He joined an artillery regiment in Magdeburg as a Fahnenjunker rank and received his officer license as a Leutnant in June 1914.

The Senior Public Prosecutor in Olsztyn closed the investigation, stating that there was a "lack of any abnormal disposition" and attributed the incidents to "senseless drunkenness".

In relation to Hitler, Himmler claims to have justified his adherence to Wittje with the fact that he did not want the Wehrmacht to influence his personnel decisions in the SS.

From April 1937 Wittje joined the Hamburg Waaren-Commissions-AG (WACO), which wanted to build an explosives factory near Dannenberg.

Himmler suspended Wittje from the SS service and set up a court of arbitration to clarify the allegations of homosexual misconduct.

The arbitration court was chaired by Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger and included the assessors Udo von Woyrsch and Theodor Eicke.

With the investigation, the Hamburg Gestapo chief Bruno Linienbach and Josef Meisinger, the head of the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion, became involved.

In January 1942 he was listed as a SS members who tried to acquire former Jewish companies in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the course of Nazi Aryanization.

He acquired a mechanical weaving and flax spinning mill in Eipel in the then Náchod district, with Himmler's approval.

[citation needed] As the war neared an end, Wittje was deployed as a battalion leader in the Volkssturm.