WALTER WARLIMONT

WALTER WARLIMONT

(1894 - 1976) German officer, Senior Operations Staff Officer to Keitel, a member of Hitler's inner circle, tried at Nuremberg. Great content T.L.S., 1p. 4to., Gmund am Tegernsee, Sept. 5, 1968, writing extensively of his post-war imprisonment and of the Nuremberg Trials in general. In part: '...Men of my former status and rank...were neither less nor more responsible for the outbreak of the second World War...than their opposites in Allied countries...It was contrary to any international law to bring officers of the Armed Forces to judicial trials, conducted even by civilian judges of victorious states...the Allies were conscious of this fact...to constitute an entirely new judicial order for these trials - which in fact was n o n e [sic] - and to have disappear...any military regulation which stood in their way...the US decided to try and to treat almost the whole of the high standing German officers as common criminals and denounce them every claim to the status of POW...'. Warlimont also adds the extremely notable postscript: 'I presume you know that we former officials had nothing to do with the crimes against jews and in Concentration Camps.' Warlimont signs at the conclusion. Some letters pierce the paper due to a faulty typewriter, else very good.