The commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht Wilhelm Bodevin Johann Gustav Keitel was present at the Nuremberg trials among the main accused. For crimes committed against humanity, in 1946, a field marshal, among other Nazis, was sentenced to death.
early years
Wilhelm appeared in the family of a noble German landowner in 1882. The parents owned the picturesque mountain estate of Helmscherod in Lower Saxony, which was bought by his grandfather, once a royal advisor. By that time, the Keitel family lived modestly, engaged in agriculture and continued to pay creditors. Wilhelm was the firstborn in the family of Charles and Apollonia. When the boy was barely six years old, his mother died during childbirth, giving birth to another son, Bodevin. Decades later, my brother became a general and commander of the ground forces of the Wehrmacht. Later, his father married a second time, his younger son's teacher became his wife.
Until Wilhelm was nine, he was educated at home, and then his father decided that the boy should continue his studies at the Royal Gymnasium of Göttingen. Among the other students, the schoolboy did not have any special abilities, he studied with laziness, without interest and dreamed of a military career. He was especially attracted to the cavalry, but it was too expensive to maintain a horse, so in 1900 he became a field artilleryman. The regiment, in which his father enrolled him, was located not far from the Keitel family estate.
Carier start
The military career of a new recruit began with the position of a cadet. After graduating from college in Anklam, he received his first officer rank. Then Wilhelm was trained in a one-year artillery course. As a reward for his high achievements, as well as in connection with his reluctance to leave home, the leadership enlisted the lieutenant as a regimental adjutant. In 1909, important changes took place in Keitel's personal life. He met his great love - Lisa Fontaine and soon proposed to the daughter of an industrialist. His wife gave him three daughters and three sons. The boys followed in the footsteps of their father and became the military, the daughters married the officers of the Third Reich.
World War I
The news of the beginning of the First World War found Keitel on the way from Switzerland, where he was vacationing with his family. An officer of the Prussian army hurried to the regiment to the place of deployment. Wilhelm began fighting on the Western Front, and in the early fall of 1914 received a severe shrapnel wound in his forearm. A month later, in the form of a captain, he returned to service and began to command an artillery battery.
In 1915, Keitel was assigned to the General Staff corps and was appointed head of the operations department of the headquarters of the 19th reserve division. In 1917, he led the Marine Corps in Flanders. During this period, the commander earned the highest award - the Iron Crosses of two degrees, several orders of Germany and one of Austria.
And in peacetime, Keitel decided to continue his military service. Since 1919, he continued to serve as the quartermaster of the army corps and in the brigade headquarters, headed the regiment's battery and earned the major's shoulder straps. The officer devoted a lot of time to training the younger shift at the cavalry school, where he taught the cadets the basics of tactics. He spent the next several years in command positions, served in a department of the Ministry of Defense and was promoted to colonel and then major general. Ten years before the implementation of the Barbarossa plan, Keitel visited the USSR for the first time as part of a German delegation.
The meteoric rise reached its peak in 1938, when Colonel General Keitel took over the leadership of the Wehrmacht.
World War II
The first military successes in Poland and France were marked with new awards and field marshal's insignia. As the commander-in-chief of the German Armed Forces, Keitel practically did not decide anything. Among his colleagues, he was distinguished by a gentle character and was in the complete power of the Fuhrer, for which he was often subjected to contempt and ridicule by the generals. So Keitel discouraged Hitler from going to war against France and the Soviet Union, but the leader who gained full control over the army did not listen to the words of an experienced military leader. The German leader did not accept the objections of the field marshal and did not sign his resignation letters, which he applied twice.
Wilhelm Keitel signed a number of notorious documents, including the "Order on Commissars", according to which all arrested commissars, commanders and representatives of the Jewish nation were shot on the spot, as well as the "Foggy Night" decree. According to another decree, the death of a Wehrmacht soldier was punishable by the destruction of fifty to a hundred communists. Special powers were granted to eliminate partisans, and unlimited use of any means "against women and children" was allowed.
In 1944, the field marshal was at a meeting with Hitler, when there was an attempt on the Fuhrer. After the bomb exploded, he was the first to help Hitler, and then Wilhelm became an active participant in the investigation of the July 20 Plot. When the results of the long-term war became apparent, on the night of May 8-9, 1945, Keitel signed the act of fascist surrender.
Nuremberg trials
The fall of the fascist army was followed by the arrest of its leaders, including Keitel. The International Military Tribunal accused him of conducting hostilities and the death of millions of people. He tried in vain to justify his actions by the fact that he was only the executor of the orders of his Fuhrer, the court confirmed his guilt on all counts. The death sentence was carried out a year later. The field marshal independently climbed the scaffold, threw on the noose and proudly pronounced his farewell words: "Germany above all." At the end of his biography, awaiting execution, Wilhelm wrote a book of his own memoirs.
