“Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces
“(S) Keitel”
Under OKW were the supreme commands of the three branches of the Armed Forces: OKH, OKM, and the Air Force, which did not receive the official designation of Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL) until 1944. Raeder remained after 1938 as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, and von Fritsch was replaced by von Brauchitsch as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Goering continued as Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force. In 1941 von Brauchitsch was replaced as Commander-in-Chief of the Army by Hitler himself, and Raeder was replaced as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy by Doenitz early in 1943. Goering continued as Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force until the last month of the war, when he was replaced by von Greim.
OKW, OKH, OKM and the Air Force each had its own staff. These four staffs did not have uniform designations; in the case of OKH, the staff was known as the Generalstab (General Staff); in the case of OKW, it was known as the Fuehrungstab (Operations Staff); but in all cases the functions were those of a General Staff in military parlance. It will be seen, therefore, that there was in this war no single German General Staff, but rather four, one for each branch of the service plus one for the OKW as the over-all interservice supreme command.
Under OKH, OKL, and OKM were the various fighting formations of the Army, Air Force and Navy respectively. The largest army field formation was known to the Germans, as it is among the nations generally, as an “army group”. An Army group was a headquarters controlling two or more “armies.” In some cases, e.g. in the campaigns in Norway and Greece where only one army was used, “armies” were directly subordinated to OKH, rather than to an “army group.” Under the armies come the lower field formations such as corps, divisions, regiments, etc.
In the case of the German Air Force (OKL), the largest formation was known as an “air fleet” (Luftflotte) and the lower units under the air fleet were called “corps” (Fliegerkorps or Jagdkorps) or “divisions” (Fliegerdivisionen or Jagddivisionen).
Under OKM were the various “naval group commands,” which controlled all naval operations in a given area, with the exception of the operation of the high seas fleet and the submarines, which by their nature, were too mobile to be restricted to an area command. The Commanders of the fleet and submarines, and certain other specialized units, were directly subordinate to the German Admiralty.
(2) Composition of the Group Charged as Criminal. The group charged in the Indictment (Appendix B) as criminal comprises, first, German officers who held the top positions in the four supreme commands described above; and second, the officers who held the top field commands.
The holders of nine of the principal positions in the supreme commands are included in the group. Four of these are positions of supreme authority: the chief of the OKW, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force. Four other positions are those of the Chiefs of Staff to the four Commanders-in-Chief: the Chief of the Operations Staff of OKW, the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, the Chief of the General Staff of the Air Force, and the Chief of the Naval War Staff. The ninth position is that of Deputy Chief of the Operations Staff of OKW. The particular responsibility of the holder of this office was planning, and for this reason his office has been included in the group.
The group named in the Indictment comprises all individuals who held any of these nine staff positions between February 1938 and the end of the war in May 1945. February 1938 was selected as the opening date because it was in that month that the top organization of the German Armed Forces was reorganized and assumed substantially the form in which it persisted up to the end of the war. Twenty-two different individuals occupied these nine positions during that period, of whom eighteen are still living.