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Wilhelm Keitel
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Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel was a German field marshal. As head of the High Command of the Armed Forces, 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 major war criminal.
BiographyEarly life and careerKeitel was born in Helmscherode, 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.
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Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel was a German field marshal. As head of the High Command of the Armed Forces, 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 major war criminal.
BiographyEarly life and careerKeitel was born in Helmscherode, 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. During World War I Keitel served on the Western front with the Field Artillery Regiment No. 46. In September 1914, during the fighting in Flanders, he was seriously wounded in his right forearm by a shell fragment.
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 organizing Freikorps frontier guard units on the Polish border. Keitel also served as a divisional general staff officer, and later taught at the Hanover Cavalry School for two years.
In late 1924, Keitel was transferred to the Ministry of Defence (Reichswehrministerium), serving with the Troop Office, the post-Versailles disguised General Staff. He was soon promoted to the head of the organizational department, a post he retained after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. In 1935, based on a recommendation by Werner von Fritsch, 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.
OKW and World War IIIn 1937, Keitel received a promotion to General and, in the following year, he assumed the position of Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) in the wake of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, and the replacement of the Ministry of War (Reichskriegsministerium) with the OKW.
For a brief period in October 1938, Keitel was the Military Governor of the Sudetenland, but in February 1938 Keitel again became Commander-in-Chief of the OKW, the post he retained until surrender in 1945. Shortly following his appointment he convinced Hitler to appoint his close friend, Heinrich von Brauchitsch, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
In 1940, following the conclusion of the French campaign, he was promoted to Field Marshal along with a number of Adolf Hitler's other generals. Unusually for a non-field commander, Keitel was awarded the Knight's Cross, for having arranged the armistice with France.
During World War II, Keitel was one of the primary planners of the Wehrmacht campaigns and operations on the western and the eastern fronts, but proved to be weak and cautious: he advised Hitler against invading France and opposed Operation Barbarossa. Both times he backed down in the face of Hitler and tendered his resignation: the Führer refused to accept it.
After participation in the planning and execution of the Operation Barbarossa, in 1942 he attempted to convince Hitler in defence of the actions of Field Marshal Wilhelm List, whose army was struggling to extricate themselves from inconclusive and bloody fighting in the Battle of the Caucasus. Keitel's defence of List was his last act of defiance to Hitler, for after that he never again challenged one of Hitler's orders, and was referred to by his colleagues as "Lakaitel" ("Lackey-tel" or "Little Lackey") and as the "nodding donkey".
Keitel signed numerous orders of dubious legality under the laws of war, the most infamous being the notorious Commissar Order, and unquestionably allowed Heinrich Himmler a free hand with his racial controls and ensuing terror in captured Soviet Union territory. Another was the order to have any of the French pilots fighting for the Normandie-Niemen fighter regiment in the USSR executed instead of their being treated as prisoners of war.
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 reliance for victory were ready.
Keitel was also instrumental in foiling the attempted coup of the July 20 plot in 1944, which attempted to assassinate Hitler. Keitel then sat on the following Army Court of Honour that handed many officers, including Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, over to Roland Freisler's notorious People's Court.
In April and May 1945, during the Battle for Berlin, Keitel urged various German generals to attack the Soviet forces and relieve Berlin. But, so late in the war, none of the generals urged by Keitel commanded forces that were capable of saving the German capital: not Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula, not Felix Steiner's Army Detachment Steiner, not Walther Wenck's 12th Army, nor Theodor Busse's 9th Army.
After the suicide deaths of German dictator Adolf Hitler on 30 April and Joseph Goebbels on 1 May, Keitel became a member of the short-lived Flensburg government controlled by German President (Reichspräsident) Karl Dönitz.
On May 8, 1945, Dönitz authorized Keitel to sign the second instrument of unconditional surrender in Berlin. On the previous day, Alfred Jodl had signed an instrument of unconditional surrender in Rheims, France.
Nazi connectionsAs a military officer, Keitel was prohibited by law from joining the NSDAP. 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. 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 the execution Keitel published Mein Leben: Pflichterfullung bis zum Untergang: Hitlers 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 Keitel by Walter Görlitz from a translation by David Irving as the author in 1965. Another work by Keitel later published in English was //Questionnaire on the Ardennes offensive//
Trial and executionFour days after the surrender, Keitel was arrested. 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.
The IMT rejected Keitel's defence that he was following orders in conformity to "the leadership principle" (Führerprinzip) and found him guilty on all charges. To underscore the criminal rather than military nature of Keitel's acts, the Allies denied his request to be shot by firing squad. Instead, he was executed by hanging. Keitel's last words were:
"Ich rufe den Allmächtigen an, er möge sich des deutschen Volkes erbarmen. Über zwei Millionen deutsche Soldaten sind vor mir für ihr Vaterland in den Tod gegangen. Ich folge meinen Söhnen nach. Alles für Deutschland!",
which translates roughly to:
"I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than two million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow now my sons—all for Germany (Alles für Deutschland)."
LegacyWhen moving to the United States and Australia after World War II, some of Keitel's family changed their last name to Keetle so as to not be associated with his crimes. Many of his descendants still go by this last name.
Portrayal in popular cultureWilhelm Keitel has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theater productions;
See also
Bibliography- BARBAROSSA. By Alan Clark. Perennial, 2002. ISBN: 0-688-04268-6
- Hitler and Russia. By Trumbull Higgins. The Macmillan Company, 1966.
- The World War II. Desk Reference. Eisenhower Center director Douglas Brinkley. Editor Mickael E. Haskey. Grand Central Press, 2004.
- The story of World War II. By Donald L. Miller. Simon & Schuster, 2006. ISBN: 10: 0-74322718-2.
- Scourched earth. By Paul Carell. Schiffer Military History, 1994. ISBN: 0-88740-598-3
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