After reading his memoirs I had to check on his life...



Walter Warlimont, the son of a publisher, was born in Osnabrueck, Germany, on 3rd October 1894. An artillery cadet he was commissioned into the German Army in June 1914. During the First World War he fought on the Western Front as a battery officer. He was promoted several times and progressed to become an brigade adjutant and battery commander.

After the war Warlimont was active in the right-wing Freikorps group. He remained in the army and in 1922 was selected for general staff training. This included spending time in England (1926) and the United States (1929).

Promoted to major Warlimont sent to Spain in September 1936 where he worked as a military adviser to General Francisco Franco during the early stages of the Spanish Civil War. Warlimont returned to Nazi Germany in 1937 where he was given command of the 26th Artillery Regiment at Duesseldorf.

In 1937, while still a Colonel in the Reichswehr Office of the Armed Forces, Warlimont prepared a report calling for the reorganization of the Wehrmacht under one staff and one supreme commander. The plan, which clearly aimed at limiting the power of the top officer elite in favor of the Fuhrer, provided the basis for Hitler's establishment of the OKW (High Command of the Armed Forces).

In September 1938 Warlimont became head of Home Defence. The following year he worked under Alfred Jodl as deputy head of the operations office in Berlin. In this role he attended Hitler's military conferences and drafted most of Germany's major operational plans and directives.

Promoted to Major General on 1 August 1940.

Warlimont together with Jodl, drew up the preliminary plans of Operation Barbarossa in December 1940. Warlimont was promoted to Lieutenant - General on 1 April 1942 and appointed head of the Wehrmacht Leadership Staff. On 1 April 1944 he was made General of Artillery.

Warlimont was seriously injured by the bomb placed by Claus von Stauffenberg on 20th July 1944.

After the war Warlimont was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes. However he was released in 1957. His book Inside Hitler's Headquarters, 1939-45 was published in 1964. Walter Warlimont died at Kreuth in Upper Bavaria on 9th October 1976.


http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x34/xm3420.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERwarlimont.htm

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc...-06-56-07.html

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