Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel stood beside Adolf Hitler for nearly the entire length of the Second World War, holding one of the most powerful positions in the German armed forces. Yet little more than a year after the surrender of Nazi Germany, Keitel was dead. In the early hours of October 16, 1946, he was led to the gallows in Nuremberg Prison and hanged. His execution was not simply punishment for serving Hitler or for being a German general.
The International Military Tribunal sentenced him to death because it concluded that he had played a central part in planning aggressive war and, more importantly, in issuing and passing down criminal orders that contributed to the killing and mistreatment of prisoners of war, civilians, partisans, and countless others across occupied Europe. Wilhelm Keitel was born in 1882 and became a professional soldier long before Hitler came to power. He served through the First World War and remained in the much smaller German army permitted by the Treaty of Versailles after the conflict. His career continued to advance, and once Hitler began rebuilding the German armed forces, Keitel rose quickly through the military hierarchy.
In 1938, Hitler reorganized the command structure of the German military and created the OKW, or High Command of the Wehrmacht. Wilhelm Keitel became its chief. The position brought him exceptionally close to Hitler. But the OKW did not function as an independent military command capable of restraining the dictator.
Hitler increasingly controlled military decisions himself, and Keitel became notorious among other German generals for his constant willingness to agree with him. Critics mocked him with the nickname “Lakeitel,” a play on the German word Lakai, meaning lackey or servant. Whatever private reservations he may have had about some of Hitler’s decisions, Keitel repeatedly signed and transmitted orders on the Führer’s behalf. That would become extremely significant after the war.
The prosecutors at Nuremberg were not interested simply in proving that Keitel was close to Hitler. They wanted to demonstrate that he knowingly participated in policies that violated the laws and customs of war. One of the main charges against him concerned Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Operation Barbarossa was not intended to be an ordinary military campaign.
Hitler regarded the war against the Soviet Union as an ideological and racial conflict, and the invasion was accompanied by a series of brutal orders that deliberately weakened the usual protections granted to enemy soldiers and civilians. Among the worst of these was the Commissar Order. Soviet political commissars captured with Red Army units were to be identified and shot or executed rather than treated as ordinary prisoners of war. The order was openly criminal because it authorized executions without trial.
Keitel was part of the command structure through which such policies were implemented, and the Nuremberg judges concluded that he could not simply distance himself from what was happening. Another critical matter was the treatment of civilians and resistance movements. As German forces occupied vast areas of Europe, partisan warfare became a serious problem. Hitler demanded merciless responses.
Instead of limiting punishment to those actually responsible for attacks, German troops carried out reprisals against hostages and civilian populations. Keitel was directly linked to that policy. In September 1941, he issued an order regarding resistance to German occupation that called for extremely harsh retaliation. The document suggested that the killing of one German soldier might be answered with the execution of fifty to one hundred communists or enemies.
Orders of this kind helped create an environment in which enormous numbers of civilians could be killed in retaliation for resistance attacks. Keitel was also associated with the infamous Night and Fog decree. Issued in December 1941, this policy was designed to intimidate resistance movements in German-occupied western Europe. Some people accused of resisting German rule were secretly seized and taken into Germany.
Information about their fate was often deliberately withheld from their families. The idea was simple and terrifying. If opponents of Nazi occupation simply vanished without explanation, uncertainty would spread fear throughout the population. Some prisoners were tried before special courts, while others ended up in concentration camps.
Many died or were simply executed. Keitel signed directives connected to the decree’s implementation through the armed forces. There were other charges as well. The prosecution presented evidence concerning the treatment of prisoners of war, captured Allied commanders, and other groups that should have been protected under international law.
Hitler’s Commando Order of October 1942 directed German forces to kill Allied commando forces in Europe and Africa, even in circumstances where they could have surrendered and become prisoners of war. Keitel transmitted this order through the military command system. After the war, it became another important example of why the defense of merely “following orders” was deeply controversial. Keitel was not an ordinary soldier standing on a battlefield being shouted at by an officer.
He was a field marshal holding one of the highest, if not the highest, positions in the entire German military command structure. When Germany finally surrendered in May 1945, Keitel’s military career came to an end. He signed the German surrender document in Berlin-Karlshorst on May 8, 1945, on behalf of the German armed forces. He was subsequently arrested and became one of the most prominent Nazi political and military figures tried before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
The trial began in November 1945. Keitel faced the four main charges upon which the court was based: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The evidence against him included orders bearing his signature and documents that had passed through the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Keitel did not deny that many of these orders existed.
Instead, one of his main lines of defense was obedience. He presented himself as a professional soldier trapped inside Hitler’s dictatorship. He argued that he had sworn an oath of loyalty that, according to German military tradition, required him to obey the head of state. At times, he claimed that he had privately disagreed with Hitler, but he remained in his position and carried out his duties.
This raised one of the most significant questions of the entire Nuremberg process. Could a soldier escape responsibility for a crime simply because a superior had ordered it? The court’s answer was essentially no. Superior orders could be considered when assessing a person’s circumstances, but they did not automatically exempt someone from personal responsibility.
An officer could not knowingly participate in clearly criminal acts and then claim complete innocence because someone above him had issued the order. This principle was especially damaging to Keitel because of his enormous seniority. He was not a junior officer with little influence. He was a field marshal and the chief of the OKW.
His signature carried enormous authority. When an order passed through his headquarters, it could affect the behavior of military formations throughout occupied Europe. On October 1, 1946, the court delivered its verdict. Wilhelm Keitel was found guilty on all four charges.
The judges concluded that he had participated in the machinery of aggressive war and had been involved in issuing and transmitting numerous criminal orders. He was sentenced to death by hanging. For Keitel, the method of execution carried a particular humiliation. He considered himself a professional soldier and requested execution by firing squad, traditionally regarded as a military form of death.
His request was denied. The Nuremberg authorities regarded the convicted defendants as criminals, not as soldiers deserving a military execution. During the early hours of October 16, 1946, the executions began inside the gymnasium of Nuremberg Prison. Ten condemned men were hanged that morning.
Hermann Göring, the Reich Marshal, had been scheduled to die with them, but he took his own life hours before his execution. American army executioner John C. Woods carried out the hangings. Keitel’s final statement evoked Germany and the German soldiers who had died during the war.
He was then executed. His body was photographed, like those of the other executed defendants. His remains were then cremated secretly, and his ashes were scattered so that his grave could not become a shrine. The case of Wilhelm Keitel remains historically important because the trial addressed a question that extended far beyond one German field marshal.
How responsible is a military officer for orders issued by political leaders? At Nuremberg, Keitel repeatedly portrayed himself as merely a soldier whose duty was obedience. But the court concluded that obedience had limits. His position meant that he possessed both knowledge and responsibility.
He saw the nature of the regime he served and repeatedly allowed his authority and signature to be used to carry out brutal policies. Wilhelm Keitel was therefore not executed simply because Germany lost the war, nor simply because he was one of Hitler’s generals. He was executed because the Nuremberg court found that he had personally participated in aggressive war and helped issue and enforce orders that violated the laws of war. His execution became one of the clearest demonstrations of the principle established at Nuremberg.
Military rank and obedience to superiors provide no complete protection when an individual deliberately participates in war crimes.