List, Wilhelm

Born May 14, 1880, in Oberkirchberg, Württemberg. Field marshal of fascist Germany (1940).

List entered the army in 1898 and graduated from the Military Academy in 1912. He fought in World War I (1914–18) and then served in the Reichswehr. He was a commander of an army group during the occupation of the Sudetenland in 1938. List was commander of the Fourteenth Army during the attack on Poland in 1939 and commander of the Twelfth Army during the defeat of France in 1940 and the aggression against Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941; he then commanded the occupation troops in the Balkans. From June to September 1942, List was commander of Army Group A, which advanced toward the Caucasus, but he was placed in retirement for disagreeing with Hitler on questions of strategic planning. In 1948 the Nuremberg Military Tribunal sentenced List to lifelong imprisonment for war crimes in Yugoslavia and Greece, but he was released by the American authorities in 1952 and lives now in the Federal Republic of Germany.