The next officer after Keitel was Lieutenant General Alfred Jodl, who served as the OKW's Chief of Operations Staff. The OKW was led by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as Chief of the OKW with the rank of a Reich Minister, which essentially made him the second most powerful person in the armed forces' hierarchy after Hitler. Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces), to the detriment of the existing military structure. The OKW was directly subordinate to Hitler in his position as Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht ( transl. The decree dissolved the ministry and replaced it with the OKW. The OKW was established by executive decree on 4 February 1938, in the aftermath of the Blomberg-Fritsch affair, which had led to the dismissal of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and head of the Reich Ministry of War, Werner von Blomberg, as well as the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Werner von Fritsch.Īdolf Hitler, who had been waiting for an opportunity to gain personal control over the German military, quickly took advantage of the scandal, using the powers granted to him by the Enabling Act to do so. This 'divide and conquer' method helped put most military decisions in Hitler's own hands, which at times included even those affecting engagements at the battalion level, a practice which, due to bureaucratic delays and Hitler's worsening indecision as the war progressed, would eventually contribute to Germany's defeat. However, Adolf Hitler manipulated the system in order to prevent any one command from taking a dominant role in decision making. By 1942, the OKW had responsibility for all theatres except for the Eastern Front. During the war, the OKW acquired more and more operational powers. Rivalry with the different services' commands, mainly with the Army High Command (OKH), prevented the OKW from becoming a unified German General Staff in an effective chain of command, though it did help coordinate operations between the three services. Created in 1938, the OKW replaced the Reich Ministry of War and had oversight over the individual high commands of the country's armed forces: the army ( Heer), navy ( Kriegsmarine), and air force ( Luftwaffe). The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ( German: ⓘ abbreviated OKW German: ⓘ High Command of the Armed Forces) was the supreme military command and control office of Nazi Germany during World War II.

Commander in chief hat