Wilhelm Keitel was born on September 22, 1882 in the family of hereditary landowners Karl Wilhelm August Louis Keitel and Apollonia Keitel-Vissering. The future Field Marshal spent his childhood on the 650-acre family estate Helmscherode, located in the western part of the Duchy of Braunschweig. The family lived very modestly, with difficulty paying for the estate, bought in 1871 by Wilhelm's grandfather Karl Keitel. Wilhelm was the first child in the family. When he was six years old, his brother Bodevin Keitel, also a famous military leader, was born. During childbirth, mother - Apollonia Keitel - died from an infectious infection. Until the age of nine, Wilhelm studied under the supervision of home teachers, dreaming of becoming a farmer, like all his ancestors. But in 1892, his father sent him to the Royal Gymnasium of Göttingen. Here he first thinks about a military career. Since it was very expensive to maintain a horse, Wilhelm chooses field artillery. Having graduated from Göttingen with average marks, in the early spring of 1901, as a volunteer, he falls into the 46th Lower Saxon Artillery Regiment. At the same time, his father marries one of Wilhelm's former home teachers, Anne Gregoire.
Hitler (right) with Field Marshals General Keitel (center) and Wilhelm von Leeb (off-screen to the right of Hitler, visible in other versions of this image) examines a map in preparation for an attack on the USSR - Barbarossa. Left in the background, Hitler's aide-de-camp, Nicholas von Below
Initially, Wilhelm Keitel served as an officer candidate in the first battery of an artillery regiment. But in August 1902 he graduated from a military school, was promoted to lieutenant and transferred to the second battery. The third battery at this time was led by Gunther von Kluge, who immediately became the nemesis of the young Keitel. Kluge considered Keitel "absolute zero," and he responded by calling him "an arrogant upstart." In 1905, Wilhelm graduated from the courses of the Jüterbog Artillery and Rifle School, after which in 1908 the regimental commander von Stolzenberg appointed him a regimental adjutant. In the spring of 1909, Keitel married the daughter of a wealthy landowner and industrialist Armand Fontaine, Lise Fontaine. In the future, they had three daughters and three sons. All sons became military men. It should be noted that Lisa has always played a major role in the family. Despite Keitel's desire to return to her native estate in Helmscherod and settle there, she longed for the further promotion of her husband up the career ladder. In 1910, Keitel becomes Chief Lieutenant.
When World War I broke out, Keitel and his family were on vacation in Switzerland. He ended up on the Western Front in the 46th Artillery Regiment and took part in the battles until, in September, in Flanders, a grenade fragment broke his right forearm. For his courage he was awarded the Iron Crosses of the first and second degrees. From the hospital, he returned to the regiment as a captain. In the spring of 1915, Keitel was assigned to the General Staff and transferred to the reserve corps. Keitel's career began to skyrocket. In 1916, he was already the chief of the operations department of the headquarters of the nineteenth reserve division. At the end of 1917, Wilhelm finds himself in the Berlin General Staff as chief of the operations department of the Marine Corps headquarters in Flanders.
After the end of the war, under the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty, the General Staff of the German army was disbanded. Keitel in the rank of captain falls into the army of the Weimar Republic, where he works as a tactics instructor at a cavalry school. In 1923 he was promoted to major, and in 1925 he was transferred to the Ministry of Defense. In 1927 he was promoted to the 6th artillery regiment as the commander of the 11th battalion, and in 1929 he became lieutenant-lieutenant (lieutenant colonel). In 1929, Keitel returned to the Ministry of Defense, but already as the head of the organizational department.
From left to right: Rudolph Hess, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Hermann Goering, Wilhelm Keitel before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg
In the summer of 1931, Keitel traveled around the USSR as part of a German military delegation. The country impresses him with its size and capabilities. When Hitler became Reich Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Keitel was appointed infantry commander. In 1934, Wilhelm's father dies, and he seriously decides to leave the army. However, his wife managed to insist on continuing the service, and Keitel succumbed to her. At the end of 1934, he assumed command of the 22nd Bremen Infantry Division. Keitel did a great job building a new combat-ready division, despite the fact that this negatively affected his health. By 1935, he became a complete neurasthenic, smoked a lot. For a long time he was treated for thrombophlebitis of the right leg. Subsequently, almost all the formations in the creation of which he participated were destroyed at Stalingrad. In 1935, Keitel was asked to head the Directorate of the Armed Forces. He could not decide on this on his own, but his wife again entered the business, forcing Wilhelm to agree. 1938 was particularly fortunate for him. In January, the eldest son, a cavalry lieutenant, proposed to one of the daughters of German War Minister Werner von Blomberg. And in February, Keitel became the head of the established Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW). Why did Hitler entrust him with this position? Most likely, for the fact that Wilhelm even then could unquestioningly carry out any of his orders.
General Walter Warlimont would later write: "Keitel was sincerely convinced that his appointment ordered him to identify himself with the wishes and instructions of the Supreme Commander, even in those cases when he personally disagreed with them, and honestly bring them to the attention of all subordinates."
Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Reich Minister of the Reich Ministry of Aviation Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler and Chief of the NSDAP Party Chancellery, Hitler's closest associate, Martin Bormann. Photo taken after the most famous assassination attempt on Hitler - he rubs his hand damaged in the explosion
By decision of Wilhelm, OKW was divided into three parts: the operational department of Alfred Jodl, the intelligence and counterintelligence department or Wilhelm Canaris' Abwehr and the economic department of Georg Thomas. All three departments had rivals in the person of other directorates and services of the Third Reich, such as the General Staff of the Army, the Directorate of Foreign Affairs, and the security service. OKW never worked the way Keitel wanted. The departments did not interact with each other, the number of problems and tasks only grew. The only successful military operation coordinated by the OKW was the Weserubung, the 43-day occupation of Norway and Denmark. After the victory of Germany in the summer of 1940 over France, generous, the Fuhrer made him a field marshal. Throughout August, Keitel was preparing a plan to invade England called "Sea Lion", which was never implemented, since Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union. Frightened Keitel drew up a document in which he expressed all his objections to this matter and a proposal to resign. It is not known what the enraged Fuhrer said to him, but after that Keitel completely trusted Hitler, turning into his obedient puppet. When at the beginning of 1941 Hitler decided to completely destroy the Russian people, Keitel issued well-known orders for the unconditional extermination of Soviet political workers and the transfer of all power in the occupied East to Himmler, which was the prologue to genocide. Subsequently, Hitler issued a series of orders designed to break the will of our people. For example, for every German soldier killed in the occupied rear, it was necessary to destroy from 50 to 100 Soviet people. Each of these documents bore Keitel's signature. Fully loyal to the Fuehrer, Wilhelm was exactly the person whom Hitler tolerated in his entourage. Keitel completely lost the respect of his fellow military men, many officers called him "lackey". When on July 20, 1944, a bomb planted by Colonel Stauffenberg exploded in Wolfsschantz - Wolf's Lair, the OKW chief was shell-shocked and stunned. But after a moment with shouts: “My Fuhrer! Are you alive?”Was already raising Hitler, who suffered much less than the others. After, conducting an operation to suppress the coup, Keitel showed no compassion for the officers who participated in it, many of whom were his friends. In the last days of the war, in the battle for Berlin, Keitel completely lost his sense of reality. He blamed all the military leaders and refused to accept the fact that Germany had lost the war. However, on May 8, 1945, Wilhelm had to sign the act of surrender of Germany. He did this in full dress, with a marshal's baton in his hand.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel goes to the signing of the Act of unconditional surrender of Germany
After that, he went to Flensburg-Muerwick, where four days later he was arrested by the British military police. The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg accused him of conspiracy against peace, committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Keitel answered all questions directly and agreed only that he was fulfilling Hitler's will. However, the tribunal found him guilty on all counts. He was denied execution. On October 16, 1946, immediately after Ribbentrop's execution, Wilhelm Keitel was hanged.
Climbing the scaffold on his own, Keitel said: “I ask the almighty God to be merciful to the people of Germany. More than two million German soldiers have died for their homeland before me. I follow my sons - in the name of Germany."
Obviously, the field marshal naively believed that over the past eight years, conscientiously obeying the Fuehrer, he was fulfilling the will of the entire German people. He finally destroyed the entire Prussian officer corps, definitely not wanting to.
Already with a noose around his neck, Wilhelm shouted: "Deutschland uber alles!" - "Germany above all".
The body of the executed German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (Wilhelm Bodewin Gustav Keitel, 1882-1946)
