Albert Kesselring

Bavarian Army and Reichswehr (to 1933)

Albert Kesselring was born on 30 November 1885 in Marktsteft in Lower Franconia, the son of a schoolmaster who later became a city school councillor, and grew up in Bayreuth. He joined the 2nd Foot Artillery Regiment in Metz in 1904 and was commissioned Leutnant in 1906. After World War I staff service he entered the Reichswehr in 1919, worked in the Reichswehr Ministry from 1922, and from 1931 to 1933 commanded an artillery detachment in Dresden.

Building the Luftwaffe (1933–1939)

Discharged from the Reichswehr against his wishes in 1933, he moved to the Reich Air Ministry as head of its Department of Administration. The Luftwaffe was not formally established until 26 February 1935. He learned to fly at 48 and became Chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff on 3 June 1936 after Walther Wever's death, overseeing expansion and the procurement of the Bf 109 and Ju 87. In June 1937 he took command of Luftkreis III in Dresden, then of Luftflotte 1. German-language sources date those appointments to 1936 and 1937, while the English Wikipedia gives the chief-of-staff tenure as 1936–1938.

Air war in Poland, the West and the USSR (1939–1941)

Commanding Luftflotte 1, he supported Army Group North in the attack on Poland with 1,105 aircraft. He received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in 1939 and on 14 May 1940, commanding Luftflotte 2, ordered the bombing of Rotterdam city centre, killing an estimated 800 civilians and making 78,000 homeless. Promoted Generalfeldmarschall in July 1940, he led the main daylight effort in the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and in June 1941 supported Army Group Centre in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Accounts differ on Rotterdam: historians are divided on whether it was terror or tactical, and under the 1907 Hague Convention the bombardment itself was not forbidden because Rotterdam was not an undefended city.

Commander-in-Chief South and the defence of Italy (1941–1945)

From November 1941 he was Wehrmacht Commander-in-Chief South, tasked with defeating British forces on Malta and securing sea supply to North Africa; he received the Oak Leaves and Swords to the Knight's Cross in 1942 and the Diamonds in 1944. After the Allied landings in Italy he became Commander-in-Chief Southwest and commander of Army Group C on 21 November 1943, fighting around the Gustav Line and Monte Cassino and withdrawing to the Gothic Line; the US Fifth Army entered Rome on 4 June 1944 after it was declared an open city. Severely wounded in a car accident in October 1944, he was deputised by Vietinghoff until mid-January 1945, and from March 1945 was Commander-in-Chief West. Sources disagree on the accident's circumstances and on whether he surrendered at Saalfelden on 9 May, as English accounts have it, or was taken prisoner on 15 May 1945, as the German account states.

Reprisals, the anti-partisan war and the 1947 trial

As Commander-in-Chief in Italy he was responsible for "Sühnemaßnahmen" (reprisal measures) against the Italian civilian population after Resistance attacks. After the Via Rasella attack of 23 March 1944 he had 335 uninvolved Italian civilians shot in the Ardeatine Caves. From April 1944 he directed the entire anti-partisan campaign, with Karl Wolff personally subordinate to him, and on 17 June 1944 he signed the "New Measures for Combating Partisans" directive authorising "utmost severity" and indemnity for excessive severity. Some 22,000 Italian civilians are believed to have been killed during the occupation, and Gentile's scholarly profile concurs that Kesselring bore significant responsibility for the massacres. His trial before a British military court in Venice opened on 17 February 1947 on two charges: involvement in the killing of some 335 Italian nationals in the Ardeatine Caves as a reprisal, and inciting and commanding forces to kill Italian civilians. After 57 days the court found him guilty on 6 May 1947 and sentenced him to death by firing squad. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in July 1947, and he was pardoned and released early on 23 October 1952, partly on account of cancer. Conflicting dates are handled explicitly: an independent profile dates the trial opening to 10 February 1947, and Gentile gives the commutation as 1948, while the German Wikipedia records a 1948 reduction of the sentence to 21 years.

Postwar activity and the "clean Wehrmacht" myth (1952–1960)

From 1952 to 1960 he was Bundesführer of the "Stahlhelm – Kampfbund für Europa", a postwar reorganisation of the World War I veterans' league. His memoirs appeared in 1953 and 1955, and in neither did he distance himself from his actions or from his unconditional loyalty to Hitler; he publicly asserted that he had saved millions of Italians and in November 1953 warned that war-crimes trials would deter volunteers. Kerstin von Lingen's 2004 monograph "Kesselrings letzte Schlacht" documents a press campaign that reframed the war criminal as an honourable man amid Adenauer-era anti-communism, while the destruction of Italian villages under the directive of 17 June 1944 was pushed aside. Gentile likewise credits Kesselring's exoneration with helping propagate the "clean Wehrmacht" myth after 1952.

Death and commemoration (1960)

He died on 15 July 1960 in a sanatorium at Bad Nauheim of a heart attack, aged 74, and was buried at the Bergfriedhof in Bad Wiessee, where the then Inspector of the Luftwaffe, Josef Kammhuber, delivered the grave oration; the English Wikipedia records a quasi-military Stahlhelm funeral. An independent profile and Britannica give the death date as 16 July 1960, which conflicts with the 15 July date in the English and German reference works.