Background
Wilhelm Keitel was born in Helmscherode, Braunschweig, on 22 September 1882.
Wilhelm Keitel was born in Helmscherode, Braunschweig, on 22 September 1882.
After he completed his education at gymnasium in Göttingen, his plan to take over his family's estates foundered on his father's resistance. Instead, he embarked on a military career in 1901, becoming an officer cadet of the Prussian Army. As a commoner he did not join the cavalry, but the mounted 46th Lower-Saxon Field Artillery Regiment in Wolfenbüttel, serving as adjutant from 1908.
A professional soldier who served as an artillery officer on the General Staff during World War I and suffered severe wounds, Keitel was a member of a Freikorps in 1919 and received various regimental appointments during the next six years.
In 1929 he was made head of the Army Organization Department, a position he held until 1934, when he was promoted to Major General. From 1935 to 1938 Keitel was head of the Armed Forces Office at the War Ministry and during this period he was again promoted to Lieutenant-General (1936) and General of Artillery (1937).
Following the fall of his close friend and collaborator, von Blomberg, and Hitler's assumption of supreme command himself, Keitel was appointed on 4 February 1938 Chef des Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces) and in November of the same year he was promoted to Colonel General. Awarded the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP in April 1939, Keitel was made General Field Marshal in July 1940 after the fall of France, personally conducting the French armistice negotiations at Compiegne.
Keitel initially opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union, but subsequently praised Hitler's relentless conduct of the Russian campaign. The Führer’s closest military adviser in the High Command, Keitel was involved in all important strategic decisions but was held in contempt by other generals for his undignified compliancy and inability to disagree with Hitler.
From the outbreak of the war in Poland Keitel condoned measures leading to mass murder, beginning with the wiping out of the Polish intelligentsia, nobility and clergy. In an instruction to the High Command in March 1941 Keitel noted that ‘the Reichsfuhrer-SS acts independently upon his own responsibility', and on 27 July he signed an order that gave Himmler absolute powers in implementing terror in Russian-occupied territory.
Keitel revealed to army commanders that they would have to carry out the execution of political commissars themselves or hand them over to the Gestapo, sanctioning such measures on the grounds that ‘we are dealing here with the destruction of a world philosophy’.
Keitel was also responsible for issuing the Night and Fog decree allowing the seizure of 'persons endangering German security', who vanished without trace into oblivion. These and other orders led Keitel to be brought before the Nuremberg Tribunal, after he had signed the unconditional capitulation of the German forces in Berlin on 8 May 1945.
He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was executed in Nuremberg prison on 16 October 1946.
Quotations: On 16 December 1942 he justified the massacres carried out by Einsatzsgruppen operating on Russian soil. "It is not only justified therefore, but the duty of the troops to use every method without restriction, even against women and children provided it ensures success. Any act of mercy is a crime against the German people."
His submissive docility and servile flattery - after the victory in the West he called Hitler "the greatest commander of all times" - earned him the nickname Lakeitel (lackey) in army circles. Second only to Hitler in the hierarchy of command, Keitel's total loyalty was highly valued by the Führer but had disastrous consequences in bringing about the acquiescence of other generals who might otherwise have questioned certain orders.
On 18 April 1909, Keitel married Lisa Fontaine, a wealthy landowner's daughter at Wülfel near Hanover. 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.