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Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Volume IV
Document No. 1590-PS

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TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 1590-PS
[several illegible notations]

Re: Taking of hostages
OKH received: 1 Oct. 1941

5 copies -copy
OKH/Gen. Qn.
(W. Bfh. Suedost)
Military Commander, South-East

Attacks on members of the Armed Forces lately committed in the occupied territories gave reason to point out that it is advisable that military commanders always have at their disposal a number of hostages of different political tendencies, namely:

1. nationalist
2. democratic-bourgeois, and
3. communist

It is important that among them shall be well-known leading personalities or members of their families, whose names are to be made public.

Depending on the membership of the culprit, hostages of the corresponding group are to be shot in case of attacks.

It is asked that commanders be accordingly instructed.
[partly illegible notation]

Chief of the Armed Forces High Command
(signed) Keitel.

Complied with in France and Belgium.
Source:
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Volume IV
Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality
Washington, DC : United States Government Printing Office, 1946

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