For educational purposes
Like many of those who surrounded Hitler, Wehrmacht chief of staff Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was simply too weak to accept where his actions were leading. Instead, he took refuge in obedience without limit.
With archival footage never previously shown, the film draws the psychological profile of aman whose moral failings had fatal consequences.
Former officers of the general staff and fellow travellers describe his path from joining the imperial army to the gallows of Nuremberg.
Keitel's key role in the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr to the apocalyptic plans for massive use of nerve gas during the last weeks of the war are presented as stages in a military career caught under the spell of the dictator.
Like many of those who surrounded Hitler, Wehrmacht chief of staff Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was simply too weak to accept where his actions were leading. Instead, he took refuge in obedience without limit.
With archival footage never previously shown, the film draws the psychological profile of aman whose moral failings had fatal consequences.
Former officers of the general staff and fellow travellers describe his path from joining the imperial army to the gallows of Nuremberg.
Keitel's key role in the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr to the apocalyptic plans for massive use of nerve gas during the last weeks of the war are presented as stages in a military career caught under the spell of the dictator.
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LearningTranscript
00:00With his signature, Germany accepted France's surrender.
00:14It was his master's greatest triumph, and his last.
00:25With his signature, German soldiers were ordered to commit crimes to satisfy Hitler's
00:30mania for Lebenswang.
00:47With his signature on Germany's surrender ended the nightmare to which he had fallen
00:51prey.
00:59At the end, he would say that he was just a soldier following orders.
01:29Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Wehrmacht high command.
01:59A war criminal through misplaced obedience, like so many.
02:05Couldn't he see the fine line between orders and immorality?
02:09The Keitel, he was a good lackey of his master, and that's what he was called, he was called
02:17Lakeitel.
02:18We just called him that, the Lakeitel.
02:23It is tragic to have to admit that the best thing I had to give as a soldier was obedience
02:34Keitel was a yes man.
02:42He worshipped Hitler in every way.
02:46He considered Hitler a military genius.
02:49He never disagreed with Hitler in any way.
02:54A soldier's career in Germany.
02:58Wilhelm Keitel swore his first oath to the Kaiser, who thought the world should follow
03:03Germany's example and wanted officers who asked no questions.
03:09Men like Keitel.
03:33Such men went far.
03:39In the First World War, he was the youngest general staff officer in the army, an efficient
03:44organizer, far from the front.
03:48He failed to see, like so many others, that the war could no longer be won.
03:57To Keitel, the 1919 revolution was not a consequence of the defeat, but its cause.
04:03The disastrous lie of the stab in the back.
04:05He wrote to his wife.
04:06Thank God we're still young enough to rebuild what was destroyed in a few days of senseless
04:12stupidity.
04:16Until that time came, he wanted to withdraw to his parents' farm at the foot of the Harz
04:21Mountains.
04:26But his family wouldn't go along with it.
04:30He would have liked to become a farmer.
04:32But when his father died, the question arose whether he should do well now.
04:37But that failed the women, because his mother was still there, his sister was still there.
04:44That wouldn't have gone well.
04:45He gave up on it.
04:49Above all, because his wife didn't want to be a farmer's wife.
04:57Berlin was now the capital of a republic.
04:59Wearing a uniform was no longer everything.
05:04The Treaty of Versailles limited the army to 100,000 soldiers.
05:08Even the Democrats thought this was far too few.
05:14In the ministry of the Reichswehr, Keitel worked hard to increase the size of the army
05:18in secret.
05:20As heavy weapons were banned, the army had to train with wood and cardboard.
05:27But secretly, the military was already planning the next conflict.
05:30The revision of Germany's eastern borders, with real steel and 100 divisions.
05:36Organisers were needed.
05:39Keitel came to the troops' office in 1929 and became head of the organisation for three
05:47and a half years.
05:49While others dreamt of past glory, Keitel turned to the future.
05:54He still seemed just an ordinary officer.
06:19A photograph marking one moment in a career which could have ended differently.
06:25The officers didn't much like the republic.
06:30The Kaiser still graced the walls of the officers' mess.
06:36Keitel and his comrades were waiting for the man who would turn their dreams into reality.
06:44Was this the man?
06:46At this stage, the lance corporal in breeches was more likely to be laughed at.
07:01But this man was a valued partner.
07:04Stalin's Red Army was the first of its kind.
07:09But this man was a valued partner.
07:12Stalin's Red Army and the Reichswehr tested new tanks, together and in secret.
07:17On an official journey through the Soviet Empire, Keitel enthused...
07:21It's like a religious mania.
07:23Only those who work have the right to live.
07:29Soon, maniacs ruled Germany too.
07:31Keitel was not yet a Nazi, but in July 1933 he met Hitler.
07:36Afterwards, his wife wrote...
07:38He was truly rejuvenated, so energetic and full of enthusiasm for Hitler.
07:44Apparently, his eyes are magnificent.
07:49Keitel was in raptures.
07:51From then on, he wanted to be at Hitler's service,
07:54initially as War Minister Blomberg's right-hand man.
07:59I remember very vividly his telling me one time
08:03that when he and his sons in uniform walked down the Kurfürstendamm,
08:09that people would turn and stare at them
08:11because they made such an impressive, such a magnificent impression,
08:16because they were typical Prussian officers.
08:19He was very proud.
08:22The reality of Hitler's Prussia.
08:24Those who didn't cooperate were hounded.
08:34The Wehrmacht cooperated. Keitel saw to that.
08:38The motto, Führer, command, we will follow, went for the army too.
08:42Keitel had politically unreliable soldiers handed over to the Gestapo.
08:50Why did people let this happen?
09:03Why was one so preoccupied
09:06that one didn't want to think about anything else?
09:11Not as an excuse, but as a fact.
09:18The regime dazzled people with bread and circuses.
09:21The 1936 Olympics, the festival of peace, directed by a warmonger.
09:28Keitel organized the Olympic village
09:31and as a reward was allowed to enter the stadium behind Hitler.
09:38Shortly before the Olympics, his master dictated a directive.
09:42Within four years, Germany had to be ready for war.
09:48This woman ensured Keitel's promotion, Greta Grün.
09:53In 1938, Keitel's boss, Blomberg, wanted to marry her.
09:58The Reich's top soldier in his second youth.
10:22I said, yes, I'll be the second top soldier.
10:27The Reich Marshal will be the second top soldier.
10:32The first and the second man in the Third Reich liked going to weddings.
10:36They had just celebrated Görings.
10:40But then a Weiss squad file revealed an old confession.
10:44The new Mrs. Blomberg had once posed for pornographic photographs.
10:53It was unbearable.
10:55The officers were almost astonished that such a thing had happened.
10:59Especially since she had a very bad reputation.
11:02If it had been something good for the people, it would have been...
11:06Well, my God, how can men fall in love?
11:09Before the scandal became public,
11:11the head of the Berlin police, Helldorf, tried to prevent the worst.
11:15File in hand, he went to Keitel to solve the problem.
11:19Between gentlemen.
11:23But Keitel couldn't find a solution.
11:41And so Hitler, the wedding guest, learnt of the scandal and saw his chance.
11:45Blomberg had to go.
11:48And with him, a whole row of other generals.
11:51Hitler took control of the Wehrmacht.
12:09In place of the dismissed men, Hitler appointed second-rate figures.
12:14Head of the Wehrmacht high command, Wilhelm Keitel.
12:22What made him the dictator's favourite were his limited horizons.
12:27There was no longer a war minister. Keitel would run that office.
12:31Even his subordinates recognised that he lacked the stature.
12:58He could be a breakfast director.
13:02Or maybe a museum director.
13:27Prague. A prelude to the great land grab.
13:32Keitel kept the misgivings of the other generals from his master.
13:35As a reward, he was given honorarily,
13:38the party's gold medal for members of the old guard.
13:45Now the lackey, the parvenu, stood in the front row.
13:48Hitler's 50th birthday.
13:51The greatest military parade that Berlin had ever seen.
13:55And the old lie.
14:07September the 1st, 1939. The invasion of Poland.
14:11The Wehrmacht's tactics exactly matched the plans worked out by Keitel and others ten years earlier.
14:21The beneficiary.
14:23Tanks met First World War cavalry.
14:30Keitel, knowing the inadequacies of his weapons, feared a war on two fronts.
14:35But the lightning victory reassured him.
14:38All that bothered him now was the lack of a proper declaration of war.
14:42He still didn't understand.
14:45But at his desk he did what he took to be his duty.
14:49Hitler gave the orders, Keitel carried them out.
14:52The occupied areas were to be cleansed of saboteurs and Jews.
14:56Ruthlessly.
15:00Behind the lines the murdering began.
15:02By SS special squads, Einsatzgruppen, with Wehrmacht soldiers in tow.
15:19Keitel said, yes, they should go out to the door.
15:24No, that's not enough, said the captain.
15:28He took a stick, which he had accidentally discovered at a lance,
15:33and threw it with all his might at the woman.
15:40Our soldiers pulled over to their commander in chief with shining eyes and excellent discipline.
15:47You can't tell these men that they're coming straight out of battle,
15:51that they're carrying enormous marches of violence and heavy batons.
15:57And you couldn't tell that the murdering had started behind the lines,
16:01or how much they knew of it, of the real goals of their supreme commander.
16:06The Front
16:11There were certainly rumors,
16:14and one or the other had seen or heard something.
16:19But we had to do with the front,
16:21so we couldn't try to pay attention to what was going on behind the lines.
16:31Few dared ask questions,
16:34in view of the speed with which the Wehrmacht was overrunning half Europe.
16:39Blitzkrieg, a lightning victory over France, too.
16:46Keitel celebrated Hitler as a genius at strategy, as did all too many.
16:52In the seclusion of his headquarters, the Fuehrer followed every movement of his troops.
17:04The initiative of these gigantic operations lies exclusively in the hands of the Fuehrer.
17:15On his side, Generaloberst Keitel and Generalmajor Jodl.
17:22The glory of victory, was some of it due to the head of the Wehrmacht high command?
17:27Actually not, because Hitler only addressed arms questions on administrative matters,
17:35while all strategic questions concerning the high command of the Wehrmacht,
17:42were answered and processed by Jodl.
17:48Hitler's Wehrmacht strategist, Alfred Jodl, knew that his superiors were dilettantes,
17:54but he seldom voiced his opinion.
18:15The comrades put on a show for the victory over France,
18:18celebrated at the place where Germany had once asked for an armistice.
18:22Hitler took only a walk-on part.
18:29Keitel was allowed to play the victor, and reveled in the revenge for 1918.
18:53For so much distortion of history, there was a reward.
18:56Hitler's desk-bound general became a field marshal.
19:06The new title bound the lackey even more closely to his master.
19:10Now, he was at his disposal every day.
19:14Without any irony, he coined the phrase,
19:17the greatest commander of all time.
19:22The supposed genius sought Lebensraum in the expanses of Russia.
19:42War against the Soviet Union, though many generals warned cautiously against it.
19:48Even Keitel had doubts at first, wrote a memorandum, warned of Napoleon's fate.
19:57But he obeyed, although he knew Hitler's real goals.
20:03This war was to shatter all rules, unhampered by morality or international law.
20:08His race war, a war of annihilation.
20:13Under Hitler's Obersalzberg, Keitel's high command turned maniacal ideas into orders.
20:19Now, the lackey became a war criminal, without a scruple.
20:23The jurisdiction decree, ordered by Hitler, signed by Keitel.
20:28When German soldiers in the East stole or murdered,
20:31there was no obligation to prosecute them.
20:34It was carte blanche.
20:37With that kind of weapon in their knapsacks,
20:40the Wehrmacht set off on the great land grab.
20:49Stirring songs like these were meant to arouse enthusiasm and confidence in victory.
20:55They were also intended to distract from the real purpose of aggression,
20:59which was not liberation, but annihilation.
21:03The first victims were Red Army political commissars,
21:06the so-called Commissar Decree, issued by Hitler, signed by Keitel.
21:12Commissars taken in battle or offering resistance,
21:15are the first victims of the war.
21:18Signed by Keitel.
21:21Commissars taken in battle or offering resistance,
21:24are on principle to be finished off immediately with a weapon.
21:29I think that many, especially the high commanders,
21:33probably all knew the order.
21:37And this order was a little murder order.
21:40There is no other word for it.
21:43Keitel knew of the scruples within the Wehrmacht.
21:46He had the Commissar Decree passed on to the troops only by word of mouth.
21:50No blood on the files.
21:52Many took advantage of that to circumvent it.
21:55Many took advantage of that to circumvent it.
22:26Even the prisoners who were not shot faced a terrible fate.
22:30Nothing was done for their survival.
22:35Two million died just in the first winter of the war.
22:38No comradeship here.
22:5530 to 40 men, that was the norm.
23:25Or not.
23:55Especially because we would count on our five fingers
23:59that they would do the same to us
24:02if we were to go to prison.
24:25A death sentence.
24:34Christmas outside Moscow.
24:38The first major defeat.
24:40The beginning of the end.
24:47Hitler tried to blame his generals
24:49and appointed himself commander-in-chief of the army.
24:52Keitel, too, had to serve as a scapegoat.
24:54He felt insulted, handed in his resignation,
24:57contemplated suicide.
25:03But another lackey stopped him.
25:16Merely wounded vanity or a troubled conscience.
25:20In any event, the last sign of rebellion.
25:25In the end, Keitel subordinated himself
25:28to Hitler's strong will again and again.
25:31And when he wanted to leave and Hitler said,
25:34no, you stay with me,
25:36and mostly he did so with a few sweet words,
25:39he contributed a little to the fact
25:42that Keitel then withdrew his resignation.
25:50Now he would be part of it to the end.
25:53With nothing but his faith in Hitler,
25:56no more scruples, no opinions of his own.
26:24Now he accepted everything,
26:26even the total war of annihilation.
26:29A willing executor who knew
26:31when Himmler's Einsatzgruppen were murdered.
26:37And the soldiers at the front?
26:39Could the murder of the Jews stay secret?
26:53I am a religious man.
26:55And I can only say,
26:57in my oath to God,
26:59I did not know.
27:01I only got the knowledge of the things
27:04in the prison camp.
27:07They knew.
27:09They didn't know.
27:12They didn't want to know.
27:17The Einsatzgruppen depended on Wehrmacht support.
27:37Drawn in?
27:40On special duties?
27:43Assigned?
27:46How do you give soldiers the order to murder?
28:07He came back and brought a lot of alcohol.
28:10And he said,
28:12prisoners would be shot.
28:15How do you feel?
28:17You don't feel like a soldier,
28:19but like a murderer.
28:21I felt like a murderer.
28:24I said,
28:25how can you shoot people
28:27who have nothing to do with it?
28:31And then I saw
28:34how they had to dig their own hole.
28:37They were put there and shot.
28:40And I was supposed to shoot too.
28:42And I shot next to them.
28:44I shot next to them out of courage.
28:48Not everyone had the courage to disobey.
28:55These pictures were never seen in the world of Hitler's bunker.
28:59The armchair assassins kept their distance from their deeds.
29:07Keitel himself never saw any shootings.
29:16The master and his lackey preferred to find cannon fodder.
29:21Once again, a fresh intake.
29:24New human material.
29:29The greatest commander of all time.
30:00Behind the front, too, ever greater losses.
30:04A partisan's war, brutal and bitter on both sides.
30:13Keitel demanded ruthless harshness,
30:15expressly including women and children.
30:18As the partisans could not be caught,
30:20success would come from terrorizing the locals.
30:24Entire villages went up in flames.
30:27Filmed by a soldier, fire against an invisible opponent.
30:31It affected civilians only and strengthened the partisans.
30:39Hitler demanded still more harshness.
30:42For every murdered German soldier, shoot 100 hostages.
30:53Keitel obeyed, no sign of a scruple.
31:05The war came home.
31:071944, a firestorm on German cities,
31:10striking down both the warlike and the innocent.
31:14In the west, invasion, a war on two fronts.
31:19In the east, almost an entire army group in captivity.
31:29Why carry on fighting?
31:31Keitel had long known that victory was no longer possible.
31:34But, like so many, he clung to the hope
31:37that the enemy's assault would collapse.
31:41The war cry of his master.
31:54These men paid the price.
32:11Victory or Bolshevistic chaos that could hardly be resisted.
32:15In the end, one was in a position where one said,
32:19either we win or we go down.
32:41Stauffenberg was accompanied by Keitel.
32:44We had a proclamation.
32:46All persons who accompanied Keitel
32:49and wanted to enter the encirclement
32:52were not to be controlled.
32:55The assassination attempt failed.
32:57An emotional Keitel embraced Hitler and stammered,
33:00Mein Fuhrer, you're alive.
33:02Hitler believed it an act of providence and swore revenge.
33:16The cleansing was another job for Keitel.
33:19His tribunal, the Ehrenhof,
33:21expelled the conspirators from the Wehrmacht
33:24so that they could be sentenced by the people's court and hanged.
33:29The members of the Ehrenhof
33:31were extremely willing supporters of Hitler
33:35and have, and I take this badly,
33:38also sacrificed people where it was not necessarily necessary.
33:59Children.
34:01Keitel was in charge of weapons
34:05and discipline.
34:07Anyone who didn't want to take part in the final act was hunted down.
34:11The lackey offered a bounty of 500 marks for every deserter.
34:17Hitler's henchmen.
34:19Beyond all scruple.
34:24In the daily briefing,
34:26wishful thinking.
34:30When someone finally told the truth, madness answered.
34:348,000 Soviet aeroplanes stood at the ready,
34:37reported the chief of the general staff, Guderian.
34:56Keitel struck the card with his fist and said,
35:01with much better knowledge,
35:03my Führer, the Reichsmarschall, is right.
35:07Dummies on the attack.
35:09Their goal, Berlin.
35:16The war came back to where it had first slipped the leash.
35:21Last pictures for the newsreel.
35:24A sick man who still kept calling for heroism.
35:38In the Führer's bunker under the Reich Chancellery,
35:41the sense it was all over, all lost.
35:44Just one Trump cub was left the Wehrmacht.
35:47Tabun, 12,000 tons of it,
35:49the most poisonous nerve gas of the war.
35:52Much of it still lies at the bottom of the Baltic today.
35:56Goebbels urged, now or never.
35:58Keitel ordered that the gas shells be taken to the centre of the Reich,
36:02although the poisonous freight
36:04could have been hit by Allied pilots at any time.
36:11Did he want to leave open the possibility of chemical warfare?
36:16It would have been in a way
36:18where you would have lured the others out
36:21to use the gas weapon on their side.
36:24That would have been catastrophic.
36:27Back then, perhaps,
36:29as you think about a nuclear war today.
36:35Even Hitler in his gas-proof bunker flinched from that,
36:39the trauma of the First World War.
36:42All the dictator wanted was to arrange his own dispatch.
36:46His vassal wanted to carry on.
36:49Keitel and Jodl suggested to him
36:51that he should go to Berchtesgaden
36:54and carry out the operations from there.
36:57He refused.
36:59After that, Keitel and Jodl gave the order
37:03to coordinate the battle around Berlin.
37:10Commander-in-Chief at last.
37:13Keitel drove to the army, under Wenck,
37:16clutching at a straw.
37:18With these men, he wanted to liberate the Reich's capital,
37:22but they just wanted to survive.
37:40April 30th.
37:42Keitel reported back to the bunker.
37:44Everything possible has been done.
37:46The situation is hopeless.
37:49His last report.
37:51Hitler committed suicide.
37:56One week later, May 8th.
37:58Keitel on his way to give his last signature.
38:02Berlin Karlshorst.
38:04Unconditional surrender.
38:06A purely symbolic act.
38:10A field marshal with a walk-on part.
38:13There was nothing to negotiate.
38:15The victors kept him waiting.
38:17At 11 p.m. on the dot,
38:19the weapons were to fall silent.
38:21But it was not until after midnight
38:23that Keitel was asked to enter.
38:26His salute was not returned.
38:30His military bearing merely a facade.
38:35I described him as looking more like the victor than the vanquished.
38:39He put a monocle in his eye.
38:41He was thoroughly...
38:42He looked really as though he had not lost the war.
38:48Keitel's signature.
38:50The final stroke in a war of aggression
38:52of which he had been the administrator.
39:04Germany, a land of rubble.
39:06These women's menfolk were in captivity or dead.
39:10The war in Europe had cost 40 million lives.
39:18Who would take responsibility for all this?
39:23Keitel felt innocent.
39:26He considered himself a military man
39:29and he was accepting responsibility
39:33for military decisions.
39:36But if they were military decisions
39:39that could lead to his conviction,
39:42then they became Hitler decisions.
39:47A film changed his mind.
39:49Made in the camps, shown in the Nuremberg courtroom.
40:03Keitel cried when he was shown how bulldozers
40:07were colliding corpses in Dachau.
40:14The sight of the inconceivable distressed the prisoner.
40:17Keitel knew that he would be sentenced to death.
40:23In his concluding remarks, a scrap of self-insight,
40:26he had really wanted to make a confession,
40:29but Goering had forbidden it and he obeyed as always.
40:53Remorse? Not feigned.
40:57But too late.
41:00It was the most impressive statement
41:02made by any of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials.
41:05It admitted that he was guilty. He took on the guilt.
41:11His last request was that he should be shot as a soldier.
41:15But Keitel was hanged like all the others.
41:18His corpse was cremated.
41:21His ashes were scattered on an arm of the river Isar.
41:56To be continued...