Product Information

Hoffmann card, trimmed signed in purple ink, V LEEB, clean signature of VON LEEB, address on reverse.

Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb (5 September 1876 – 29 April 1956) was a German field marshal and World War II war criminal. During Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of the Soviet Union—Leeb commanded Army Group North, which advanced through the Baltic States towards Leningrad, eventually laying siege to the city. Units under Leeb’s command committed atrocities against the civilian population and closely cooperated with the SS Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads primarily tasked with the murder of the Jewish population as part of the Holocaust.

Leeb was a beneficiary of Adolf Hitler’s corruption scheme for senior Wehrmacht officers, receiving regular, extra-legal, secret payments throughout the war, and one-time gifts of 250,000 Reichsmark in 1941 and of an estate valued at 638,000 Reichsmark in 1943. Following the war, Leeb was tried in the High Command Trial as part of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials. He was found guilty and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.