Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Keitel (1882-1946) was a Field Marshal in the German nilitary forces of World War II, who headed the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), essentially the military secretariat for Adolf Hitler rather than a true combined services headquarters. Despite his high rank, he was often described as a clerk in a marshal's uniform; he was nicknamed "Lakeitel", or "Lackey". The Americans at Nuremberg felt he "would make a fine first sergeant whose life was governed by soldierly obedience." [1]
At the four-power Nuremberg tribunal, after hearing the Auschwitz testimony of Rudolf Hoess, he told psychologist G.M. Gilbert, "But you see, I brought it very clearly that as far as the generals were concerned, if we had known what criminal acts Hitler was planning and executing as we know now, we would have refused to go along."[2] Keitel was in no way intellectually curious, as opposed to his operations officer, Alfred Jodl, and it is just plausible he did not know the details of genocide. Nevertheless, his signature is on violations of the military laws of war, such as the Commando Order.On 16 December 1942, he issued a general order stating "This war no longer has anything to do with knightly conduct or with the agreements of the Geneva Convention.[3]