Karl von Rundstedt

KARL VON RUNDSTEDT, (1875-1953), German army officer who became one of Adolf HITLER's ablest generals. A member of an aristocratic Prussian family and the son of an army general, he was born in Aschersleben on Dec. 12, 1875. At the age of 12 he entered officers training school, and later he studied at the exclusive Potsdam cadet academy. During World War I, as a major, he commanded an infantry unit near Alsace and, as an army corps chief of staff, helped to reorganize the Turkish general staff.

After World War I, as a lieutenant colonel in the Reichswehr, he commanded the 3d military district, including Berlin. He reportedly took part in the clandestine effort to rearm Germany.

Retired in 1938 for reasons of age, Rundstedt returned to active duty in 1939 at the outbreak of WORLD WAR II . Known as "a high priest of strategy, he commanded the armies that swept across southern Poland. Similar success in France in the spring of 1940 earned him the title of marshal of the Reich. In 1941 he commanded the armies of the south in their initially successful invasion of the USSR, but after overrunning Ukraine his forces were turned back at Rostov by Soviet troops under Marshal Timoshenko. At the time of the Allied D-Day invasions of June 1944, Rundstedt was German supreme commander in western Europe. In September he launched the Battle of the Bulge, which delayed Allied victory. But in the face of imminent defeat, he finally retired in March 1945.

Captured by U.S. troops at Bad Tolz in May 1945, he was held by the British for a war-crimes trial but was released in May 1949 because of ill health. He died in Hannover, on Feb. 24, 1953.