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Then came Hitler's suicide in the Berlin bunker. Keitel was baffled. He had followed Hitler's every order in the naive belief that the Führer would accept responsibility for his actions. While more cynical generals like Gotthard Heinrici, commander of the Vistula Army Group, beat a retreat toward the American lines, Keitel went back to Berlin to sign the surrender document that he had never believed would be written. All around him the other evil men of Nazidom were taking the easy way out: Hitler was followed in suicide by Himmler, Goebbels and Goring.
Two Shortcomings. Keitel considered it himself but decided against it. "The armed forces," he wrote in his Nürnberg cell, "would have labeled me a deserter and a coward. Hitler himself chose death rather than accept responsibility. For him to have committed suicide when he knew he was defeated . . . for him to have left it to a subordinate to account for his auto cratic and arbitrary actions, these two shortcomings will remain forever incomprehensible to me. They are my final disillusion."