Wilhelm Keitel

German field marshal (1882–1946)

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Lived 1882–1946, aged 64Germany

Germany PoliticiansPolitician

Wikipedia
66 languages
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Era
1882–1946
Aged 64
Known for
The Fall of Berlin
1945

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

Chief of Nazi Germany's armed forces high command through World War II, signing criminal orders that produced war crimes at scale. His peers knew him as Hitler's reflexive yes-man. The Nuremberg tribunal convicted him on every count and hanged him in 1946.

Biography

About

Wilhelm Keitel came up through the German military bureaucracy, appointed head of the Armed Forces Office at the Reich Ministry of War in 1935. When Hitler took direct command of the Wehrmacht in 1938, he dissolved the ministry and created the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht with Keitel as its chief. In that role Keitel signed numerous criminal orders and directives that generated war crimes across occupied Europe. His own officer corps held him in contempt as a man incapable of refusing Hitler anything. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg indicted him as a major war criminal after Ger…

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