WILHELM KEITEL BECAME A CHRISTIAN

    

Wilhelm Keitel

Was He Perhaps The Fuhrer's Father Figure?

(1882-1945)

Descended from a wealthy landowning family, soon the army eagerly beckoned him. Not for him the plough but instead the sword. During the Great War he served on the Western Front with honour but was wounded in his right forearm and would later serve in the German General Staff Office for the remainder of the War.

 

But like so many disillusioned returning soldiers in 1918 and others returning to a new republican Germany, Keitel it seems was disgusted by this and instead was attracted to the Freikorps, then with its fierce emphasis towards the values of the Monarchy and loyalty to Germany. Any Soviet styled ideas exported to Germany would have been anathema to him and many others.

 

The Freikorps then was under the strict and brutal command of the enigmatic homosexual and an early supporter of the young Cpl. Adolph Hitler, this was Captain Ernst Rohm. Incidentally he would later claim that Hitler, the new up and coming political oratator, was his protege.

 

As Keitel had been severely wounded in the War this may have put the brakes on his service as an active soldier. But he still remained a professional and would see service in various staff training academies.

 

However during this turbulent period of post-War German politics, I suspect that Keitel would have become acquainted with the young Hitler himself, also a disillusioned soldier and artist. Remember both were then in the closed world of the Freikorp. Strangely Keitel later claimed that he didn't make the acquaintance of Hitler until 1933, but I find it difficult to accept this premise.

 

Berlin and Munich then were small provincial towns. Both men would have trodden the same streets in those turbulent times.

 

In 1937 he would become Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces (this was due to a scandal which had erupted against General Bloomberg, the then head of the armed forces. Interestingly his son would later marry the disgraced general's daughter. After serving on the Russian front it remains unclear if the young Keitel was killed in action in 1942.)

 

By then Keitel's personal star was ascending and one can only guess what Hitler, once a lowly corporal, recognized in this landowning officer-but something did indeed attract him. Remember generals of his privileged background were the men Hitler so openly despised and wasn't Wilhelm Keitel certainly one of this smug breed of men he had known in the trenches and loathed.

 

Also during the War new generals arrived and were disposed, some were fired on a Monday only to be re-instated on a Tuesday. Crazy times no less. Yet through it all Keitel survives and from 1939 onwards he is always filmed in the Fuhrer's company, either in Rome meeting Mussolini or at Munich meeting Chamberlain. Keitel is even sitting next to Hitler on his private plane, visiting naval destroyers, and is seen in the War Room as Hitler pours over large battle maps. Keitel always seems to be looking over his leaders shoulder. Always it seems nodding to the Hitler's escalating demands.

 

During the "good years" he witnessed the fall of France (going with Hitler to the forest to sign the surrender document), of which he carefully and militarily oversaw, as well as the fall of the Netherlands, Poland and other conquered Nazi territories. Keitel was there in 1942 when the Wehrmacht went on the defensive instead of the offensive in Russia. The Third Reich was now in ruins and the future fate of both men was now sealed forever. It was the beginning of the end for both men.

 

But what did the Fuhrer see in him or in his grandiose personality (in one wartime film clip taken on a moving train, Hitler leans over and affectingly touches Keitels arm.) Privately other officers called him a lackey and always behind his back. He was Hitler's poodle, they openly joked. Maybe he was just Hitler's mascot.

 

Wilhelm Keitel had never it seems requested membership to join the Nazi party in the 1930s. I wonder why? But later during the War he was awarded the golden party badge and accepted it. (He can be seen wearing this in a wartime newsreel.)

 

But it all ended in tears when in 1945 he grudgingly ratified the German forces surrender terms in Berlin, and from there his destination under armed guard was to Nuremberg prison, where of course Hitler's race policies had been formulated into the Nazi constitution some years ago. But for Keitel it would be at the Allied war trials that he would have to give an account of his actions against the Reich's enemies. (Both James and myself visited this historical building some years ago and not much had changed either since 1945. Unfortunately we were not allowed the opportunity to inspect the cells where the main captives had been contained (they are still in use to this day!)

 

At his trial he was naturally found guilty of war crimes. Then after the verdict he was hanged on 16th October 1946. End of story.

 

But at this point in our brief biography I now turn to The infamous at Nuremberg, a memoir by Col. Burton C. Androus.  I was very pleased when this book came into my possession

 

Because some years ago an American Bible teacher had mentioned that he suspected several top Nazis had truly repented at Nuremberg and were saved. We are always pleased when this sincerely happens to anyone because: "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth" (Luke 15:7.) 

 

And he was quite categoric that one of the repenting men was in fact Wilhelm Keitel no less. I then felt some further research was needed to confirm this bizarre claim.

 

And just looking at the book now with its 1969 cover, there is the man himself seated next to Ribbentrop (who also may have repented.)

 

The book most certainly presents Keitel at peace with himself as he prepares to meet God's Judgment. ("It is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgement.") And much of the book's evidence comes from an Army Lutheran Chaplin, who was sent to somehow try and minister to those who requested his services in the prison before their appointment with the hangman's noose. (Lutheran's in those days it should be stated were not part of the wicked ecumenical movement that openly flourishes today.) He writes of Keitel's Bible that he found him reading in his cell: "I have carried it through two world wars I know from this book that God can love a sinner like me."

 

How true of a wretched man who seeks a Saviour. Was the Field Marshall searching?

 

Again he concluded his devotions by saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner. Keitel confessed his faith in the all redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour," finally the Chaplin could write: "I never heard a man pray the way he did."

 

This must have made a deep lasting impression on this army Chaplin for him to commit it to paper, but I'm glad he made the effort to recount his experience to the author of the book.

 

And so much for the Field Marshall's belief that it is never too late for a man to cry out and repent. Again how true we would confirm.

 

And did he call on the name of the Lord before his appointment with the hangman? (Incredibly just looking at the picture of his corpse it is quite clear that the American hangman botched the job, something Piermont would have called amateurish.) But I rather like to think that Keitel was saved. I certainly hope so. Maybe one day I will get to find out. 

But of one thing I am sure, Wilhelm Keitel is certainly not looking over Adolph Hitler's shoulder anymore!

 

 

GPB

November 2010

(All Rights Reserved)

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.excatholicsforchrist.com/mobile/wilhelm-keitel.html

THE JAPANESE KEMPEITAI INTERPRETER: TAKASHI NAGASE (DIED: JUNE 21, 2011)

            On this date, June 21, 2011, Takashi Nagase, an interpreter of the Ministry of War of Japan, passed away. He is someone I respect and admire for being repentant. I will post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.

Military portrait of prison camp guard Takashi Nagase

Takashi Nagase (永瀬 隆 Nagase Takashi^?, c.1919 - June 21, 2011) was an interpreter of the Ministry of War of Japan. He was born in 1918 in Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan. He learned English language from a U.S. Methodist in a college in Tokyo. He was one of the officers in charge of the construction of the "Death Railway" which ran between Thailand and Burma and included the famous bridge over the River Kwai, and is known for the use of forced labor of Allied prisoners of war, though the majority of the labor (and resultant deaths) was incurred by romusha, or local civilians pressed into labor.

Nagase was first introduced to the British Public in the documentary made by ex-POW John Coast about the realities of life on the Thai-Burma Railway, which was broadcast in the UK on BBC2 on 15 March 1969 (it was repeated on Boxing Day 1974). The documentary was called 'Return to the River Kwai' and featured interviews with Nagase and two other Japanese soldiers who had worked with the prisoners on the Railway. Nagase acted as both interpreter for the two other soldiers and interviewee. A transcript of the documentary and Nagase's responses to Coast's questions about the treatment of the POWs and some of the Japanese accused of war crimes after the war (plus some of Nagase's responses that did not make it into the final edit of the documentary) can be found in the new edition of Coast's book "Railroad of Death".

Nagase was also noted for his reconciliation with former British Army officer Eric Lomax, whom he interrogated and tortured at a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in 1942. Lomax then went on to mention his reconciliation with Nagase in his autobiography, The Railway Man. The book chronicled his experience before, during, and after World War II. It won the 1996 NCR Book Award and the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography.

Nagase also wrote a book on his own experiences during and after the war entitled Crosses and Tigers, and financed a Buddhist temple at the bridge to atone for his actions during the war. The meeting between the two men was filmed as a documentary Enemy, My Friend? (1995), directed by Mike Finlason.

After the end of World War II, Takashi Nagase became a devout Buddhist priest and tried to atone for the Japanese army's treatment of prisoners of war. Takashi made more than 100 missions of atonement to the River Kwai in Thailand.

He died in 2011.

In films

Nagase is portrayed by Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada in the film The Railway Man, based on Lomax's autobiography. The film also stars Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.

He was previously portrayed by Yugo Saso in the 2001 film, To End All Wars.

The statue of Nagase Takashi (Fujiwara) at the river entrance to the JEATH Museum, with the bamboo hut of the museum in the background. [Photo: Kim McKenzie] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/remembering-the-railway/local-memories.php#]

  

INTERNET SOURCE: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=249387&rel_no=1

Building Bridges Over Hate

Takashi Nagase helped torture British POWs in WWII. He has tried to make amends ever since Takashi Nagase still breaks down when he remembers the young British man he helped torture. "I couldn't bear his pain," he says, choking back tears. "He was crying Mother! Mother! And I thought: what she would feel if she could see her son like this. I still dream about it." Nagase was a military interpreter for the dreaded Kempeitai, or special Japanese police in the prison camp made famous in the movie "Bridge on the River Kwai," when POW Eric Lomax was caught with a concealed radio and map.

Neither man has ever completely recovered from what took place in the following days as Lomax was relentlessly tortured. For the 22-year-old Signals Corps' engineer from Edinburgh, it was the beginning of a nightmare that has taken him 60 years to shake off. "The psychological damage stays with you forever," he says.

For his 21-year-old tormentor, it was the start of one of war's most remarkable and courageous stories of repentance.

Lomax was beaten relentlessly and dragged broken and weak before Nagase and his commanding officer for interrogation. He remembers the officer's face "full of latent and obvious violence." But it was "hateful little" interpreter, for days intoning in a flat inflectionless voice: "Lomax you will be killed," who he really despised.

Nagase's voice droned in his ear as he was repeatedly held down and water was hosed into his nose and mouth, filling his lungs and stomach. Lomax survived -- barely -- to spend the rest of the war in a brutal military prison, and for half a century nursed his hated against his interrogator. "I wished to drown him, cage him and beat him," he says.

This informal photo shows Australian Sergeant Lloyd Rankin of the War Graves survey party with Japanese assistants while locating POW cemeteries and grave sites along the railway in October 1945. These men are (from left) interpreter Nagase Takashi, Lance-Corporal Iwamoto, Private Hayashi (rear) and an unidentified steam train driver. Nagase Takashi later wrote a memoir of his experiences on the railway, Crosses and Tigers, and devoted himself to acts of reconciliation in Kanchanaburi. [AWM P01910.027] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/the-enemy/the-japanese-on-the-railway.php#]

Today, Nagase is a frail 87-year-old retired English teacher who says he understands the hate directed at him.

"People who have been to hell do not forgive easily," he says. "And we were in hell. But I wanted to help him in some way. I searched my brain for the right English expression and as he was leaving the camp I said to him quietly, 'Keep your chin up.' I still remember his astonished face."

The Thai-Burma Railway was one of the great evil follies of World War II, a 415-kilometer track hewn mostly by hand through rock and tropical jungle that consumed the lives of up to 100,000 men, including an estimated 16,000 slave laborers conscripted from the ranks of the decimated Allied forces. 

Gravestone of one of the thousand of POWs who died working on the "Death Railway." [PHOTO SOURCE: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=249387&rel_no=1]

By the time what became known as "Death Railway" was completed, the line was lined with thousands of flimsy wooden crosses marking the bodies of young men from Glasgow, London and Liverpool, who had succumbed to starvation, disease and beatings; 60 years later some are still held in the jungle's swampy embrace, lost forever.

Nagase, who was chosen as interpreter because he had been taught by U.S. Methodists in a Tokyo college, remembers entering the stinking, malaria-ridden Kanchanaburi prison camp, on the railway's route to Burma (now Myanmar) in September 1943. "It was surrounded by these brazen vultures attracted by the stench of the corpses. I still shudder when I think of it."

His halting, imperfect English was often the only conduit between the camp commanders and thousands of prisoners, and he helped interrogate many POWs, but it was the memory of Lomax that lingered. "As I watched him being tortured and heard his cries, I felt I was going to lose my mind. I though he was going to die and I still remember my relief when I felt his pulse."

When the war ended, Nagase spent seven weeks locating 13,000 abandoned bodies along the line for the Allied War Graves Commission; many now lie in a cemetery in front of Manchanaburi Station. For most, this gruesome work would be penance enough for sins committed under orders during wartime, but Nagase was only beginning his long journey to redemption.

"The work of searching for bodies changed my whole life," he says. He began to write and lecture in Japan about the horrors he had seen, harshly criticizing, at some personal risk, the Japanese military, and the Emperor system that survived the war. "It should be completely abolished," he says today. "The Emperor should apologize for what was done in his name."

He used much of his own money to build memorials across Thailand, including a Buddhist peace temple near the Tham Kham Bridge over the Kwoi Noi River -- the bridge on the River Kwai -- and to fund education programs in the area. Most remarkably of all, he has returned to Thailand 125 times, the last time in June this year, trips he says 'calm his soul.'

In 1976, he organized the first of a series of reunions between ex-POWs and Japanese soldiers, a tense affair on the famous bridge which was overseen by Thai riot police, "just in case." Nagase was criticized by the Japanese press for holding the Thai national flag rather than the Rising Sun that had once fluttered over the camp. "Do they know how many Thai people were slaughtered under that flag," he asks.

But he had to wait until March 1993 before a reunion on the banks of the Kwai with the tall, blue-eyed Scotsman he had helped interrogate. Although not yet ready to forgive, Lomax had been disarmed by an "extraordinarily beautiful" letter from Nagase. He had gone to Thailand not knowing what to expect and ended up comforting a shaking, crying Nagase who simply kept saying: "I am so sorry, so very, very sorry."

The formal forgiveness that Nagase craved came later. "I knew he had hated me for 50 years and I wanted to ask him if he forgave me, but I couldn't find a way," says Nagase today. So I said: 'Can we be friends,' and he said 'yes.'" And the old soldier who will again travel to Berwick-upon-Tweed next month to see the man he now calls "my friend" is again wracked by sobs.

Takashi Nagase, Eric Lomax and his wife Patricia meeting for the first time since the war on the rebuilt Kwai bridge. [PHOTO SOURCE: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=249387&rel_no=1]

When they meet, the men swap war stories and share their astonishment at the 'utter futility' of the project that scared their lives so profoundly. Lomax wrote in his biography, The Railway Man: "The Pyramids, that other great engineering disaster, are at least a monument to our love of beauty, as well as to slave labor; the railway is a dead end in the jungle...The line has become literally pointless. It now runs for about 60 miles and then stops."

Nagase has never got over his bitterness at the waste of lives and believes, controversially, that young Japanese today share responsibility for what happened. In July this year, he astonished a group of British high students on an Imperial War Museum-sponsored trip in Japan by tearfully apologizing to them and demanding that a Japanese student to do the same. "This is not a problem of our generation," said the bewildered Japanese, a reply that infuriates Nagase.

"It is not a generational issue," he says. "The shame belongs to the whole Japanese race." Needless to say, he is disgusted by attempts by some nationalist scholars and politicians in Japan to rewrite history. "The textbooks they have written contain the same things as we were taught in school in the textbooks in the lead up to the war. It is unforgivable."

And he has no tolerance for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine, the war memorial that he and Lomax visited together when the Scotsman came to Japan. Lomax was astonished to see a monument in the shrine to the hated Kempeitai, saying, "It is like seeing a memorial to the Gestapo in a German cathedral." Inside they found an "immaculate" C56 steam locomotive from the Thai-Burma railway, with no mention of those who died constructing it; Lomax calls it a "monument to barbarism."

"Koizumi is a fool," spits Nagase. "I don't care who I say this to. And why are the newspapers now writing that the war was good. What do they think the Japanese Imperial Army was doing in East Asia for 15 years? Why don't they listen to what other Asian people are saying? Sometimes this is an odd country."

But although he says he is considered a "traitor" in Japan, he also frequently criticizes the U.S. "What the Americans are doing in Iraq is not good," he says. "In war people identify exclusively with their country. It makes people crazy. There has to be other ways of solving problems."

At 87, Nagase knows his time is short and desperately wants the railway declared a U.N. World Heritage Site before he dies. In November, despite a dangerously weak heart, he will cycle with a group of Japanese peace campaigners along the remains of the railway as part of his campaign. He has cultivated good ties with Thai government officials and won the support of several embassies, but the U.N. designation is controversial.

There is little official support in Japan for a memorial to one of history's most barbaric episodes, and some veterans are still reluctant to embrace their former captors in a joint campaign; others believe that the railway should be allowed to sink back into the jungle. A 1987 commercial plan to renovate the line was criticized by the former Allied countries and withdrawn.

British Foreign Office spokesman Dan Chugg said the British government had not been formally approached about the move, but said any response "would depend very much on the views of the veterans about how we might feel about the proposal. If it comes up we would talk to veterans groups and take it from there. Because it is not a site in the UK we are simply an interested observer."

For his part, Lomax is unequivocal. "He has my complete support. This is very important to him."

After 60 years of campaigning, to make up for less than two years service in the Thai prison camp, those who know Nagase relentless say his search for redemption is humbling, awe-inspiring.

"He is so courageous," says Keiko Tamura, who runs an organization that helps locate former allied POWs in Japan. "The people who fought in the war forgot their humanity, so it is a long battle to get them to see each other as human beings again. That's what he does. He is often asked why he continues, and he says it is so we won't forget those who died."

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ex-Japanese+military+interpreter,+philanthropist+Nagase+dies+at+93.-a0259884103

Ex-Japanese military interpreter, philanthropist Nagase dies at 93.

OKAYAMA, Japan, June 22 Kyodo

Takashi Nagase, a former Japanese military interpreter who was involved in the construction of the infamous Thailand-Burma railway during World War II and later engaged in philanthropic activities to atone for his wartime acts, died Tuesday at a hospital in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, his family said. He was 93.

The 415-kilometer railway is also known as the ''Death Railway'' as about 16,000 Allied prisoners of war, including British, Dutch and Australian nationals, as well as 80,000 to 100,000 Asian laborers died while being forced to build it.

Nagase witnessed Japanese troops torture POWs in Kanchanaburi facing the River Kwai in western Thailand in the last years of the war. Shortly after the war, he was deployed by the Allied Forces on a mission to search for the bodies of Allied soldiers who perished while building the railroad and confirmed the remains of more than 13,000 POWs.

The railway construction was made famous in the 1957 British film, ''The Bridge on the River Kwai.''

To atone for his wartime activities, Nagase visited Thailand 135 times since 1964. In 1976, he organized a meeting of reconciliation between the former Japanese army members and POWs at the railroad bridge on River Kwai.

Nagase founded the River Kwai Peace Foundation, which has given more than a thousand scholarships to students in Kanchanaburi and helped build memorials to the war dead and temples in various places in Thailand.

In 2006, Thais built a life-size statue of Nagase at a war museum in Kanchanaburi to honor his philanthropic activities.

The railway linking Thailand and Burma, now Myanmar, was completed in October 1943 after about 18 months of construction work with a labor force of some 400,000. Currently the railway operates along a portion of about 130 km in Thailand.

COPYRIGHT 2011 Kyodo News International, Inc.

No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.

Copyright 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

PLEASE WATCH THESE TWO VIDEOS TO HEAR FROM THE LATE TAKASHI NAGASE:

The Railway Man - Eric Lomax Documentary

Published on Dec 2, 2013

http://www.therealrailwayman.com/ - The Railway Man ... a tortured soldier confronts his torturer after 50 years spent tracking him down. Film documentary about Eric Lomax that preceded The Railway Man.

VIDEO SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do3FwIymiqI

VJ Day - Meeting The Enemy – Thailand

VIDEO SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfevifb0H1Y