Description:

WILHELM KEITEL
(1882-1946) German field marshal and army chief of staff under Adolf Hitler, convicted of war crimes and executed at Nuremberg. Fine content partly-printed D.S. ‘W. Keitel' in pencil, 1p. legal folio, Nuremberg, Jan. 17, 1946, a ‘Defendant's Application for Summons of Witness', in which Keitel asks that Oberregierungsrat Dr. HANS ERBE (1892-1953), a former employee of the Ministry of the Interior, be summoned to give evidence on his behalf. It adds that Erbe served under Wilhelm Frick up until the middle of 1944 and that Erbe has knowledge ‘…That the Consulting Committee of the Defense of the Country, subsequently the Reichs Defense Committee, advised only on questions regarding the defense of the country, and never on strategic or operational [matters]…it also did not concern itself with the planning of aggressive wars'. Keitel states that these facts are relevant because ‘the prosecution asserts that the above mentioned committee has planned aggressive wars. I was member of this committee'. Countersigned in pencil by DR. OTTO NELTE (1887-1957) defense counsel for Keitel as well as for head of the Wehrwirtschaftsfuhrer Heinrich Horlein, and head of the Wehrmacht medical system Siegfried Handloser. HANS ERBE worked at the Ministry of the Interior from 1921 onward, then as a judge in the Reich Administrative Court in 1939 before becoming a soldier. At the end of the war, he was employed as a legal counsel at a firm in Berlin. Erbe was officially ‘denazified' at the end of the war, becoming an ‘exonerated person' in 1948. According to the Bremen State Archives, Erbe claimed at Nuremberg that he joined the NSDAP: ‘…only out of concern for his professional position as a ministerial official and that he never supported the Nazi regime, but on the contrary spread 'counter-propaganda', helped those persecuted for racial and political reasons and made contact with civil society people resistance circles…'. The Archives note that Erbe's statement was confirmed by other witnesses' statements at the trial. Light wear and soiling, else very good. Sold with a blank copy of the document.

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November 29, 2023 10:00 AM EST
Elkton, MD, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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