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Document 30039

NUREMBERG: WILHELM KEITEL
Nazi Chief of staff of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces; hanged at Nuremberg.
ANS: "W. Keitel" twice in pencil, 1p, 8x4½. (Nuremberg), 1946 January 27. In German with full English translation. In full: "To the Office. "I ask the level of the heat to my Cell 8 immediately lowered till tomorrow morning because it is too hot for sleeping." He has also signed: "W. Keitel/Cell 8" in the upper left. Wilhelm Keitel, one of Hitler's most loyal and trusted lieutenants, became Chief of Staff of the armed forces office, equivalent to Minister of War, in 1935. In 1938, he advanced to head of the armed forces high command, which Hitler had created as a central control agency for Germany's military effort. In June 1940 Keitel dictated the terms of the French surrender. Nazi intelligence officer Maj. Gen. Erwin Lahousen, a star prosecution witness in the war crimes trial, testified that Keitel told him on 12th September, 1939, while aboard Hitler's headquarters train, that the Polish intelligentsia, nobility and Jews were to be liquidated. On May 13, 1941, Keitel signed an order that civilians suspected of offenses against troops should be shot without trial. On May 8, 1945, he ratified in Berlin the unconditional surrender of Germany. Keitel was convicted at Nuremberg and, on October 16, 1946, he and nine other defendants sentenced to death were hanged. Their bodies were brought to Dachau, where they were burned; the ashes were scattered into a river. Folds do not touch signature. Lightly creased, 1¾x¼-inch portion of paper missing in blank upper margin. Irregular bottom edge. Overall, fine condition.

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