Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel

[Klaus]

200px-Keitel_01.jpg
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel
(September 22, 1882 – October 16, 1946)


Early life and career

The son of Carl Keitel, a middle-class landowner, he was born in Helmscherode, Brunswick, Germany. 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 in 1909. 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.
He 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, he was transferred to the Reich Defence Ministry (Reichswehrministerium), serving with the Troop Office (Truppenamt), 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 he became chief of the newly-created Wehrmachtsamt (Armed Forces Office).

OKW and World War II

Keitel, signing the ratified surrender terms for the German Army in Berlin, 8/9 May 1945
In 1937, Keitel received a promotion to General, and in the following year, in the wake of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair and the replacement of the Reichskriegsministerium (Reich War Ministry) with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, a.k.a. OKW (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces), he assumed the position of Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. Accordingly, in 1940 he became a "Generalfeldmarschall" (Field Marshal).
During World War II, Keitel proved a weak and cautious commander: 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. In 1942 he again stood up to Hitler over Field Marshal Wilhelm von List. 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"). He signed numerous orders of dubious legality under the laws of war, the most infamous of which being the notorious Commissar order, and unquestionably allowed Himmler a free hand with his racial controls and ensuing terror in captured Russian territory. Another was the order to have any of the French pilots fighting for the Normandie-Niemen fighter regiment in and on behalf of the USSR to be executed instead of their being treated as prisoners of war. Keitel was also instrumental in foiling the attempted coup of the July 20 Plot in 1944, whose objectives were the assassination of Hitler and the replacement of the current upper hierarchy in the Army, and sat on the following Army Court of Honour that handed many officers, including Field Marshal von Witzleben, over to Roland Freisler's notorious People's Court.

After World War II

On May 8, 1945, Keitel signed Nazi Germany's surrender to the Red Army. Four days later he was arrested, and soon faced the International Military Tribunal, which charged him with a number of offences: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and, finally, crimes against humanity. The IMT rejected Keitel's defence that he was following orders in conformity to the Führerprinzip or leadership principle. Instead he was found 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 and hanged him instead. His last words were "I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than 2 million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow now my sons - all for Germany."



Source: Wikipedia

[Ingsoc]

By all accounts Keitel was a weak man that couldn't resist Hitler wishes, it's probably the exact reason Hitler choose him to be the head of the OKW (that and someone like Keitel never will be in a position that he could use the Wehrmacht to overthrow Hitler and the Nazis), Keitel even admitted it after the war in the book "The Nuremberg Intervies" he said that "I had an empty GFM rank".

[Jack the collector]

Keitel,was a lackey.Keitel did sign the Nacht und Nebel decree,for this he deserved his death sentence.Examining his life is a paradox and it still confuses me how he could have embraced such a monster.His execution was botched to say the least,24 minutes to die.

[Ingsoc]

His execution didn't go well, his neck did not broke and his face were hurt during the hanging, not a very pretty site.

[Jim O]

Not a pretty sight at all. But death is rarely sanitary.

[Klaus]

"He had completely succumbed constantly in the direct proximity of Hitlers influence. From a honorable, civil-solid general he had developed in the course of the years to a suck up, insincere, instinctless servant. He suffered a great deal under his own weakness." - Albert Speer _

Quotes by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel:

"I believed. I was wrong. That is my debt."

"The war is won, it can't be lost anymore..."

Source: Wikipedia

[Ingsoc]

GFM Erich von Manstein also blame him and Jodl in creating an unrealistic expetions in Hitler on what could be done at the front.

[Klaus]

He was a lapdog to Hitler. Obidient to the last. Thats why Hitler left him in command, alltough Adolf knew that he lacked leadership qualities.

[Sarge]

I agree that he was a lackey and weak, however, no one who actually stood up to Hitler was allowed to have this job. If not him it would have been another lackey, this was the ethos of the Nazi system of rule.

[Ingsoc]

Here a link to download his autobiography "The Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel", he wrote it shortly before he was hang.

Free download of David Irving's translation of the memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel