"His last words were: “I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than 2 million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow now my sons – all for Germany.”

The trap door was small, causing head injuries to Keitel and several other condemned men as they dropped. Many of the executed Nazis fell from the gallows with insufficient force to snap their necks, resulting in convulsions that in Keitel’s case lasted 24 minutes.

The corpses of Keitel and the other nine executed men were, like Hermann Göring’s, cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar."