Witzleben completed the Prussian Cadet Corps program at Liegnitz Ritter-Akademie in Silesia and in Lichterfelde near Berlin, and on 22 June 1901 joined Grenadier Regiment König Wilhelm I No.

Shortly before Adolf Hitler seized power with the Enabling Act of 1933, Witzleben became commanding officer of Infanterieführer VI in Hanover.

He was promoted to Generalleutnant (lieutenant general) and in the newly established Wehrmacht became commander of III Army Corps in Berlin in September 1935.

The men planned to overthrow Hitler in a military coup d'état and avert another European war, which seemed highly likely during the 1938 Sudetenland Crisis, until the Munich Agreement both shocked and demoralized the plotters.

On 1 May 1941 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief OB West, succeeding Generalfeldmarschall Rundstedt, but only a year later, on 15 March 1942, he took leave from that position for health reasons.

Some sources, however, claim that he was again forcibly retired at this time after he had criticized the regime for its invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 in Operation Barbarossa.

He then protested angrily that it had been bungled and left after 45 minutes to return to Zossen, where he reported the situation to General der Artillerie Eduard Wagner and then drove back to his country estate, 30 mi away, where he was arrested the next day by Generalleutnant Viktor Linnarz of the OKH personnel office.

Ravaged by the conditions of his Gestapo arrest, he surprisingly approached the bench giving the Nazi salute,[2] for which he was rebuked by the presiding judge Roland Freisler.

In three months the outraged and tormented people will call you to account and drag you through the filth in the streets alive.Much of the court proceedings, including scenes of Witzleben's trial, was filmed for the German weekly newsreel Die Deutsche Wochenschau;[citation needed] however, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels decided against releasing the footage, firstly because Freisler's abusive ranting in the courtroom might draw sympathy for the accused, and secondly because the regime wanted to quell public discussion of the event.

By Hitler's direct orders, he was hanged from a meat hook with a thin hemp rope,[3] often mistakenly reported as a piano wire, and the execution was filmed,[4][5] with the footage since lost.