the Luftwaffe - even
said that Keitel had "a sergeant's mind inside a field marshal's body".
From April 1941, Keitel issued a series of criminal orders allowing the execution of Jews,
civilians and non-combatants for any reason. His guidelines stated that the
soldiers on the Eastern Front had to use "unusual severity" to stamp out resistance
and a response to a loss of German soldier was the execution of 50 to 100 "Communists"
Keitel was also increasing pressure for a more ruthless reprisal policy
in German occupied territories and even authorized the killing of enemy special operations troops
even when captured in uniform. He also drafted the "Night and Fog" decree
that authorized the nighttime arrests and secret killings of suspected members of the resistance
and signed orders authorizing reprisals against the families of Allied volunteers.
However, Keitel was also affected by the war as his sons were killed
in the German attack on the Soviet Union. An attack that Keitel had helped execute.
In the summer of 1944, Wilhelm Keitel took part in the persecution of the conspirators
who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler on the 20th of July,
1944. After the bomb had exploded, he personally led the wounded Hitler out of the room.
It was Keitel who on Hitler's orders sent two generals to Erwin Rommel, a famous German
field marshal known as the Desert Fox whose participation in the assassination attempt
remains ambiguous until today, offering him the choice of a court-martial or suicide.
It was Wilhelm Keitel who on the 8th of May 1945 in Berlin
signed the German Instrument of Surrender which was the legal document that effected
the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany on all fronts and ended World War II in Europe
In the end, justice finally caught up with Keitel when he was arrested by the allies
and tried at the Nuremberg Trials which were held against representatives of the defeated
Nazi Germany. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, planning,
initiating and waging wars of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Keitel admitted that he knew that many of Hitler's orders were illegal, but kept insisting that he
had only followed them when ordered and it was all Hitler’s responsibility. Regarding
the atrocities he said that they had developed, one from the other, step by step and without any
foreknowledge of the consequences, destiny took its tragic course, with its fateful consequences.
He even said he would suffer more agony of conscience and self-reproach in his cell
than anybody would ever know. Prison pyschiatrist
G. M. Gilbert said that Keitel "had no more backbone than a jellyfish."
On the 1st of October 1946 the International Military tribunal found Wilhelm Keitel
guilty on all four counts and sentenced him to death by hanging.
His request for a military execution by firing squad was denied due to the criminal rather than
military nature of his acts. On the 16th of October 1946, the day of Keitel’s execution,
Keitel told the prison chaplain: “You have helped me more than you know.
May Christ, my savior, stand by me all the way. I shall need him so much”.
He then received Communion and was executed later that day by American Army sergeant
John C. Woods who had no documented pre-war experience as a hangman. It is believed that
he was deliberately bad at his job to make the 10 Nazi war criminals that he executed on that day,
suffer as they all died in long agonizing death. The Nazis executed by sergeant Woods fell from the
gallows with a drop insufficient to snap their necks, resulting in their death by
strangulation that in some cases lasted several minutes. With Wilhelm Keitel, it was even worse.
After he had said his last words “ I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people.
More than two million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow
now my sons – all for Germany” , Keitel was hanged but because the trap door was too small, it caused
him painful head injuries and as he fell from the gallows with insufficient force to snap his neck,
his horrible convulsing lasted 28 long minutes before he died. He was 64 years old.
After that, his corpse was cremated and scattered in the river Isar.
There were no tears shed for Wilhelm Keitel.
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