Johnnis Friedrich Leopold von Zeket was born on April 22, 1866 in Schleswig. He was the son of a Prussian general and joined the Royal Alexander Guards Grenadier Regiment as an officer's candidate in 1885. He married Dorothy Fabian in 1893. After marriage, he had no children, but the couple had a good relationship.

He showed his talent in staff work very early. He entered the Military Academy in Berlin in 1897, and then served alternately on the front line and staff units. In 1899, he was transferred to the General Staff as an assistant, and at that time he was still a lieutenant of the army. After being appointed as the chief of staff of the Third Army in Berlin in 1913, he held this position until the outbreak of World War I. The Third Army belonged to Alexander von Crook's First Army and served as the most important right-wing offensive in the famous "Schliffen Plan". After the Battle of the Marne River, the First Army was forced to retreat. But von Zeket fully demonstrated his personal talents and leadership skills in this battle.

On January 27, 1915, Zeket was promoted to colonel and transferred to the chief of staff of the 11th Army of August von Mackenson, newly formed in Eastern Galicia. In the breakthrough of the Battle of Gorlitze-Tarnov that began on May 2, 1915, the 11th Army advanced a total of 300 kilometers, and by the end of September, the Polish outreach was completely removed, completely eliminating the Russian threat to Galicia. Although Markens' command was important in this victory, Zeket's exquisite planning was indispensable. He was promoted to major general and received the Blue Max Medal. From October to November 1915, he planned and completed the occupation of Serbia. This record allowed Von Zeket to add oak leaves to his Blue Max Medal.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was hit hard by the Russian Brusinov cavalry in June 1916. Zeket was appointed chief of staff of the Austro-Hungarian coalition, whose mission was to rest the army and improve combat effectiveness. This work was not easy to complete due to the growing hostility between Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Zeket soon discovered that it was difficult to get along with his Austro-Hungarian colleagues. Despite this, Zeket succeeded

He completed this mission. With the expectation of creating the same miracle again, he was sent to Turkey in October 1917 to serve as Chief of Staff of the Army. However, even von Zeket could not be completed. On the Palestinian battlefield, Alanby launched an advancing attack on September 19, 1918 to defeat Sanders' Turkish-German coalition. On October 30, Turkey signed an armistice agreement, allowing all Germans to leave Türkiye within 30 days.

Zeket returned to Germany on November 13. Paul von Hindenburg asked him to be responsible for organizing the evacuation of German troops in Ukraine and the entire eastern front. He completed the task brilliantly under very difficult conditions, which allowed him to enter the German delegation to participate in the Paris Peace Conference as military representative. Zeket was then promoted to Lieutenant General, and took over Hindenburg from July 7 to 15, 1919 to serve as the last chief of staff of the General Staff of the German Army before the dissolution of the General Staff of the German Army. On October 11, he became the chief of staff of the Army with real power and began to build an elite unit of 100,000 people - the largest scale stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles. In March 1920, he became the commander-in-chief of the German Wehrmacht. At this time, at the age of * he was about to start his greatest career in his life.

Zeket's personality is "cold", "irritable", "cold", and his nickname is "Sphinx", in short, he has a strong personality. Manstein described Zeket in this way, "everyone has felt his inner passion and the iron will that makes him the leader of the army." He is not a theorist, and considers more about the combat level. He expresses his hostility to the theorists in this way: "Three things are fought against by the human brain in vain: stupidity, bureaucracy and slogans."

Zeket believed that people were the core issue of his military reconstruction. He entrusted almost all his responsibilities to capable staff, and he personally supervised the training. He revived the original General Staff in the name of the "Peace Times Military Organizing Committee" and spared nominally all his efforts to train the officers. Finally, the German General Staff provided a small but highly committed cadre team to guide other core staff and combat teams. His value was reflected in 1933-1940, during which time the German army increased 50 times, but at the same time it continued to improve the doctrine of movement. During World War II, most of the graduates of the General Staff, as well as the military staff and commanders, performed very well in combat levels.

Zeket, he suspected that the huge army of traditional types could conduct mobile warfare based on the strategy of pursuing rapid and decisive victory, and believed in small-scale, long-term, professional, and moving troops. He initiated a formal study of the lessons of war in 1921, and this research resulted in the "Military Order No. 487", which Zeket personally wrote "Leadership and the use of synthetic weapons". This book became the basis for the training of German troops until the 1930s. From the 1930s, they were revised to the famous "300 Army Order" and were used until 1945.

The New German Army's doctrine stems from the above lessons learned. The most prominent part of the new doctrine is the integration of armored warfare and air force. In order to train the tank and aircraft tactics prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles, he exchanged training aid for the Red Army for the establishment of a secret training center in the Soviet Union. This training center includes three illegal training programs: armor, aircraft and chemical warfare.

The development of armored warfare was a response to the recognized technical failure of the First World War. Zeket prefers annihilation strategy rather than attrition strategy. He emphasized that his training orders began with a slogan - "War is movement". Although Zeket has a forward-looking view in many areas, he was accused of narrow-mindedness until his death. In addition, he never fully agreed with the powerful capabilities of large-scale armored forces that coordinated combat with other weapons and air forces. Although Zeket never fully understood mechanization

The power of war was not sure about how to conduct tank wars accurately, and emphasized more about the achievement of motorized logistics support for the cavalry divisions. However, Zeket did not take concrete opposition to the changes promoted by Guderian and others. On the other hand, the experimental results of Guderian and others formed a complex between the large-scale army and Zeket "depreciate large-scale army", and they established an army in the army - a small army composed of well-equipped armored forces. The Germans further developed the storm troops tactics in World War I (i.e., Huthier tactics) into the mechanized full-service doctrine.

Zeket had a broader and deeper understanding of the revolutionary nature of air force operations. He drew 180 officers from the newly built German army and advocated the establishment of an independent air force. As the Treaty of Versailles prohibited this, he formed the Shadow Air Force. All exercises required the joining of the air force and received extensive arbitration. His air force theory centered on support for ground forces, with the highest principle of obtaining air superiority. Unlike the United States and Britain, Germany used bombers to achieve what is now called battlefield air closure. For this purpose, the Germans concentrated on building fighter jets, then attack aircraft on the ground, and finally bombers.

In short, the most prominent feature of Zeket's army is its close integrity of political leadership and policies, the priority of soldiers, the appropriate staff system and correct doctrine. The German army during this period was small but almost impeccable, and was one of the most outstanding military machines in history.

To sum up, the later German army had a distinct personal style of Zeket. It is not difficult to find that the German army's brilliant achievements, especially the initial achievements, were closely related to Zeket's efforts. However, Zeket's plan also had several shortcomings. This led to some criticisms, which believed that these shortcomings were part of the reason for the German army's final failure in World War II.

Michael Giller gave severe criticism of the German army's independence from political reality. He believed that this led to the fusion of ideology and technological supremacy, which pushed Germany into World War II and suffered a disaster. He believed that Zeket made the Germans focus on the art of combat and focus on the rapid victory of war. The result of distinguishing the practitioners of war from strategists led to the failure of many German operations in World War II without the lasting strategic impact. Giller successfully described an army that tried to exist independently from the political structure and pursued too much victory at the combat level, and clearly demonstrated that technical excellence itself was just an empty shell.

The strongest criticism of Zeckett's army was that the military vision of the General Staff was so narrow that by 1934, the Chief of Staff further reduced the focus of sandbox exercise training, from the strategic operational level to the tactical (division and army) level, which led to the neglect of logistics and intelligence subjects. As Albert Seaton wrote, "The military staff rarely exceeds the level of big tactics, and many of its members were content to consider the 200-mile radius as a strategic issue," he said.

The most persuasive criticism was pointed out by a German scholar: "Germany's superiority in will and leadership is unshirkable for their ability to arbitrarily and short-sightedly evaluate potential opponents."

Some other accusations include: the efforts to re-arm are economically fragile and largely ignore the weaknesses of the German economy; the Luftwaffe is very successful in tactical aspects but is not fully competent for strategic actions of all levels, etc.

Of course, in general, the army established by Zeket worked well. The seven-week attack war in 1940 destroyed the French army; the German army then further adhered to victory at the tactical and combat levels in North Africa, the Balkans, and especially Russia. Near the end of World War II, the leadership and doctrine of the German army successfully postponed the destruction of Hitler's country, despite the overwhelming material advantage of the Allies. It should be said that Zeket excelled in completing the greatest cause of his life and entered the palace of history as the "father of the German army in World War II".

In the early autumn of 1926, his enthusiasm for the monarchy ruined his position. He allowed a member of the Hohenzollern royal family to wear military uniforms to attend the annual military exercise, which was specifically forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles and also collided with the rise in republican sentiment in Germany at that time. Zector was forced to resign on October 8.

In 1930, he ran for parliament. During his tenure in the National Assembly of the Weimar Republic, von Zeket had close contacts with Hitler's Nazi Party.

He was sent to China in 1934 to assist in the construction of a modern Chinese army and served as the head of Chiang Kai-shek's German military advisory regiment. His suggestions were of great value to the fifth encirclement and suppression of the Jiangxi Red Army launched by the Kuomintang. This battle triggered the epic Long March of the Red Army. He served as the chairman's trustee and represented Chiang Kai-shek himself in military and political affairs. In addition, several German-style equipment divisions he trained and established for the Kuomintang also played an important role in the early stage of the War of Resistance and was the core force in the early anti-Japanese war.

In March 1935, he returned to Germany. On December 29, 1936, he died of heart disease in Berlin.
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