German general who headed the Wehrmacht High Command and was complicit in Nazi war crimes.
As head of the Wehrmacht High Command, he signed criminal orders and bore responsibility for Nazi mass murder and the conduct of the war.
Keitel became head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) in 1938 and served under Hitler's supreme command as an executor of policy. He signed orders and decrees that violated international law, including one shielding German crimes in the East from prosecution, the Commissar Order requiring the summary execution of Soviet political officers, and the Night and Fog Decree. As OKW chief, he was also responsible for cooperation between the Einsatzgruppen and the military in mass murder of civilians in the Soviet Union, and for the brutal treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg convicted him on all four counts; he was hanged in 1946.
Activities and affiliations
- Military command · Germany state institutions
Career Timeline
- 1901Joined the Prussian army as an artillery officer.
- 1938Appointed head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW).
- 1945Signed the German surrender document in May.
- 1946Convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and hanged.
Related historical events
Postwar rearmament planning and the Organization Department
After the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles limited the German army to 100,000 men. Keitel served in the Reichswehr Ministry's Truppenamt, which concealed the functions of the prohibited Army General Staff. He was responsible for secretly planning, reorganizing, and enlarging the German army in violation of the treaty. Promoted to lieutenant colonel in February 1929, he became head of the Ministry's Army Organization Department that October and was promoted to colonel in 1931. He held the post until 1933 and, from 1930, prepared for a future expansion of the army. This interwar rearmament planning preceded his appointment in 1938 as head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW).