Günther Blumentritt

Günther Blumentritt was an officer in World War I, who became a Staff Officer under the Weimar Republic and went on to serve as a general in the German Army during World War II. He served throughout the war, mostly on the Western Front, and mostly as a Staff Officer, though he was eventually given his own Corps and made a General der Infanterie. Blumentritt was instrumental in planning the 1939 German invasion of Poland and the 1940 invasion of France, he participated in Operation Barbarossa, and afterward commanded a major role for planning the defense of the Atlantic Wall and Normandy. After the war, Blumentritt gave an affidavit at the Nuremberg Trials, though he never testified in person, and then later helped in the rearmament of Germany during the Cold War and the development of the modern German army.