KEITEL: In the ministerial sector of the Reich Government, there was the method of the signatures of the Führer and Reich Chancellor and the Ministers immediately involved, and, finally of the Chief of the Reich Chancellery. This did not hold good for the military sector, for according to the traditions of the German Army and the Wehrmacht the signatures were given by the principal experts who had worked on the matter, by the Chief of Staff, or by whoever had given or at least drafted the order, and an initial was added on the margin.
GEN. RUDENKO: Yesterday you said that you signed such decrees together with other Ministers of the Reich.
KEITEL: Yes, yesterday I mentioned individual decrees and also gave the reasons why I signed them, and that in so doing I was not Reich Minister and did not receive the function of a minister in office.
GEN. RUDENKO: What organization exercised the function of the War Ministry from February 1938 on?
KEITEL: Until the last days of January, or the first days of February, it was the former Reich Minister for War, Von Blomberg. Beginning with 4 February there was neither a Minister for War nor a War Ministry.
GEN. RUDENKO: That is precisely why I asked you what government organization had replaced the War Ministry and exercised its function, since I knew that this Ministry did not exist.
KEITEL: I, myself, with the Wehrmachtsamt, the former Staff of the War Ministry, whose chief I was, carried on the work and distributed it, as I described in detail yesterday, that is, I transferred all command functions to the commanders-in-chief of the branches of the Wehrmacht. But this was not an order of mine but an order of Hitler’s.
GEN. RUDENKO: From the diagram you have submitted to the Tribunal it would appear that the OKW was the central, coordinating, and supreme military authority of the Reich and that it was directly under Hitler’s control. Would this conclusion be correct?
KEITEL: Yes, that was the military staff of Hitler.
GEN. RUDENKO: Who, in the OKW, directly supervised the drafting of military and strategic plans? I am referring specifically to the plans for the attack on Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, Holland, France, Norway, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.