Thirdly, the Führer, as leader of the Party, had the Party Chancellery of which the Deputy of the Führer, Rudolf Hess, was in charge at that time and occupied a high position within that organization. After his leaving, Bormann did not become Deputy of the Führer but Chief of the Party Chancellery.
Fourthly, there was the Private Chancellery of the Führer, with a Reichsleiter as Chief.
For military matters, as his military cabinet or military staff—or as it used to be known in former years, the “Maison Militaire”—the High Command of the Armed Forces was formed.
This reorganization was necessary, because after the retirement of Blomberg as Minister of War, no new Minister of War had been appointed, and the Führer, since as head of State he was in any case Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, was now determined not only formally to be this Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, but to execute that function in fact. In consequence, he now needed a staff organization. This was to be the High Command of the Armed Forces, and Keitel became Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces.
In Germany the word “chief” in the military sense has a different meaning from “commander-in-chief.” The responsibility and right to issue orders rest with the commander or the commander-in-chief. The assistant in staff administration, in the working out, administering, and transmitting of orders, and in maintaining liaison, is the actual chief of the respective staff. Thus, the former Colonel General Keitel, or General Keitel, was Chief of Staff of the military staff of the Commander-in-Chief, called the High Command of the Armed Forces. On the one hand, he had charge of the entire machinery of the staff of the Commander-in-Chief, as far as military organizational and technical matters, and military direction, that is to say, strategy, were concerned, to the extent that the Führer wanted to have his strategic orders administered from a central point. For this there was established in the High Command as a purely general staff, strategic department, the Supreme General Staff.
DR. NELTE: If I understand you correctly, OKW is translated as High Command of the Armed Forces, but this apparently has been used in different ways, at one time as the Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces—as, for example, when Keitel was called the Chief of the OKW—and at another time, as the OKW Office of the High Command of the Armed Forces, in other words, Hitler. Is that right?
GÖRING: That is correct as such, but not very clear. The High Command of the Armed Forces is the staff of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, in the same way that I, as Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force had my General Staff on one hand, and my chief adjutant’s office on the other—these formed the staff with which I worked. The High Command constituted for the Führer, as Supreme Commander a similar organization. The chief of my General Staff likewise could give no direct orders to the commanders of the air fleets, commanding generals of air corps or divisions. The orders could only be issued “By command of the Commander-in-Chief,” signed “I.A.,” that is to say, “Im Auftrag (by order).”
The chief of a staff, therefore, even the Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces, had no command function except to the members of his immediate office and the few administrative organizations connected with that staff. An order, command, or directive from the High Command of the Armed Forces, for instance, to me as Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, was only possible when the instruction began in the following form: “The Führer has ordered . . .” or, “By command of the Führer, I hereby inform you . . .”
May I express myself quite emphatically: At one time I told Colonel General Keitel, “I am bound only by orders of the Führer. Only orders in the original and signed by Adolf Hitler are presented to me personally. Instructions, directives or orders which start ‘By command of the Führer,’ or ‘By order of the Führer’ go to my chief of staff who gives me an oral report indicating the most important points. Whether then—to put it bluntly—they are signed, ‘By command of the Führer: Keitel, Colonel General,’ or ‘Meier, Stabsgefreiter’, makes no difference to me. But if they constitute a direct command from you, an order, which you want to give me, then save yourself time and paper because both are meaningless to me. I am Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, and immediately and exclusively subordinate to the Führer.”
DR. NELTE: Do you know whether Hitler, on the one hand, and the commanders-in-chief of the branches of the Armed Forces, on the other, observed these command functions described by you, or whether in other branches of the Armed Forces the actual procedure was, perhaps, different?