Background
Walther Warlimont was born in Osnabrück on 3 October 1894.
Walther Warlimont was born in Osnabrück on 3 October 1894.
A career officer of middle-class background, Warlimont had entered the army in 1913 as a cadet and served in World War I as a Lieutenant. During the Spanish Civil War he led the German volunteers for General Franco and acted as Plenipotentiary of the Reich War Ministry.
In 1937, while still a Colonel in the Reichswehr Office of the Armed Forces, Warlimont prepared a report calling for the reorganization of the Wehrmacht under one staff and one supreme commander. The plan, which clearly aimed at limiting the power of the top officer élite in favour of the Führer, provided the basis for Hitler’s establishment of the OKW (High Command of the Armed Forces). Warlimont was given the position of Jodi's deputy and Chief of the National Defence section in the OKW, which he occupied from 1939 to 1944, handling questions of recruiting and manpower. Promoted to Major General on 1 August 1940, Warlimont together with Jodi drew up the preliminary plans for Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the attack on the Soviet Union, in December 1940. A loyal Nazi, Warlimont was promoted to Lieutenant-General on 1 April 1942 and appointed head of the Wehrmacht Leadership Staff. On 1 April 1944 he was made General of Artillery.
After the war, Warlimont was arrested and condemned to life imprisonment as a war criminal on 27 October 1948. The sentence was commuted to eighteen years and he was released in 1957 from Landsberg prison.