Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Erwin von Witzleben (born 1881, died 1944) was a German soldier. He served as a junior officer in the First World War, and won the Iron Cross. He was forced into realy retirement after he critized Adolf Hitler's persecution of Werner von Fisch, and the Night of the Long Knives. At the start of the Second World War he was recalled, and placed in charge of the 1st Army, which tasked with invading France in May 1940. He then became a Field Marshal. In 1942, after Operation Barbarossa, he was again critical of the government, and was retired again. In 1944 he was arrested for involvement in Claus von Stauffenberg's plot to kill Hitler, and was executed on August 8. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.