Background
Erwin von Witzleben was born in Breslau on 4 December 1881.
Erwin von Witzleben was born in Breslau on 4 December 1881.
An active officer from 1901, he served on the western front during World War I and was appointed Berlin Military Area Commander when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Assigned to Defence District III and given command of the Third Army Corps in 1935, he was promoted to Lieutenant-General. In 1939—40 he commanded the First Army and following the fall of France he was named General Field Marshal on 19 July 1940.
Von Witzleben was Commander of Army Group D in France and in overall charge of the Army West when he was retired from active service by Hitler. A veteran conspirator - he had three times failed to make a putsch - von Witzleben was chosen to be the military head of the Resistance circle and would have become Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht in a new government had the plot to remove Hitler succeeded. Arrested on 21 July 1944 following the failure of the plot, he was the most broken and pathetic of the conspirators brought before the People's Court. His execution on 8 August 1944 was a particularly grisly affair.
The sixty-three-year-old Field Marshal was pushed into a cellar at Berlin's Plotzensee prison, placed under a meathook and, half-naked with a running noose around his head, he was lifted and slowly strangled.