Branch: Heer
Born: 22 September 1882 in Helmscherode, Brunswick,
German Empire.
Died: 16 October 1946 in Nuremberg, Allied-occupied
Germany.
Ranks:
Generalfeldmarschall 19 July
1940
Generaloberst 1 November 1938
General der Artillerie 1 August
1937
Generalleutnant 1 January
1936
Generalmajor 1 April 1934
Oberst 1 October 1931
Oberstleutnant 1 February
1929
Major 1 June 1923
Hauptmann 8 August 1914
Oberleutnant 18 August 1910
Leutnant 18 August 1902
Fähnrich 14 October 1901
Decorations:
Knights Cross
Wound Badge
Prussian Iron Cross, 1st Class (1914) with 1939 Bar
Prussian Iron Cross, 2nd Class (1914) with 1939 Bar
Prussian Royal Hohenzollern House Order, Knight's Cross with
Swords
Brunswick War Merit Cross, 1st Class
Brunswick War Merit Cross, 2nd Class with Bewährung (Reliability)
Clasp
Saxe-Ernestine Ducal House Order, Knight 2nd Class with Swords
Hesse General Honor Decoration, for Bravery
Oldenburg Friedrich August Cross, 1st Class
Oldenburg Friedrich August Cross, 2nd Class with Vor Dem Feinde
(In the Face of the Enemy) Clasp
Hamburg Hanseatic Cross
Bremen Hanseatic Cross
Cross of Honor for Combatants 1914-1918
Brunswick Ducal Order of Henry the Lion, 4th Class
Armed Forces Long Service Award, 1st Class (25-year Service
Cross)
Armed Forces Long Service Award, 3rd Class (12-year Service
Medal)
Austrian Military Merit Cross, 3rd Class with War Decoration
Commemorative Medal of 13 March 1938
Commemorative Medal of 1 October 1938 with Castle Prague Bar
Commemorative Medal for the Return of the Memel District
Commands:
Other: Personnel
Articles:
Wilhelm Bodewin Gustav Wilhelm Keitel Was born on 22 September
1882 in Helmscherode, Brunswick, German Empire and became
a German field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall). As head of
the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme Command of the Armed
Forces) and de facto war minister under
Adolf
Hitler, he was one of Germany's most senior military leaders
during World War II. At the Allied court at Nuremberg he was
tried, sentenced to death and hanged as a war criminal.
Wilhelm Keitel was born in Bad Gandersheim, Duchy of Brunswick,
German Empire, the son of Carl Keitel, a middle class landowner
and his wife Apollonia Vissering. After completing his education
in Göttingen, he embarked on a military career in 1901,
becoming a Fahnenjunker (Cadet Officer), joining the 6th Lower-Saxon
Field Artillery Regiment. He married Lisa Fontaine, a wealthy
landowner's daughter, in 1909. Together they had six children,
one of whom died in infancy. His eldest son, Karl-Heinz Keitel
went on to serve as a divisional commander in the Waffen-SS.
During World War I Wilhelm Keitel served on the Western Front
with the Field Artillery Regiment No. 46. In September 1914,
during the fighting in Flanders, he was severely wounded in
his right forearm by a shell fragment.
Wilhelm Keitel recovered, and thereafter was posted to the
German General Staff in early 1915. After World War I ended,
he stayed in the newly created Reichswehr, and played a part
in organising Freikorps frontier guard units on the Polish
border. Wilhelm Keitel also served as a divisional general
staff officer, and later taught at the Hanover Cavalry School
for two years.
In late 1924, Wilhelm Keitel was transferred to the Ministry
of Defence (Reichswehrministerium), serving with the Troop
Office (Truppenamt), the post-Versailles disguised General
Staff. He was soon promoted to the head of the organisational
department, a post he retained after the Nazi seizure of power
in 1933. He suffered a heart attack and double pneumonia in
the autumn of 1932. In 1935, based on a recommendation by
Werner
von Fritsch, Wilhelm Keitel was promoted to Lieutenant-General
and appointed as the departmental head of the Wehrmachtsamt
(Armed Forces Office) which had the responsibility over all
three branches of the armed forces
In 1937, Wilhelm Keitel received a promotion to General. In
the following year, after the
Werner
von Blomberg-
Werner
von Fritsch Affair, the Ministry of War (Reichskriegsministerium)
was replaced by the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando
der Wehrmacht or OKW), and Wilhelm Keitel was appointed as
its chief. This effectively made Wilhelm Keitel Germany's
war minister, and accordingly he was appointed to the Cabinet.
Soon after his appointment at OKW, he convinced
Adolf
Hitler to appoint his close friend,
Walter
von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
For a brief period in October 1938, Wilhelm Keitel was Military
Governor of the Sudetenland. In February 1939 Wilhelm Keitel
again became Chief of OKW. Wilhelm Keitel remained the Chief
of OKW until the end of the war.
During World War II, Wilhelm Keitel was one of the primary
planners of the Wehrmacht campaigns and operations on the
western and the eastern fronts. He advised
Adolf
Hitler against invading France and opposed Operation Barbarossa.
Both times he backed down in the face of
Adolf
Hitler and tendered his resignation, which
Adolf
Hitler refused to accept.
In 1940, after the French campaign, he was promoted to Field
Marshal along with several other generals. Unusual for a non-field
commander, Wilhelm Keitel was awarded the Knight's Cross for
arranging the armistice with France.
He had advised
Adolf
Hitler not to attack Russia in 1941 as he was convinced
that Operation Barbarossa would be a failure. The overwhelming
success of Barbarossa in its initial phase did a great deal
to undermine Wilhelm Keitel's authority in the face of
Adolf
Hitler.
In 1942, he confronted
Adolf
Hitler in defence of Field Marshal
Wilhelm
von List, whose Heeresgruppe A (Army Group A) was stalled
in the Battle of the Caucasus.
Adolf
Hitler spurned Wilhelm Keitel's pleading and fired
Wilhelm
von List. Wilhelm Keitel's defence of
Wilhelm
von List was his last act of defiance to
Adolf
Hitler he never again challenged one of
Adolf
Hitler's orders. For example, during a strategy briefing
late in the war, Luftwaffe intelligence discovered vast numbers
of Soviet fighter aircraft ready to be deployed to the front.
Reichsmarschall
Hermann
Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, told
Adolf Hitler
that they were simply dummies the Red Air Force could not
possibly have that many aircraft. Wilhelm Keitel then slammed
his fist onto the table, and, although he knew the exact opposite
was true, said Mein Führer, the Reichsmarschall is correct.
His sycophancy was well known in the army, and he acquired
the nickname 'La Wilhelm Keitel', a pun on his name (in German,
the word 'Lakai' means 'lackey').
Wilhelm Keitel unquestionably allowed
Heinrich
Himmler a free hand with his racial controls and ensuing
terror in occupied Eastern European territory. He also signed
numerous orders of dubious legality under the laws of war.
The most infamous were the Commissar Order (which stipulated
that Soviet political commissars were to be shot on sight)
and the Night and Fog Decree (which called for the forced
disappearance of resistance fighters and other political prisoners
in Germany's occupied territories). Another was the order
that French pilots of the Normandie-Niemen squadron be executed
rather than be made prisoners of war.
Wilhelm Keitel accepted
Adolf
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
Adolf
Hitler staked his hopes for victory were ready.
Nevertheless, rationalisations and copious conjectures will
continue to muddy or inspire historical perspectives, even
the mere suggestion, that the decisive and pivotal event of
WWII was the military defeat of the Third Reich, at the peak
?of its most powerful assembly of military might, by the opposing
Red Army forces during an intense ?summer(not winter) 8 week
period, ending late in August 1943, contesting the territory
along a ??400 km front line, from Bryansk, Orel, Kursk, Belgorod
down to Kharkov. The primary records of ?Field Marshal W.
Wilhelm Keitel like other commanders from this period, need
scrutiny by critically aware ?readers to avoid simplistic
expert accounts, such as passing off the Third Reich's military
defeat ?on the battle field of summer 1943, as merely
Adolf
Hitler's fault.?
Wilhelm Keitel played an important role in foiling the July
20 plot in 1944. Wilhelm 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.
In April and May 1945, during the Battle of Berlin, Wilhelm
Keitel called for counterattacks to drive back the Soviet
forces and relieve Berlin. However, there were insufficient
German forces to carry out such attacks.
After
Adolf
Hitler's suicide on 30 April, Wilhelm Keitel stayed on
as a member of the short-lived Flensburg government under
Grand Admiral
Karl
Dönitz.
On 8 May 1945, Dönitz authorised Wilhelm Keitel to sign
an unconditional surrender in Berlin. Although Germany had
surrendered to the Allies a day earlier, Stalin had insisted
on a second surrender ceremony in Berlin.
As a military officer, Wilhelm Keitel was prohibited by law
from joining the NSDAP (National Socialist Party). However,
after the Wehrmacht's rapid early successes on the Russian
Front, he was given a Golden (Honorary) NSDAP membership badge
by
Adolf Hitler,
who was seeking to link military successes to political successes.
In 1944, German laws were changed and military officers were
encouraged to seek NSDAP membership. Wilhelm Keitel claimed
he did so as a formality at the Nuremberg Trials, but never
received formal party membership. He was one of only two people
to receive honorary party membership status.
Before his execution, Wilhelm Keitel published Mein Leben:
Pflichterfüllung bis zum Untergang:
Adolf
Hitler's Feldmarschall und Chef des Oberkommandos der
Wehrmacht in Selbstzeugnissen, otherwise known in English
as In the Service of the Reich, and was later re-edited as
The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel by Walter Görlitz
from a translation by David Irving as the author in 1965.
Another work by Wilhelm Keitel later published in English
was Questionnaire on the Ardennes offensive
Four days after the surrender, Wilhelm Keitel was arrested
along with the rest of the Flensburg government. He soon faced
the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which charged him
with a number of offences:
Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace
Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression
War crimes and,
Crimes against humanity.
Wilhelm Keitel testified that he knew many of
Adolf
Hitler's orders were illegal (for instance, he described
the Night and Fog Decree as the worst of all the orders he'd
been given) but claimed he was merely following orders in
conformity to the leader principle (Führerprinzip). The
IMT rejected this defence and convicted him on all charges.
Because of his signature on orders which called for soldiers
and political prisoners to be killed or disappeared, he was
sentenced to death. To underscore the criminal rather than
military nature of Wilhelm Keitel's acts, the Allies denied
his request to be shot by firing squad. Instead, he was executed
by hanging. Wilhelm Keitel's last words were:
I call upon the Almighty to have mercy on the German people.
More than two million German soldiers went to their deaths
for the fatherland before me. I now follow my sons. Everything
for Germany!
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