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...
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