Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (Born ; 22 September 1882 in Helmscherode,Duchy Of Brunswick, Germany– Died ; 16 October 1946 in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany) was a German field marshal and a Nazi War Criminal between 1938 and 1945 the chief of the "Oberkommando der Wehrmacht". He was one of the 24 accused of the Nuremberg Trials and hanged in 1946.
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel was in 22 September 1882 and he is 7 year’s older then Adolf Hitler . He was born in Helmscherode in the State Of Germany Duchy Of Brunswick (Today Lower Saxony) he joined the Imperial German Army in 1901 at age 19 just 13 year’s before World War 1 in July and August 1914 . After Archduke Franz Ferdinand was Assassinated by Gavrilo Princip on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo in Bosnia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (later part of Yugoslavia in 1918 and today part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia for the assassination and the German Empire lead by Kaiser Wilhelm II declared war on Russia for supporting Serbia and later declared war on France while Japan declared war on the German Colonies and Germany launch the Schlieffen Plan (planned by Alfred Graf Von Schliffen in 1905-1906) in August 1914 at the Battle of the Marne but failed in September 1914 Wilhelm Keitel was on the Western Front in World War 1 he took part in Flanders fighting in Belgium (lead by King Albert I of Belgium after King Leopold II of Belgium died in 1909) . Keitel was wounded as a German Soldier in WW1 from 1914-1918 . After the end of the Great War in 1918 and the Collapse and defeat of the German Empire ,Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (except Bulgaria) in 1918 by Britain,France,Italy and America he joined the Reichswehr in 1919 during the Weimar Republic Era Germany until 1933 when Adolf Hitler,along with Ernst Röhm,Hermann Göring,Rudolf Hess,Joseph Goebbels,Heinrich Himmler,Reinhard Heydrich,Adolf Eichmann,Hans Lammers,Ernst Kaltenbrunner,Martin Bormann,Rudolf Höss,Hans Frank,Alfred Rosenberg,Joachim von Ribbentrop,Kurt Daluege and the Nazi Party and all the other Nazi Officals came to power and took over Germany on 30 January 1933 . In May 1945 Admiral Karl Donitz surrendered Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union,the United States,France,and Britain Germany was a occupied country until 1949 when it got split into the Federal Republic Of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) . During the Nuremberg Trials in 1946 Keitel was convicted as a Nazi War Criminal and was executed on 16th October 1946 aged 64 for War Crimes . Wilhelm Keitel also appeared in the movie Downfall (2004 movie) .
Wilhelm Keitel Media
Wehrmacht GenFeldmarschall 1942h1
Keitel (seated far right) with Hitler in the Sudetenland in 1938.
Keitel (far left) and other members of the German high command with Adolf Hitler at a military briefing, (c. 1940)
Keitel signing the ratified surrender terms for the German Army in Berlin, 8 May 1945
Plaque commemorating French victims at the Hinzert concentration camp, using the expressions "Nacht und Nebel" and "NN-Deported." The inscription translates to: "No hate, but also no forgetting."
Keitel's detention report from June 1945
17 October 1946 newsreel of the Nuremberg trials sentencing
Keitel's body after his execution; note the injuries caused from hitting his head on the trap door.
