In late 1939-early 1940 Halder was an opponent of Operation Weserübung, which he believed was doomed to failure, and made certain the OKH had nothing to do with the planning for Weserübung, which was entirely the work of OKW and the OKM.

OKW believed that before Barbarossa could be launched it would be necessary to eliminate the possibility of interference from Greece by militarily subduing this country, in an operation codenamed Operation Marita.

Ryti and Mannerheim did not know the internal balance between OKW and Wilhelmstraße and the stakes were too high to risk Ribbentrop's pressuring the Wehrmacht to withdraw its support from Finland.

These groups — the Nazi party and government leadership, the German General Staff and High Command ( OKW ); the Sturmabteilung ( SA ); the Schutzstaffel ( SS ), including the Sicherheitsdienst ( SD ); and the Gestapo — had an aggregate membership exceeding two million, making a large number of their members liable to trial if the organisations were convicted.

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ( OKW ), the overall command for all German military forces, ordered reductions in raw and steel materials for armament production.

* 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.

** Alfred Jodl, German Nazi Chief of the OKW ( b. 1890 )

The OKW directed the operations of the German Armed Forces during World War II.

In December 1939, following the success of German infiltration and sabotage operations in the Polish campaign, the German Office for Foreign and Counter-Intelligence ( OKW Amt Ausland / Abwehr ) formed the Brandenburger Regiment ( known officially as the 800th Special Purpose Training and Construction Company ).

Rundstedt urged OKW to halt the offensive, lest the " bulge " created by the German advance become a " second Stalingrad ", but Hitler was determined to press on.

Peter Hoffmann's biography of Hitler assassination conspirator Claus Graf von Stauffenberg (" Stauffenberg, A Family History ," 1992 ) indicates that after the failure of Stauffenberg's bomb plot in July 1944, Gisevius went into hiding until January 23, 1945, when he escaped to Switzerland by using a passport that had belonged to Carl Deichmann, a brother-in-law of German Count Helmuth James von Moltke, who was a specialist in international law serving in the legal branch of the Foreign Countries Group of the OKW ( Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, " Supreme Command of the Armed Forces ").

He called Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel Chief of German Armed Forces High Command ( OKW ) in Fürstenberg.

The OKW plan was for all German forces ( except the stationary fortress-troops ) in southern France to move north to link up with Army Group B to form a new defensive line from Sens through Dijon to the Swiss frontier.

On Hitler's insistence, the OKW developed a revised plan for the capture of Gibraltar, which might be implemented once the German invasion of the Soviet Union had been completed.

On 7 May, the day General Alfred Jodl, Chief-of-Staff of German Armed Forces High Command ( German acroynym OKW ), was negotiating the surrender of all German forces at SHAEF, the last the OKW had heard from Schörner was on 2 May.

During July 1941, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ( OKW, or German High Command ) displayed a lack of coherent strategy.

Walter Warlimont ( born 3 October 1894 in Osnabrück, Germany ; died 9 October 1976 in Kreuth near the Tegernsee ) was a German officer and war criminal known for his role as a deputy chief in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ( OKW ), Germany's Supreme Armed Forces Command during World War II.

At the start of 1941, the OKW decided to create the German XI Air Corps, which would include the 7th Flieger Division.

* General Erich Fellgiebel, head of communications German High Command ( OKW )

General Walter Warlimont — the Deputy Chief of Staff at OKW, the German armed forces headquarters — was also sent to von Kluge's headquarters to ensure these orders were complied with.

Bormann exploited the disaster at Stalingrad, and his daily access to Hitler, to persuade him to create a three-man junta representing the State, the Army, and the Party, represented respectively by Hans Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the OKW ( armed forces high command ), and Bormann, who controlled the Party and access to the Führer.

Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations in the OKW, remarked, after Raeder said Kriegsmarine could not meet the operational requirements of the Army, " then a landing in England must be regarded as a sheer act of desperation ".

While the Waffen-SS remained officially outside the armed forces ( Wehrmacht ) and under Himmler's authority, they were placed under the operational command of the Armed Forces High Command ( OKW ) or Army High Command ( OKH ), and were largely funded by the Wehrmacht.

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.

Soon after his appointment at OKW, he convinced Hitler to appoint his close friend, Walter von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

In theory, the OKW served as the military general staff for the Third Reich, coordinating the efforts of the Army, Navy, and Air Force ( Heer, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe ).

This created a situation such that by 1942 the OKW held the de facto command of Western forces while the Army High Command ( Oberkommando des Heeres ) ( OKH ) exercised de facto command of the Eastern Front.

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

Given the precarious situation, Hitler moved away from his " no step backward " agenda and agreed to an OKW plan for the complete withdrawal of Army Group G and B.

The order for the operation was issued by Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ( OKW ; Supreme Command of the Armed Forces ) to Oberkommando des Heeres ( OKH ; Army High Command ) and Oberkommando der Luftwaffe ( OKL ; Air Force High Command ) on 6 February 1941.

While the need for a joint headquarters to coordinate the work of all the services was desirable in theory, for example to determine industrial and manpower priorities and avoid duplication of effort, OKW was increasingly used as an alternate Army planning staff by Hitler.

The paragraph in which General Müller called for Army commanders to prevent " excesses " was removed on the request of the OKW.

This weakened the traditional Army High Command ( Oberkommando des Heeres, or OKH ) which was now subordinated to the OKW.

* Zossen-The underground bunker complex that was headquarters for both the German Wehrmacht ( OKW ) and ( Heer ) Army High Command ( OKH ) located approximately 20 miles west of Berlin in Zossen, Germany.

The Waffen-SS was a separate organization, although SS combat units were usually placed under the operational control of Army High Command ( OKH ) or Wehrmacht High Command ( OKW ).

* Zossen — The underground bunker complex that was headquarters for both the Wehrmacht ( OKW ) and ( Heer ) Army High Command ( OKH ) located approximately 20 miles west of Berlin in Zossen, Germany.

The OKW or Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ( High Command of the Armed Forces ) reported that the SS-VT had unnecessarily exposed themselves to risks and acted recklessly, incurring heavier losses than Army troops.

In an attempt to coax Hitler out of his rage, the Chief of Staff of the OKW, General Alfred Jodl, speculated that the Twelfth Army which was facing the Americans could move to Berlin because the Americans already on the Elbe river were unlikely to move further east.

It was signed by representatives of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ( OKW ) and the Allied Expeditionary Force together with the Soviet High Command, French representative signing as witness on 7 May, and signed again by representatives of the three armed services of the OKW and the Allied Expeditionary Force together with the Supreme High Command of the Red Army, French and US representatives signing as witnesses ( see: Allies of World War II ) on 8 May 1945.

After 1939, he worked at the German Army Headquarters ( OKW ), in the Abwehr department.

In April 1945, as the Red Army approached the Reich's capital, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, established his headquarters at a former Wehrmacht officer's mess hall in Karlshorst, where on May 9, the unconditional surrender of the German forces was presented to Zhukov by Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff as the representative of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as Chief of Staff of OKW, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine.

A parallel attack by the Red Army against the new 6th Army on the Mius river south of Kharkov necessitated the withdrawal of reserve forces held to exploit any success on the southern shoulder of Kursk, and the OKW also had to draw on some German troops from the Eastern Front to bolster the Mediterranean theater following the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily on the night of 9 – 10 July 1943.