Activities and affiliations

Military command Germany state institutions 1847–1934 Natural causes

German field marshal in World War I and president of the Weimar Republic

Paul von Hindenburg commanded German land forces during World War I and was elected president of the Weimar Republic in 1925, serving until 1934. In the early 1930s he authorized governments lacking parliamentary support to rule through presidential emergency decrees, and on January 30, 1933, appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor. Hitler’s government soon expanded its power through terror and political manipulation.

Military command Germany state institutions 1865–1946 ○ Died

Freikorps commander who tried to keep Germany's eastern influence in Finland and the Baltic

White Army quartermaster Hannes Ignatius described him as the "true regent of Finland."

He led the Baltic Sea Division to the aid of the Finnish Whites in 1918, then commanded the German troops and Freikorps in Latvia in 1919, retaking Riga but backing a coup against the Latvian government he saw as an obstacle. Recalled after Cēsis, he led far-right veterans' movements in the Weimar years.

Military command Germany state institutions 1867–1939 ○ Natural causes

General who struck the 1918 secret pact with Ebert that preserved the officer corps and later served Weimar as defence and interior minister

On 10 November 1918, he made a secret telephone pact with Ebert, pledging army support for the new government while preserving the officer corps’ command.

A Württemberg staff officer and railway transport expert, he ran the War Office in the war, directing munitions production and labour mobilisation. In October 1918 he succeeded Ludendorff as First Quartermaster General and in November told the emperor that the army no longer stood behind him. On the night of 10 November he struck a secret telephone pact with Ebert, trading the army’s support for the preservation of the officer corps’ command. He later served as transport, defence and interior minister and fell in 1932 over his ban on the Nazi SA.

Military command Germany state institutions 1868–1946 ○ Natural causes

SPD defence minister who said “someone has to be the bloodhound” and used the Freikorps to crush the left risings of 1919

He directed the suppression of the 1919 Berlin uprising with Freikorps and army forces, then authorized summary executions by military forces in a March order.

A basket-maker from Brandenburg who became an SPD journalist, he entered the Reichstag in 1906 and was known as its military expert. Sent to Kiel as the government’s representative in November 1918, he calmed the mutiny and became governor. After the Christmas crisis he joined the Council of People’s Deputies for military affairs and, saying “someone has to be the bloodhound”, organised the Freikorps that crushed the January rising and the March battles. First defence minister from February 1919, he resigned after the Kapp Putsch of 1920, later governed the province of Hanover and was arrested after the July 1944 plot.

Military command Germany state institutions 1869–1927 ○ Stroke

German Eastern Front chief of staff who placed his soldier's boot on the Brest-Litovsk negotiating table

"The General on several occasions put his soldier's boot on the table around which the discussion was taking place": Trotsky, who wrote that 'Hoffmann's boot was the only reality to take seriously'

An outstanding strategic staff officer who, as Chief of Operations of the German Eighth Army, devised the plans that destroyed the Russian armies at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. As Chief of Staff of the Eastern Front from late 1917, he was the driving force behind the German position at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks: on 18 January 1918 he spread a map before the Soviet delegation and demanded the severance of Poland, the Baltic states, and Ukraine from Russia. After Trotsky's 'neither war nor peace' declaration, Hoffmann commanded Operation Faustschlag, an unopposed advance that compelled the Bolsheviks to accept far harsher final terms. He embodied the asymmetry between revolutionary diplomacy and imperial military force, most memorably by placing his soldier's boot on the negotiating table.

Military command Germany state institutions 1876–1956 ○ Natural causes

Wehrmacht field marshal who directed the encirclement of Leningrad

In September 1941 he believed Leningrad was about to fall, but the city did not surrender.

Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb was a German field marshal and one of the Wehrmacht's senior operational commanders in the Second World War. In 1941 he led Army Group North through the Baltic states toward Leningrad, completing the land encirclement and directing the operational pressure that sustained it. Forces under his command committed crimes against civilians and cooperated with the SS in the murder of Jews. Convicted after the war in the High Command Trial for transmitting the Barbarossa Decree and its criminal application by subordinate units, he was sentenced to time served and released.

Military command Germany state institutions 1876–1960 ○ Convicted war criminal, released 1955

A Nazi German naval commander who pursued a grand surface fleet

In the 1940 planning for Operation Sea Lion, control of the English Channel and the vulnerability of invasion transport exposed the German navy’s fundamental weakness.

Erich Raeder was an admiral who rose through the Imperial German Navy and went on to command the navies of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. He pursued a battleship-centered ocean fleet combined with commerce raiding, although Germany’s navy was unready to confront the Royal Navy when the Second World War began. Raeder was skeptical of Operation Sea Lion in 1940, pointing to German weakness in controlling the English Channel and the vulnerability of an invasion transport, and those naval limits constrained the plan’s feasibility. At the postwar International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, he was convicted of conspiracy, crimes against peace, and war crimes, sentenced to life imprisonment, and released in 1955.

Military command Germany state institutions 1880–1970 ○ Natural causes

Freikorps officer who ordered the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919 and joined the Kapp Putsch

As a staff officer, he ordered the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919. He organised the 1920 Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch and became a leading Heimwehr organiser in Austria.

As staff officer of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division, the largest Freikorps unit, he had Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht interrogated after their capture in January 1919 and ordered them killed, later boasting “I had them executed”. A leading figure in the Kapp Putsch of 1920, he went to Austria to help organise the right-wing Heimwehr and was deported. In Nazi Germany he faded from public life, only loosely tied to the party. In a 1962 interview and his memoirs he claimed Noske and Ebert had approved the killings, which was never confirmed. Never punished, he died in Düsseldorf in 1970.

Military command Germany state institutions 1881–1954 ○ Trial halted on medical grounds

German field marshal who commanded the Stalingrad offensive

In May 1941, days after Yugoslavia's surrender, he ordered reprisals killing one hundred Serbs for every German soldier wounded.

Maximilian von Weichs was a German professional officer shaped by the Bavarian and Reichswehr staff traditions who commanded corps and armies in Nazi Germany's wars of aggression. In 1942 he became commander of the newly formed Army Group B, placing the Sixth Army and Axis allies within the command structure of the southern offensive toward Stalingrad, where he advocated withdrawal after the encirclement but could not overcome Hitler's orders. He later commanded Army Group F and the German forces in the Balkans, where responsibility for reprisals against civilians and other war crimes was raised, and proceedings against him in the Hostages Trial were halted because of his failing health.

Military command Germany state institutions 1882–1946 ✕ Executed

German general who headed the Wehrmacht High Command and was complicit in Nazi war crimes.

As head of the Wehrmacht High Command, he signed criminal orders and bore responsibility for Nazi mass murder and the conduct of the war.

Keitel became head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) in 1938 and served under Hitler's supreme command as an executor of policy. He signed orders and decrees that violated international law, including one shielding German crimes in the East from prosecution, the Commissar Order requiring the summary execution of Soviet political officers, and the Night and Fog Decree. As OKW chief, he was also responsible for cooperation between the Einsatzgruppen and the military in mass murder of civilians in the Soviet Union, and for the brutal treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg convicted him on all four counts; he was hanged in 1946.

Military command Germany state institutions 1883–1945 ○ Died in prison

Wehrmacht general who directed anti-Partisan operations

Lüters assessed the Partisans' combat morale as “surprisingly high.”

Rudolf Lüters was a professional German officer who served through the First World War, the Imperial Army, and the Reichswehr before becoming a Wehrmacht general of infantry in the Second World War. From late 1942 he commanded German forces in Croatia and took part in planning and directing the Neretva and Sutjeska offensives against the Yugoslav Partisans. He assessed the Partisans as well organized and well led, with surprisingly high combat morale, yet at Sutjeska ordered that no able-bodied man leave the encirclement alive, exposing the annihilatory character of the occupation war. Captured by Soviet forces in 1945, he died in detention later that year.

Military command Germany state institutions 1884–1972 ○ Natural causes

Chief of the German Army General Staff who planned Barbarossa and later forged the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht"

On 11 August 1941, his early optimism shattered, Halder wrote in his diary: 'The Russian colossus...has been underestimated by us...whenever a dozen divisions are destroyed the Russians replace them with another dozen.'

Franz Halder served as Chief of the German Army General Staff from 1938 to 1942, directing operational planning for the invasions of Poland, France, and, most consequentially, the Soviet Union. His diary entry of 31 July 1940 records Hitler's decision, delivered at the Berghof, to destroy the USSR; Halder's staff subsequently drafted the Commissar Order mandating summary execution of Red Army political officers, and the Barbarossa Decree granting German soldiers judicial immunity for atrocities in the East. After the war he served as lead consultant to the U.S. Army Historical Division, supervising over 700 former German officers in a systematic effort to suppress evidence of Wehrmacht crimes and fabricate the myth of the 'clean Wehrmacht,' a narrative that shaped Western historiography for decades.

Military command Germany state institutions 1885–1960 ○ War-crimes conviction, released 1952

Nazi field marshal who built the Luftwaffe and directed the defence of Italy

His trial opened at Venice in February 1947; convicted on 6 May of the Ardeatine massacre and of inciting the killing of civilians, he was sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment on 4 July 1947 and released in October 1952.

Albert Kesselring was a Nazi field marshal who helped build the Luftwaffe and commanded German forces in the invasions of Poland, France and the Soviet Union, then from November 1941 as Commander-in-Chief South in the Mediterranean and Italy, delaying the Allied advance at the Gustav and Gothic Lines. Under his command reprisals were carried out against civilians: a directive of June 1944 authorised the utmost severity, and some 22,000 Italian civilians are believed to have been killed during the occupation, including 335 shot in the Ardeatine Caves. Convicted at Venice in 1947 and sentenced to death, he was commuted to life imprisonment, released in 1952, and never repudiated his conduct of the war.

Military command Germany state institutions 1885–1971 ○ Convicted war criminal, released 1954

A German general whose armoured successes were inseparable from crimes on the Eastern Front

In December 1942, Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army tried and failed to relieve the encircled Sixth Army at Stalingrad.

Hermann Hoth was a German general who carried the Prussian and imperial army tradition into the Wehrmacht and rose as a panzer commander. He directed rapid mobile operations in the invasions of France and the Soviet Union, and in 1942 commanded the Fourth Panzer Army during Case Blue and the failed attempt to relieve Stalingrad. Hoth understood the war against the Soviet Union as a war of annihilation and transmitted and implemented the Commissar Order and brutal measures against civilians. Convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the OKW trial, he received fifteen years in prison and was released early in 1954.

Military command Germany state institutions 1886–1971 ○ Natural causes

The Wehrmacht's defensive specialist on the Eastern Front

On 16 April 1945, he pulled the main body out of the forward trenches before the Soviet bombardment, preserving the deeper defensive line.

Gotthard Heinrici was a senior German army commander in the Second World War who gained a reputation as the Wehrmacht's leading specialist in defensive operations. He fought in the invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union, bearing command responsibility as war crimes and ideological orders shaped the conduct of the campaign. As commander of Army Group Vistula in 1945, he anticipated the Soviet main thrust and built a defense in depth around the Seelow Heights, but tactical skill could not reverse Germany's defeat.

Military command Germany state institutions 1887–1952 ○ Natural causes

The general who represented Germany's surrender in Italy

On 29 April 1945 at Caserta, his representatives signed the surrender instrument for the German forces in Italy.

Born into a Prussian military family, Heinrich von Vietinghoff became a senior commander after serving in the Imperial Army and the Reichswehr. He took part in the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union, and from 1943 commanded German defensive operations in occupied Italy. In April 1945 he negotiated with the Allies at Caserta and represented the German forces in the surrender arrangements, making him a central participant in ending the German war in Italy. After captivity, he joined West German rearmament discussions.

Military command Germany state institutions 1888–1954 ○ Natural causes

A leading architect of armoured warfare and a general of Nazi Germany

In May 1940, he argued that the armoured forces across the Meuse should keep moving toward the Channel rather than wait for the infantry.

Heinz Guderian was a professional soldier who helped develop the doctrine of concentrated armoured manoeuvre and shape Germany’s panzer force and early wartime victories. He presented himself after the war as the “father” of the panzer arm, but his ideas rested on work by Oswald Lutz and many other officers. During the 1940 invasion of France, he pressed for a rapid thrust through the Ardennes, across the Meuse and onward to the English Channel, helping isolate Allied forces around Dunkirk. He nevertheless collaborated with the Nazi regime and commanded in an eastern war of aggression marked by occupation crimes, while his postwar memoirs minimized his responsibility and political ties.

Military command Germany state institutions 1890–1946 ✕ Executed

An operational architect of Nazi Germany's war

On 30 June 1940 he wrote, “The final German victory over England is now only a question of time.”

Alfred Jodl was a career officer who served throughout the Second World War as chief of the Operations Staff of Germany's Armed Forces High Command, translating Nazi political decisions into military directives. In 1940 he judged final victory over Britain to be only a matter of time, while the OKW examined pressure and invasion options and coordinated the associated operational preparations and orders. He signed or circulated the Commissar and Commando Orders and bore responsibility for forced evacuation and the destruction of homes in occupied territory. Convicted on all four counts at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, he was hanged in 1946.

Military command Germany state institutions 1890–1957 ○ Natural causes

A field commander undone by the collision of orders and reality

After being told that no German field marshal had ever been captured alive, Paulus refused suicide and surrendered.

Friedrich Paulus was a German staff officer and general whose work included planning the invasion of the Soviet Union. As commander of the Sixth Army, he led the advance on Stalingrad, then became trapped between Hitler's order to hold the city and the army's collapse after the Soviet encirclement. He surrendered on 31 January 1943 and, in captivity, became a critic of the Nazi regime who joined anti-Nazi German officers' organizations sponsored by the Soviet Union. In postwar East Germany he researched military history, leaving a legacy shaped both by responsibility for an aggressive war and by his late break with Nazism.

Military command Germany state institutions 1891–1945 ✕ Suicide

Hitler's "fireman" who rushed from crisis to crisis on the Eastern Front, the Wehrmacht's most tenacious defensive commander

Driving through a blizzard to confront Hitler in East Prussia, Model glared through his monocle and demanded: "Mein Führer, who commands Ninth Army, you or I?"

Walter Model distinguished himself as a staff officer in the First World War and rose to become the Wehrmacht's finest defensive commander in the Second. As commander of the 9th Army in the Rzhev salient, he repelled repeated major Soviet offensives, earning the nickname "the Lion of Defence" and Hitler's trust as the "fireman" who could be rushed to any crisis. On 27 April 1943, Model was the first senior commander to warn Hitler against Operation Citadel, presenting aerial reconnaissance photographs of the Red Army's deeply prepared defences in the Kursk salient, yet the offensive went ahead and his 9th Army failed to advance even 12 kilometres on the northern face. In the war's final weeks, trapped in the Ruhr Pocket, he dissolved his army group rather than order a mass surrender and shot himself in a forest.

Military command Germany state institutions 1891–1955 ○ Died in prison

The final Berlin commander of a collapsing Reich

“I order the immediate cessation of resistance. Every hour you keep on fighting prolongs the suffering of the civilians in Berlin and of our wounded.”

Helmuth Weidling was a German general who rose from imperial service to become an artillery officer and corps commander in the Wehrmacht. His command on the Eastern Front implicated him in Nazi Germany’s war of aggression and occupation, and his corps was later examined in connection with the Ozarichi camp crimes. Appointed commander of the Berlin Defence Area on 23 April 1945, he directed the city’s defence under Hitler’s ban on surrender, then negotiated with Vasily Chuikov and ordered the garrison to cease resistance on 2 May. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, he received a 25-year sentence for war crimes and died in custody in 1955; Russian prosecutors declared him ineligible for rehabilitation in 1996.

Military command Germany state institutions 1891–1980

German naval commander of the U-boat fleet who briefly became head of state after Hitler's death.

Dönitz commanded Germany's U-boat force during the Second World War and became commander-in-chief of the Navy in January 1943. He continued to send submarines into battle through 1945 despite mounting losses. After Hitler's suicide, Hitler's will named him head of state; on 7 May 1945, Dönitz ordered Alfred Jodl to sign Germany's surrender instrument. Convicted at Nuremberg of crimes against peace and war crimes, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.