Jim Cain of Idaho, USA, inquires Friday, March 7, 2003 about the authenticity of the Keitel memoirs 

Did Keitel really write those death-cell memoirs?

WHAT is your evaluation of The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel, widely advertised for sale on Amazon.com and supposedly hastily written out by Keitel in the six months before his Nuremburg hanging?

It is hard for me (as a former officer/soldier) to imagine why a man in captivity like him would, under the circumstances, write anything either truthful or of any historical value.

What is your assessment of it?

Jim Cain

 The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel

David Irving replies:AS YOU probably know, I was the person who translated The Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel (William Kimber, London, ca 1967); I was paid $85 for the three month job — not very much even in those days. I did take the trouble to visit the late field-marshal’s family, and discovered that the German publisher had cut out large tracts of the book which were deemed “politically incorrect” — and I put them back into the UK translation. I will shortly post the whole book in English as a free download on this website at http://old.fpp.co.uk/books/Keitel