Name: Wilhelm Bodevin Johann Gustav Keitel
State: Germany
Field of activity: Army
Greatest Achievement: Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel served as supreme commander in chief by the German armed forces. Reporting directly to Hitler, he had complete control military strategy German troops. In addition, he signed a number of criminal orders. He was convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court sentenced Wilhelm Keitel to death penalty.
Key facts
Technically, Keitel was the commander-in-chief, but in fact he did not decide anything. He had gentle character and was in the complete power of the Fuhrer, for which he was despised by his colleagues - the generals. In fact, thanks to Keitel, Hitler had full control over the army.
Keitel issued a number of infamous decrees, including the Commissar Order, which authorized unlawful killing Soviet commissars, as well as the “Foggy Night” decree, which stipulated that resisters and saboteurs arrested in Western Europe will be taken to Germany for secret judicial trial V special court. Nuremberg Tribunal convicted Keitel on all counts and sentenced him to death, despite Keitel's assurances that he regretted and was completely dependent on his will at the time of his criminal acts.
Beginning of military service
Wilhelm Keitel was born near Bad Gandersheim, Germany, on September 22, 1882. In 1901 he became an officer Prussian army. During the time, he commanded the battery, on western front. Then as a full-time officer. In 1914, in Flanders, Keitel was seriously wounded by a shell fragment.
The German army under Keitel will forever go down in history for the atrocities and genocide it committed. German soldiers drove people into concentration camps, carried out mass executions, millions of Jews were tortured to death. Millions of Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation in Nazi camps. And all these actions were approved by Keitel.
Keitel signed many decrees that went against international law. These include the infamous "criminal orders":
- Jurisdiction Order decriminalizing crimes committed in the East of Germany;
- "Guidelines" for troops demanding "ruthless" action against Jews;
- Commissar's order demanding the immediate killing of all Soviet politicians upon their capture.
Keitel also signed the "Foggy Night Ordinance", which resulted in the killing of thousands of resistance fighters and the Order of Commandos, which illegally killed soldiers of the troops. special operations, even when they were captured in uniform.
As head of the OKW, Keitel was also responsible for massacres Jews and Russians and for the cruel treatment of prisoners of war. He also initiated the use of civilian forced labor.
Interrogation and execution
When Soviet troops were already in Germany, Keitel did not want to stay with his Fuhrer and fled. He was caught by his own people and brought to the Reichstag, where he was forced to sign an act of surrender, and was subsequently arrested.
The Allies brought Keitel along with others Nazi leaders to Nuremberg, where they appeared before the International Military Tribunal.
The tribunal found Keitel guilty of all charges, rejecting all defense arguments. On October 16, 1946, the sentence was carried out, already former field marshal was hanged. Before his death, Keitel said:
“I call on Almighty God to have mercy German people. More than 2,000,000 German soldiers died for the sake of the Fatherland, now it’s my turn. I follow them for Germany's sake."
I’ll tell you a little about one of the stories that I wrote on the blog a long time ago.
Perhaps someone hasn't heard it yet, but it's interesting
When our army begins to be compared with the American and other armies of the world, I always remember a story that happened during my service in the group Soviet troops in Germany about thirty years ago.
In the seventies, it was customary to organize competitions between friendly armies.
I then served in the artillery and one day I had the opportunity to attend a championship that was held between our unit and the fraternal German unit, which was armed with the same guns and tractors.
In addition to combined arms running and shooting, the program included next exercise: the tractor, having left the starting point and having driven 50 meters, must turn around so that the cannon is facing the enemy, the crew jumps off the tractor, unhooks the gun, unsheaths it, spreads the support frames, aims at the target, loads it, fires a shot with which it must hit the target. The standard for everything is 45 seconds.
There was only one limit for completing this exercise, so we did it one by one; who was faster was decided by a stopwatch. By lot, first the Germans, then ours. Both divisions are present, cheering for their own.
The stopwatch clicked. The Germans have gone. They act clearly, you'll fall in love with them. The tractor expertly jumps into position. The officer stands aside with binoculars, not interfering in anything. The sergeant gives commands, the soldiers act like machine guns, the frames are separated, the covers are removed, the projectile is in the barrel.
Shot. The target is hit.
41 seconds
The Germans are jubilant. The standard was exceeded by 4 seconds! the result is excellent.
Now ours. The tractor flies into position, the gun almost tips over when turning, stands on one wheel, ponders for a moment whether to fall on its side or back to working position. It blew by - it fell as it should. The crew runs towards her in a crowd.
The sergeant gives out kicks, the officer grabbed the frame, dropped the binoculars, which were crushed in the confusion, the mat-rewind, loading almost stumbled, in the fall, by some miracle, sends a shell into the breech, shot! The target is hit.
17 seconds.
That’s when I understood why the Germans lost the war. They are not capable of extreme efforts in an extreme situation. And our whole life is extreme situation, and extreme efforts are the norm of behavior in war. The stupidity of generals is always compensated by the heroism of soldiers. We were not provided with food - so we are Peaceful time got used to it. Did the tanks break through? And we will throw a reconnaissance company under these tanks. Is there no one to go on reconnaissance? Did the scouts die under the tanks? Volunteers - two steps forward! This is the Russian style of martial art.
When analyzing the Second World War, and American military historians discovered a very interesting fact.
Namely: in a sudden clash with Japanese forces, the Americans, as a rule, made decisions much faster and, as a result, defeated even superior enemy forces. Having researched this pattern, scientists came to the conclusion that average length Americans have a word of 5.2 characters, while the Japanese have 10.8 and, therefore, it takes 56% less time to give orders, which plays an important role in a short battle...
Just for fun, they analyzed Russian speech, and it turned out that the length of a word in Russian is 7.2 characters per word (on average), but when critical situations Russian-speaking command staff goes to profanity and the word length is reduced to... 3.2 characters per word.
This is due to the fact that some phrases and even phrases are replaced by ONE word. (There, for example, the phrase is given: “32nd, I order to immediately destroy the enemy tank firing at our positions” = “32nd, no way about this”)
Much has been said about the factors that contributed to the USSR's victory over Germany, but much less attention has been paid to the reasons for the defeat of the Wehrmacht. Let us note the main mistakes of the Third Reich, which are referred to by German historians and generals.
Hitler's incompetence
Most German historians claim that Germany's defeat was not so much due to individual strategic mistakes, but rather due to the adventurism of political and military plans.
Hans Adolf Jacobsen notes that "pursued by Hitler political goal far exceeded the effectiveness of the military and economic means" Hitler, as the main culprit of the defeat, is also named in his memoirs German military leaders. Thus, General Walter Chal de Beaulieu writes about the “ambiguity of the strategic goal at the beginning of the war” and the “Führer’s hesitation between Moscow and Leningrad,” which did not allow the success of the first months of the war to be developed.
On the one hand, the desire of the German generals to relieve themselves of all responsibility for the lost war is understandable, but on the other hand, one cannot ignore the role that Hitler played in the preparation and deployment of the war against the USSR. Note that after the failure near Moscow, the Fuhrer assumed sole command of the Wehrmacht.
Thaw and frost
Military historian and Major General Alfred Filippi noted that German generals foresaw the possibility of military operations in conditions of impassability and muddy roads and prepared divisions for this. For example, in the infantry division of the first wave, the main traction force was horses: according to German data, their number was close to 5 thousand.
But at the same time, the degree of motorization was high - 394 cars and 615 trucks, 3 armored personnel carriers and 527 motorcycles. The plans of the German armies were disrupted by the first thaw, which, based on Guderian’s notes, lasted from October 7 to November 4, 1941. German generals note that after success at Kiev they were ready to march on Moscow, but “many formations got stuck in a quagmire, which allowed the Russians to strengthen their defenses.”
To no less an extent, the advance of the Wehrmacht was slowed down by the unusually severe frosts for the Germans that engulfed European part USSR already at the end of November 1941. The cold affected not only the soldiers, but also the weapons and equipment. Guderian noted in his memoirs that the lubricant in rifles, machine guns and machine guns froze, the hydraulic fluid thickened in the recoil devices of guns, and the braking system of cars did not function in the cold.
Human resources
Already in August 1941, General Franz Halder wrote that Germany underestimated the strength of Russia. It's about not about superiority in manpower - it did not exist at the beginning of the war - but about the unparalleled dedication with which the Red Army fought and the Soviet rear worked.
The big miscalculation of the German command was that it was unable to foresee the ability of the USSR to mobilize human resources and in a matter of months restore the loss of almost half of agricultural and two-thirds of industrial capacity.
It is important that the Soviet Union threw all its resources into the fight against the enemy, which Germany could not afford to do. True, Guderian noted that the High Command of the Third Reich made a miscalculation in the distribution of divisions among theaters of war. From 205 German divisions Only 145 were sent to the East. According to German general, in the West, primarily in Norway, Denmark and the Balkans, 38 divisions turned out to be redundant.
During the war, another mistake of the German command in the distribution of armed forces became clear. The number of Luftwaffe contingents was over 20% of the total number of Wehrmacht soldiers and officers. Moreover, out of 1 million 700 thousand Luftwaffe military personnel, approximately 1 million 100 thousand people were directly related to aviation - the rest were support personnel.
Scale of the war
A distinctive feature of the military conflict between Germany and the USSR is its enormous scale. From the autumn of 1941 to the autumn of 1943, the length of the Soviet-German front was never less than 3,800 km, while the German armies across the territory Soviet Union I had to walk about 2 thousand km. Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist admitted: “We were not preparing for a protracted struggle. Everything was built on achieving decisive victory before the onset of autumn." The reason for the failures in the East, according to the field marshal, was that German troops “were forced to overcome vast spaces without proper command flexibility.”
Von Kleist is echoed by military historian, former Major General Kurt von Tippelskirch, who sees the main reason for the defeat of the German army in the fact that its forces were “wasted in vain by useless resistance in the wrong place and at the wrong time, as well as fruitless attempts to capture the impossible.”
Mistakes of the German generals
Albeit with great reluctance, but still the German military leaders admit their gross strategic miscalculations, which ultimately led to failure in Eastern Front. Let us note four of the most significant.
1. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt calls the choice of the initial disposition of German troops the first strategic mistake. We are talking about the gap between the left and right flanks of Theodor von Bock's armies, formed due to the impassable Pripyat swamps. As a participant in the First World War, Rundstedt was well aware of this danger, but neglected it. Only the fragmentation of the Red Army units then saved Army Group Center from a flank attack.
2. German command acknowledges that summer campaign 1941 began without a clearly developed goal and a common view on the offensive strategy. The General Staff never determined the direction of the main attack, as a result of which Army Group North got bogged down near Leningrad, Army Group South slowed down its offensive near Rostov, and Army Group Center was completely thrown back from Moscow.
3. Catastrophic mistakes, according to German historians, were made during the attack on Moscow. Instead of switching to temporary defense in November 1941 positions achieved in anticipation of reinforcements, the Wehrmacht sent its main forces to capture the capital, resulting in three winter months German troops lost more than 350 thousand people. The offensive impulse of the Red Army was nevertheless stopped, but at the same time german army significantly reduced its combat effectiveness.
4. Summer of 1942 German command sent its main forces to the Caucasus, thus underestimating the possibility of resistance by Soviet troops at Stalingrad. But the city on the Volga is the most important strategic goal, by capturing which Germany would cut off the Caucasus from “ Mainland"and would block access for military industry USSR to Baku oil. Major General Hans Doerr noted that “Stalingrad should go down in the history of wars as the greatest mistake ever made by the military command, as the greatest disregard for the living organism of its army ever shown by the leadership of the state.”
Much has been said about the factors that contributed to the USSR's victory over Germany, but much less attention has been paid to the reasons for the defeat of the Wehrmacht. Let us note the main mistakes of the Third Reich, which are referred to by German historians and generals.
Hitler's incompetence
Most German historians claim that Germany's defeat was not so much due to individual strategic mistakes, but rather due to the adventurism of political and military plans.
Hans Adolf Jacobsen notes that “Hitler’s political goals far exceeded the effectiveness of the military and economic means at his disposal.”
German military leaders also name Hitler as the main culprit of the defeat in their memoirs. Thus, General Walter Chal de Beaulieu writes about the “ambiguity of the strategic goal at the beginning of the war” and the “Führer’s hesitation between Moscow and Leningrad,” which did not allow the success of the first months of the war to be developed.
On the one hand, the desire of the German generals to relieve themselves of all responsibility for the lost war is understandable, but on the other hand, it is impossible not to take into account the role that Hitler played in the preparation and deployment of the war against the USSR. Note that after the failure near Moscow, the Fuhrer assumed sole command of the Wehrmacht.
Thaw and frost
Military historian and Major General Alfred Filippi noted that German generals foresaw the possibility of military operations in conditions of impassability and muddy roads and prepared divisions for this. For example, in the infantry division of the first wave, the main traction force was horses: according to German data, their number was close to 5 thousand.
But at the same time, the degree of motorization was high - 394 cars and 615 trucks, 3 armored personnel carriers and 527 motorcycles.
The plans of the German armies were disrupted by the first thaw, which, based on Guderian’s notes, lasted from October 7 to November 4, 1941. German generals note that after success at Kiev they were ready to march on Moscow, but “many formations got stuck in a quagmire, which allowed the Russians to strengthen their defenses.”
To no less an extent, the Wehrmacht's advance was slowed down by unusually severe frosts for the Germans, which engulfed the European part of the USSR already at the end of November 1941. The cold affected not only the soldiers, but also the weapons and equipment. Guderian noted in his memoirs that the lubricant in rifles, machine guns and machine guns froze, the hydraulic fluid thickened in the recoil devices of guns, and the braking system of cars did not function in the cold.
Human resources
Already in August 1941, General Franz Halder wrote that Germany underestimated the strength of Russia. This is not about superiority in manpower - it did not exist at the beginning of the war - but about the unparalleled dedication with which the Red Army fought and the Soviet rear worked.
The great miscalculation of the German command was that it was unable to foresee the ability of the USSR, under the severe pressure of war, to mobilize human resources and, in a matter of months, restore the losses of almost half of the agricultural and two-thirds of the industrial capacities. [C-BLOCK]
It is important that the Soviet Union threw all its resources into the fight against the enemy, which Germany could not afford to do. True, Guderian noted that the High Command of the Third Reich made a miscalculation in the distribution of divisions among theaters of war. Of the 205 German divisions, only 145 were sent to the East. According to the German general, in the West, primarily in Norway, Denmark and the Balkans, 38 divisions were redundant.
During the war, another mistake of the German command in the distribution of armed forces became clear. The number of Luftwaffe contingents was over 20% of the total number of Wehrmacht soldiers and officers. Moreover, out of 1 million 700 thousand Luftwaffe military personnel, approximately 1 million 100 thousand people were directly related to aviation - the rest were support personnel.
Scale of the war
A distinctive feature of the military conflict between Germany and the USSR is its enormous scale. From the autumn of 1941 to the autumn of 1943, the length of the Soviet-German front was never less than 3800 km, while the German armies had to cover about 2 thousand km across the territory of the Soviet Union.
Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist admitted: “We were not preparing for a protracted struggle. Everything was built on achieving a decisive victory before the onset of autumn.” The reason for the failures in the East, according to the field marshal, was that German troops “were forced to overcome vast spaces without proper command flexibility.”
Von Kleist is echoed by military historian, former Major General Kurt von Tippelskirch, who sees the main reason for the defeat of the German army in the fact that its forces were “wasted in vain by useless resistance in the wrong place and at the wrong time, as well as fruitless attempts to capture the impossible.”
Mistakes of the German generals
Albeit with great reluctance, but still the German military leaders admit their gross strategic miscalculations, which ultimately led to failure on the Eastern Front. Let us note four of the most significant.
1. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt calls the choice of the initial disposition of German troops the first strategic mistake. We are talking about the gap between the left and right flanks of Theodor von Bock's armies, formed due to the impassable Pripyat swamps. As a participant in the First World War, Rundstedt was well aware of this danger, but neglected it. Only the fragmentation of the Red Army units then saved Army Group Center from a flank attack.
2. The German command recognizes that the summer campaign of 1941 began without a clearly developed goal and a common view on the offensive strategy. The General Staff never determined the direction of the main attack, as a result of which Army Group North got bogged down near Leningrad, Army Group South slowed down its offensive near Rostov, and Army Group Center was completely thrown back from Moscow.
3. Catastrophic mistakes, according to German historians, were made during the attack on Moscow. Instead of switching to temporary defense of the achieved positions in November 1941 in anticipation of reinforcements, the Wehrmacht threw its main forces into capturing the capital, as a result of which German troops lost more than 350 thousand people over three winter months. The offensive impulse of the Red Army was nevertheless stopped, but at the same time the German army significantly reduced its combat effectiveness.
4. In the summer of 1942, the German command sent its main forces to the Caucasus, thus underestimating the possibility of resistance by Soviet troops at Stalingrad. But the city on the Volga is the most important strategic goal, by capturing which Germany would cut off the Caucasus from the “Mainland” and block access for the USSR military industry to Baku oil.
Major General Hans Doerr noted that “Stalingrad should go down in the history of wars as the greatest mistake ever made by the military command, as the greatest disregard for the living organism of its army ever shown by the leadership of the state.”
On the same topic:
Why Hitler lost the war. "German View" Why Hitler was defeated in the war: what do the Germans think?