Keitel later testified at the Nuremberg Trials that of all the illegal orders he'd carried out, the Night and Fog Decree was " the worst of all.

He also testified against Keitel and Kaltenbrunner.

Keitel then slammed his fist onto the table, and, although he knew the exact opposite was true, said " Mein Führer, the Reichsmarschall is correct.

Charlie ( Harvey Keitel ) is a young Italian-American man who is trying to move up in the local New York Mafia but is hampered by his feeling of responsibility towards his reckless friend, Johnny Boy ( Robert De Niro ), a small-time gambler who owes money to many loan sharks.

Keitel then sat on the Army " Court of honour " that handed over many officers who were involved, including Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, to Roland Freisler's notorious People's Court.

Unlike many American male actors, Keitel has appeared nude in several films, including full frontal nudity in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano.

When Keitel explained the political importance of the offensive Guderian remarked " How many people do you think even know where Kursk is?

Keitel accepted Hitler's directive for Operation Citadel in 1943, despite strong opposition from several field officers who argued that neither the troops nor the new tanks on which Hitler staked his hopes for victory were ready.

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

The OKW was almost always represented at daily situation conferences ( Lagevorträge ) by Jodl, Keitel, and the officer serving as Hitler's adjutant.

After hearing reports of and witnessing massacres in Poland, Canaris on 12 September 1939 travelled to Hitler's headquarters train, at the time in Upper Silesia, to register his objection to the atrocities ; prior to reaching Hitler he encountered General Wilhelm Keitel whom he informed: " I have information that mass executions are being planned in Poland, and that members of the Polish nobility and the Roman Catholic bishops and priests have been singled out for extermination.

On 12 December, Keitel issued a directive which explained Hitler's orders:

This was followed by a long lunch at 2 pm, where Hitler would invariably sit in the same place, as he did at every meal, between Jodl and Otto Dietrich, the Nazi Press Chief, while opposite him sat Keitel, Hitler's secretary, Martin Bormann and General Karl Heinrich Bodenschatz, Goering's adjutant.

When reports came that Hitler had decided to die rather than be captured, the chiefs of the OKW – Marshall Keitel and Marshall Jodl – decided to wait for further orders from Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring who, with Hitler's demise, was the highest ranking officer in Nazi Germany.

In 1945 Marshall was in Flensburg and lodged on Hitler's yacht at the time that Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel were being interrogated.

During the entire period of the war, the OKW was led by Keitel, who reported directly to Hitler, from whom most operational orders actually originated as Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht ( Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces ).

One common line of defense of the accused was the Plea of Superior Orders: they stated that they were only following orders from higher up, in particular from Hitler and Field Marshal Keitel.

Nineteen of the 22 were convicted, and twelve of them ( Bormann absentia, Frank, Frick, Göring, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, Streicher ), were given the death penalty ; the other three ( Funk, Hess, Raeder ) got a life term.

As part of the reorganization of the military command structure following the Blomberg – Fritsch Affair in early 1938, it was declared that the service chiefs, namely OKW chief Wilhelm Keitel, Army commander Walter von Brauchitsch, Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring and Raeder were to have the same status as Cabinet ministers and as such, they all started to receive publicly the same pay as a Cabinet member and privately payments from Konto 5 slush fund.

The Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wanted Raeder and the other high officials of the " grocery ring " like Wilhelm Keitel, Hermann Göring and Hans Lammers who used their positions to ignore rationing when grocery shopping to be punished in order to let the German people know that the elite were suffering like everyone else, but Hitler claimed if the German people learned of the luxurious lifestyles of the elite in the middle of a war that the effect would be fatal to morale.

His father's ashes ( supposedly scattered after being hanged ) were purchased from the Americans and are buried with him and his uncle Bodewin Keitel at the family plot in Bad Gandersheim.

Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl however were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.

The other senior members were Keitel and Generals Guderian, Walther Schroth and Karl-Wilhelm Specht.

The only Army officers individually indicted were the OKW chiefs Keitel and Jodl, but they had never been field commanders.

Keitel and Jodl were to hang, but the Army high command as a whole was acquitted.

Two months later Armed Forces High Command Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel expanded it to include all persons in occupied countries who had been taken into custody and were still alive eight days later.

Other of Newman's suggestions were Jane Horrocks as Katie Reed, Helena Bonham Carter as Penelope Churchward, Colin Firth as Arthur Holmwood, Christopher Lee as Mycroft Holmes, Richard E. Grant as John Seward, and Harvey Keitel as Count Dracula.

Following their executions on October 16, 1946, the ashes of the Nazi war criminals Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Alfred Rosenberg, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Frick, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Fritz Sauckel and Julius Streicher were scattered in the Isar, as were those of Hermann Göring who had committed suicide the previous night.

When he reported to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, he gave his personal opinion that even if Germany were able, with the cooperation of Spain, to seize Gibraltar, the British would land in Morocco and French West Africa.

Such behavior was officially sanctioned and two heads of the army, Generals Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl, were prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials.

The Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner ( representing Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht ) met Heydrich and agreed to the activation, commitment, command, and jurisdiction of Security Police and SD units in the Wehrmachts table of operations and equipment ( TOE ): in the rear operational areas, the Einsatzgruppen were to function in administrative sub-ordination to the field armies in order to effect the tasks assigned them by Heydrich.

Among the acting personalities who appeared in the series were Al Pacino, Jill Clayburgh, Jane Elliot, Ralph Waite, Harvey Keitel, James Earl Jones, Charles Durning, Gretchen Corbett, and Roy Scheider.

Both Ferrara and Keitel were nominated for Spirit Awards and, despite its controversial content, the film was lauded by critics.

Keitel was also responsible for convincing De Niro to play Johnny Boy.

* 1945 – World War II: Ratification in Berlin-Karlshorst of the German unconditional surrender of May 8 in Rheims, France, with the signatures of Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Soviet Union, and for the Western Headquarters Sir Arthur Tedder, British Air Marshal and Eisenhower's deputy, and for the German side of Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff as the representative of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as the Chief of Staff of OKW, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine.

Keitel also served as a divisional general staff officer, and later taught at the Hanover Cavalry School for two years.

Keitel, signing the ratified surrender terms for the German Army in Berlin, 8 / 9 May 1945

Unusually for a non-field commander, Keitel was awarded the Knight's Cross for arranging the armistice with France.

In April and May 1945, during the Battle of Berlin, Keitel called for counterattacks to drive back the Soviet forces and relieve Berlin.

The length for the rope used for the execution was calculated in such a way that Keitel did not die quickly from a broken neck, but " agonizingly from slow strangulation, struggling for 24 minutes at the end of the rope before expiring.

Wilhelm Keitel wrote his memoirs in the six weeks before he was hanged ; they have been published later in few editions, for example " The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel: Chief of the German High Command, 1938 – 1945 " edited by Walter Görlitz, ISBN 978-0-8154-1072-0.

During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a starring role as " J. R .", in Scorsese's first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door ( 1967 ).

In 2002, at the Moscow International Film Festival, Keitel was honored with the Stanislavsky Award for the outstanding achievement in the career of acting and devotion to the principles of Stanislavsky's school.

Moreover, Keitel has worked for other acclaimed directors such as: Theodoros Angelopoulos, Dario Argento, Luc Besson, Fernando Colomo, Brian De Palma, Stanley Donen, Philip Kaufman, Spike Lee, Barry Levinson, Jack Nicholson, Robert Rodriguez, George A. Romero, Paul Schrader, Ettore Scola, Luis Sepúlveda and Bertrand Tavernier ; and for TV productions with Stephen Frears, Clint Eastwood, and Joel Schumacher.

Detective Hal Slocumb ( Keitel ) discovers the event that Louise experienced in Texas, and during a couple of brief phone conversations, expresses sympathy for her predicament and pledges to protect her.

It was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role ( Warren Beatty ), Best Actor in a Supporting Role ( Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley ), Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Music, Original Score, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.