Keitel's rise to the Wehrmacht high command began with his appointment as the head of the Armed Forces Office at the Reich Ministry of War in 1935.

[6] After the war, Keitel was retained in the newly created Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic and played a part in organizing the paramilitary Freikorps units on the Polish border.

In 1924, Keitel was transferred to the Ministry of the Reichswehr in Berlin, serving with the Truppenamt ('Troop Office'), the post-Versailles disguised German General Staff.

[5] Now a lieutenant-colonel, Keitel was again assigned to the war ministry in 1929 and was soon promoted to Head of the Organizational Department ("T-2"), a post he held until Adolf Hitler took power in 1933.

Playing a vital role in the German rearmament, he traveled at least once to the Soviet Union to inspect secret Reichswehr training camps.

[11] On 21 January 1938, Keitel received evidence revealing that the wife of his superior, War Minister Werner von Blomberg, was a former prostitute.

[12] Upon reviewing this information, Keitel suggested that the dossier be forwarded to Hitler's deputy, Hermann Göring, who used it to bring about Blomberg's resignation.

[19][20] Hermann Göring's description of Keitel as having "a sergeant's mind inside a field marshal's body" was a feeling often expressed by his peers.

[21] He was known by his peers as a "blindingly loyal toady" of Hitler, nicknamed "Nickgeselle", after a popular metal toy nodding donkey, the "Nickesel".

[27] On 31 July 1940, Hitler held a major conference that included Keitel, Halder, Alfred Jodl, Erich Raeder, Brauchitsch, and Hans Jeschonnek which further discussed the invasion.

[30] In January 1943, just before the final surrender at Stalingrad, Hitler agreed to the creation of a three-man committee with representatives of the State, the Armed Forces High Command, and the Party in an attempt to centralize control of the war economy and over the home front.

In addition, it ran up against resistance from cabinet ministers, who headed deeply entrenched spheres of influence and, seeing it as a threat to their power, worked together to undermine it.

After Hitler's suicide on 30 April, Keitel stayed on as a member of the short-lived Flensburg Government under Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.

Upon arriving in Flensburg, Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production, said that Keitel grovelled to Dönitz in the same way as he had done to Hitler.

[34] The criminal nature of the invasion was now obvious; local commanders continued to express shock and protest over the events they were witnessing.

[37] In the summer and autumn of 1941, German military lawyers unsuccessfully argued that Soviet prisoners of war should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

[39] Also in September, Keitel issued an order to all commanders, not just those in the occupied Soviet Union, instructing them to use "unusual severity" to stamp out resistance.

[40] In December 1941, Hitler instructed the OKW to subject, with the exception of Denmark, Western Europe (which was under military occupation) to the Night and Fog Decree.

[41] Signed by Keitel,[42] the decree made it possible for foreign nationals to be transferred to Germany for trial by special courts, or simply handed to the Gestapo for deportation to concentration camps.

At the same time, Keitel increased pressure on Otto von Stülpnagel, the military commander in France, for a more ruthless reprisal policy in the country.

[41] In October 1942, Keitel signed the Commando Order that authorized the killing of enemy special operations troops even when captured in uniform.

Keitel formally endorsed the state of affairs in September, reiterating for the armed forces that "evacuation of the Jews must be carried out thoroughly and its consequences endured, despite any trouble it may cause over the next three or four months".

[46] His defence relied almost entirely on the argument he was merely following orders in conformity to "the leader principle" (Führerprinzip) and his personal oath of loyalty to Hitler.

In its judgment against him, the IMT wrote, "Superior orders, even to a soldier, cannot be considered in mitigation where crimes as shocking and extensive have been committed consciously, ruthlessly and without military excuse or justification."

[53] Many of the executed Nazis fell from the gallows with insufficient force to snap their necks, resulting in convulsions that in Keitel's case lasted 24 minutes.

[51] The corpses of Keitel and the other nine executed men were, like Hermann Göring's, cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar.