7131 - Wilhelm Keitel Triple-Signed Typed Nuremberg Interrogation Transcript on the Killing of Downed Allied Airmen: "The responsibility for it lies with others, but not with us soldiers"

Wilhelm Keitel Triple-Signed Typed Nuremberg Interrogation Transcript on the Killing of Downed Allied Airmen: "The responsibility for it lies with others, but not with us soldiers" Typed interrogation transcript in German, signed three times, "W. Keitel," and initialed seven times, "K," three pages, 8 x 10.5, September 27, 1946. The transcript covers Keitel's final answers on the question of downed Allied airmen and parachutists being "dealt with" over German territory, meaning summary killing by civilians or the SS rather than proper POW treatment. Keitel's position, consistent throughout, is that OKW never issued and never would have issued such an order, that any order along those lines came from Himmler and Bormann's directives to the Gauleiters and police, and that he only learned of those documents during the trial itself. He is pressed specifically on an order of June 12, 1944, out of Koblenz, addressed to the Inspector of the Security Police and SD concerning shot-down enemy flyers, signed by an SS officer named Wiebens. Keitel calls the whole line of questioning "entirely untrue," the same maneuver he says was used with the notorious handover of POWs to the SD: "Show me the order, it isn't there." He closes with his defense philosophy stated plainly: "If an order was issued, then the responsibility for it lies with others, but not with us soldiers.". In very good to fine condition, with scattered creasing, small edge tears, and paper loss to the top edge of the last page. Accompanied by a full English translation and a deckle-edge photograph of Keitel's corpse after his execution by hanging. This interrogation came at the very end of the Nuremberg proceedings, just four days before the International Military Tribunal delivered its judgment on October 1, 1946. Keitel’s hand-corrected answers show him still advancing a central theme of his defense: that criminal directives attributed to the German military leadership either did not exist or originated with Nazi Party and SS authorities outside the OKW, leaving professional soldiers without responsibility. The Tribunal rejected that broader effort to distance himself from the regime’s criminal orders, finding that Keitel had personally participated in or transmitted directives involving unlawful killings, forced labor, and the mistreatment of prisoners. He was convicted on all four counts, sentenced to death, and hanged at Nuremberg on October 16, 1946.