Wilhelm Keitel
1882 – 1946 · aged 64
German field marshal (1882–1946)
- Born
- 22 Sept 1882 · Helmscherode
- Died
- 16 Oct 1946 · Nuremberg Court Prison
Life timeline
Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.
- 22 Sept 1882BornBorn in Helmscherode
- 1914 – 1918WarWorld War I
- 1937AwardOrder of the Sacred Treasure, 1st Class
- 1939 – 1945WarWorld War II
- 1939AwardGolden Party Badge
- 1942AwardGrand Cross of the Order of the Cross of Liberty
- 1944AwardWound Badge of 20 July 1944 in Black
- 16 Oct 1946DiedDied in Nuremberg Court Prison
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Meanwhile in the world
Major world events during their lifetime (1882 – 1946).
- 18961896 Summer Olympics
- 1898Spanish–American War
- 1904 – 1905Russo-Japanese War
- 1915 – 1923Armenian genocide
- 1917Balfour Declaration
- 1917February Revolution
- 1917October Revolution
- 1917 – 1922Russian Civil War
- 1919 – 1920Paris Peace Conference
- 1920Treaty of Versailles
- 1933 – 1945The Holocaust
- 19341934 FIFA World Cup
- 19361936 Summer Olympics
- 1937 – 1945Second Sino-Japanese War
- 19381938 FIFA World Cup
- 1938Munich Agreement
- 1939 – 1940Winter War
- 1940 – 1945Auschwitz concentration camp
- 1941Attack on Pearl Harbor
- 1941 – 1945Eastern Front
- 1941Operation Barbarossa
- 1942 – 1943Battle of Stalingrad
- 1945Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- 1945 – 1946Nuremberg trials
Biography
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈkaɪtl̩]; 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: crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, criminal conspiracy, and war crimes. He was sentenced to death and executed in Nuremberg by hanging in 1946.
Text from the Wikipedia article Wilhelm Keitel, CC BY-SA 4.0
About this information
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