Karl Witzell

Karl Witzell (born October 18, 1884 in Hiesfeld near Wesel , † May 31, 1976 in Berlin ) was a German naval officer , most recently Admiral General in World War II and head of the Naval Weapons Main Office.

Life

Witzell joined the Imperial Navy on April 1, 1902 as a midshipman and completed his basic training on the training ship SMS Moltke . In the following years he took part in various trips abroad by the cruiser squadron and was employed in the German lease area Kiautschou for several years as a company officer and adjutant in the sailor artillery department. At the beginning of the First World War Witzell was as Kapitänleutnant III. Artillery officer on the large-scale ship SMS Oldenburg . He was then transferred to the small cruiser SMS Elbing on September 4, 1915 as an artillery officer, with which he took part in the Skagerrak battle on May 31, 1916 . On June 2, 1916 he was briefly transferred to the small cruiser SMS Frankfurt , before he was commanded as a navigational and first officer on the SMS Graudenz on September 1, 1916 . He retained this command until the end of the war.

From February 2, 1920 he was assigned as an artillery officer to the Wilhelmshaven Command and at the same time a member of the sub-commission of the Naval Peace Commission. In this function he tried as much as possible to negotiate with the victorious powers for the artillery defense possibilities of the German coasts. On June 29, 1920, Witzell was promoted to captain of the corvette , and from February 5, 1921, he was appointed head of the naval command's weapons department . For a short time he was first officer on the liner Braunschweig from January 11 to 31, 1926 and in the same function from February 1, 1926 to September 30, 1927 on the Schleswig-Holstein . There he was promoted to frigate captain on April 1, 1927 . Then he did his job again as a department head.

On October 1, 1928, he was appointed chief of the naval weapons department and on October 1, 1934, he was appointed chief of the naval weapons office. In the meantime, he had been promoted to sea captain on December 1, 1928 and to rear admiral on September 1, 1933 . Even after the naval leadership was renamed to High Command of the Navy, Witzell remained at his post. In his function he had a decisive influence on the development and construction of naval weapons.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, on November 7, 1939, he became chief of the Naval Weapons Main Office in the Navy High Command . Promoted to General Admiral on April 1, 1941 , he resigned from active service on August 31, 1942 and was made available to the Navy on October 1, 1942, but was no longer used for active military service. He was appointed to the Presidential Council of the Reich Research Council and was finally awarded the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords on October 5, 1942 in recognition of his great services to the development of weapons and armaments in the German Reich .

Despite ending his military career, Witzell was a Russian prisoner of war in May 1945 and sentenced in the Soviet Union on June 25, 1950 by a military tribunal to a 25-year prison term for war crimes . On October 7, 1955, he came to Friedland with the last German prisoners of war from the Soviet Union (" Return of the Ten Thousand "). He became a founding member of the Working Group for Defense Technology .

Awards

• Knight's Cross of the Dannebrog Order
• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Friedrich-August-Kreuz II. And I. Class
• Prussian service award cross
• Wehrmacht service award IV. To I. class
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• War Merit Cross (1939) 2nd and 1st class with swords
• Oak leaves for the Wehrmacht service award, 1st class
• Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords on October 6, 1942

literature

• Hans H. Hildebrand and Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849-1945 Volume 3: PZ , Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1990, ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 , pp. 568-569