Wilhelm keitel biography of williams
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Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Keitel was born as the son of an estate owner in 1882. His father pushed him into a military career. In 1901 he joined the 46th Artillery Regiment in Wolfenbüttel and was appointed regimental adjutant in 1908. His rise through the ranks continued during and after the First World War. After the Nazis took power in January 1933 Keitel participated in the expansion of the Reich Defence Ministry. In 1938, when its tasks were turned over to the newly founded Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), General Keitel was appointed chief of the OKW. He held a rank equivalent to that of a Reich minister, but had no command authority in his own right. During the Second World War Keitel was involved in all aspects of military planning and proved unswervingly loyal to Hitler. In June 1940 he signed the armistice with France and shortly thereafter was promoted to the rank of field marshal. Although Keitel initially opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union, he ensured the smo
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Wilhelm Keitel
German field marshal and war criminal (1882–1946)
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (German pronunciation:[ˈvɪlhɛlmˈkaɪtl̩]; 22 September 1882 – 16 October 1946) was a German field marshal who held office as chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the high command of Nazi Germany's armed forces, during World War II. He signed a number of criminal orders and directives that led to numerous war crimes.
Keitel's rise to the Wehrmacht high command began with his appointment as the head of the Armed Forces Office at the Reich Ministry of War in 1935. Having taken command of the Wehrmacht in 1938, Adolf Hitler replaced the ministry with the OKW and Keitel became its chief. He was reviled among his military colleagues as Hitler's habitual "yes-man".
After the war, Keitel was indicted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as one of the "major war criminals". He was found guilty on all counts of the indictment: cri
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Wilhelm Keitel: Biography
Early Life and World War I
Wilhelm Keitel was born near Bad Gandersheim in what fryst vatten today the state of Lower Saxony, Germany, on September 22, 1882. In 1901, he joined the Prussian army as an artillery officer. During World War inom, Keitel served on the western front as a battery commander and then staff officer. He was seriously wounded in Flanders in 1914.
Following World War I, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles reduced the German army (the Reichswehr) to 100,000 men. Keitel, then a colonel, served in the Truppenamt (troop office), an agency which concealed the existence of the proscribed Army General Staff. In this capacity, he was responsible for secretly planning, reorganizing, and eventually enlarging the German army in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
Military Career
In 1935, on advice from Commander-in-Chief General Werner von Fritsch, Keitel was promoted to Major General and in 1937 to Colonel General. In 1938, Keitel was appointed