Closing statement by the defendant Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (22 September 1882 – murdered 16 October 1946) before the "International War Crimes Tribunal" in Nuremberg on August 31, 1946. 2/3

Here, too, there is talk of "Keitel's instructions," although the French indictment itself states that as head of the OKW, I could not give orders directly to the Wehrmacht units.
In the closing statement by the Soviet Russian prosecutor, it says - I quote: "Starting with the documents on the execution of political figures, Keitel, this soldier, which he likes to refer to, shamelessly lied to the American prosecution authorities during the preliminary investigation - breaking his oath - by saying that this decree had the character of a reprisal and that political figures were kept separate from the other prisoners of war at the latter's own request. He was exposed in court." End of quote. This is document 884-PS.
The accusation of lying is unfounded. The Soviet prosecution overlooked the fact that the record of my interrogation in the preliminary proceedings on this issue was not part of the evidence before this court. It should therefore not have been used in the prosecution's closing statement. I have not seen the record of the preliminary interrogation and do not know its wording. If it is complete, it will also contain the clarification of the error that arose from the fact that the document in question was not presented to me. During the interrogation by my defense attorney, I presented the facts correctly on the witness stand.
In the last stage of the trial, the prosecution once again attempted to seriously incriminate me by linking my name with an order to prepare for bacteriological war. A witness, the former General Medical Officer Dr. Schreiber, had said in his report: "The Chief of the OKW, Field Marshal Keitel, had issued the order to prepare for bacteriological war against the Soviet Union." End of quote.
On the witness stand here, however, this witness spoke of a Führer order.
But this is also incorrect. The introduction of Colonel Bürker's statements, approved by the tribunal with the consent of the prosecution, shows that in the autumn of 1943 I sharply and categorically rejected the suggestion made to me by the Army Medical Inspectorate, the Army Weapons Office, to activate the bacterial experiments, as Bürker literally says, with the comment that this was out of the question, as it was forbidden.
This is correct. Colonel General Jodl can also confirm that no order of the kind claimed by the witness was ever issued, but that Hitler banned the bacteriological war discussed in some quarters. This proves the contrary claim made by the witness Dr. Schreiber to be untrue.
I claim to have told the truth in all matters, even when they incriminated me, and to have made every effort to contribute to clarifying the true facts to the best of my knowledge, despite the large scope of my work.

So at the end of this trial I want to openly state my current knowledge and confession: During the course of the proceedings my defense attorney asked me two fundamental questions; the first months ago. It was:

"If you had won, would you have refused to have played a part in the success?" I answered: "No, I would certainly have been proud." The second question was: "How would you behave if you were in the same situation again?"

My answer: "Then I would rather choose death than allow myself to be drawn into the net of such pernicious methods."
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