Following graduation from secondary school in 1905, he broke from family tradition and joined the army as a cadet in an infantry division on 8 March 1905.

During World War I, Heinrici fought in the German invasion of Belgium and earned the Iron Cross 2nd Class in September 1914.

In this position, he was awarded the Prussian Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords in August 1918.

However, Heinrici received a "German Blood Certificate" from Hitler himself, which validated their supposed "Aryan" status and protected them from discrimination.

[7] Later in 1943, he refused to obey an order to destroy the city of Smolensk by fire before the German army's retreat, and he was temporarily dismissed from his post as commander.

Heinrici wrote in his diary:"Hampered by the snow and especially the snowdrifts, often shoveling ourselves out metre by metre, and traveling with vehicles and equipment that are by no means adequate for the Russian winter, behind us the enemy pressing on, concern to bring the troops to safety in time, to carry the wounded along, not to let too many weapons or too much equipment fall into enemy hands, all this was sorely trying for the troops and their leaders...Kitted-out with fabulous winter equipment, the Russians everywhere push through the wide gaps that have opened up in our front...The retreat in snow and ice is absolutely Napoleonic in its manner.

On 20 March 1945, Hitler replaced Heinrich Himmler with Heinrici as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula on the Eastern Front.

Only the terrain itself favoured Heinrici; he dug the 9th Army into three defensive lines atop Seelow Heights, overlooking the sandy, swampy banks of the Oder.

Hitler only became aware of the retreat of Army Group Vistula around 21 April, after a puzzling request by Heinrici, who sought permission to move his headquarters to a new site, which was farther west than Berlin.

Instead, Heinrici was moving it northward in an attempt to halt the Soviet breakthrough at Neubrandenburg, contrary to orders of Keitel and his deputy, General Alfred Jodl.

[13] General Kurt von Tippelskirch was named as Heinrici's interim replacement until Student could arrive and assume control of Army Group Vistula.

Heinrici died in 1971 in Karlsruhe[1] and was buried with full military honours at the Bergäcker cemetery in Freiburg im Breisgau.

[25] As a military commander, historians have described him as the premier defensive expert of the Wehrmacht and a genius admired by his peers, whose present-day obscurity could be due to his being, in the words of Samuel W. Mitcham, "as charismatic as a 20-pound sack of fertilizer".

Liddell Hart, who interviewed Heinrici after the war, described him in similar terms, as "a small, precise man with a parsonical manner" who "talks as if he were saying grace" and "hardly looks like a soldier.

In his writings, Heinrici revealed his growing doubts about Hitler's strategy and his mounting concern as the Wehrmacht was implicated in war crimes and the first actions of the Holocaust.

Heinrici's personal writings from the Eastern Front bear eloquent testimony to this, as well as to the empathy and care he had for his soldiers, for whom he felt responsible.