- Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945) was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (The Nazi party). He was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and became FAhrer (leader) [2] in 1934, remaining in power until his suicide in 1945.
- Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel (Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, 1891-1944) | The famous "Desert Fox" commander of the North African campaign was born in Heidenheim, near Ulm on Nov. 15, 1891. While earning the respect of both sides in WWII, Rommel became disillusioned with Hitler. Although the Nazis accused him of being involved in the abortive July 20, 1944 bombing/assassination attempt against Hitler, his active role in the plot is doubtful.
- Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein (November 24, 1887-June 10 1973) served the German military as a lifelong professional soldier. He became one of the most prominent commanders of Nazi Germany's armed forces ("Wehrmacht"). During World War II he attained the rank of Field Marshal ("Generalfeldmarschall") and was held in high esteem by his fellow officers as one of the Wehrmacht's best military minds.
- Alfred Jodl
Alfred Jodl was a German military commander, attaining the position of Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) during World War II, acting as deputy to Wilhelm Keitel.
- Gerd von Rundstedt
Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt (December 12, 1875 - February 24, 1953) was a "Generalfeldmarschall" of the German Army during World War II. He held some of the highest field commands in all phases of the war.
- Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Josef Waldheim was an Austrian diplomat and politician. At the time of his death from congestive heart failure at age 88, Waldheim was the oldest living former Secretary-General of the United Nations and the oldest living former Austrian President, having served in these roles from 1972 to 1981 and 1986 to 1992, respectively.
- Ludwig Beck
Ludwig August Theodor Beck (June 29, 1880 - July 21, 1944) was a German general and the Chief of the General Staff of the Oberkommando des Heeres during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany before World War II. Born in Biebrich in Hessen-Nassau, he was educated in the conservative Prussian military tradition. After serving on the Western Front in World War I, he was eventually promoted to the General Staff in 1933.
- Henning von Tresckow
Henning Hermann Robert Karl von Tresckow (January 10 1901 - July 21 1944) was a Major General in the German Wehrmacht who is known for organizing German resistance against Hitler. Tresckow was born in Magdeburg into a Prussian noble family with a long military tradition; his father, a cavalry general, had been present at Versailles in 1871. Tresckow fought as one of the youngest soldiers with the rank of Leutnant during World War I on the Western Front.
- Fedor von Bock
Fedor von Bock (December 3, 1880 - May 4, 1945) was an officer in the German military from 1898 to 1942, attaining the rank of "Generalfeldmarschall" during World War 2. He served as the commander of Army Group North during the Invasion of Poland in 1939, commander of Army Group B during the Invasion of France in 1940, and later as the commander of Army Group Center during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941; his final command was that of Army Group South in 1942.
- Walter Model
Otto Moritz Walter Model (24 January 1891 – 21 April 1945) was a German General and later Field Marshal during World War II. He is noted for his defensive battles in the latter half of the war, mostly on the Eastern Front but also in the west, and for his close association with Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He has been called the Wehrmacht's best defensive tactician. Although he was a hard-driving, aggressive panzer commander early in the war, …
- Walther von Brauchitsch
Heinrich Alfred Hermann Walther von Brauchitsch (October 4, 1881 - October 18, 1948) was an aristocratic German General and the Commander-in-Chief of the Heer (German Army) in the early years of World War II.
- Felix Steiner
Felix Martin Julius Steiner was a German Heer and Waffen-SS officer who served in both World War I and World War II. Steiner ranks as one of the most innovative commanders of the Waffen-SS. He skillfully commanded the SS-Deutschland Regiment through the invasions of Poland, France and the Low Countries. He was then chosen by Himmler to oversee the creation of, and then command the volunteer SS Division, SS-Division "Wiking".
- James Last
James Last (born Hans Last on April 17, 1929 in Bremen) is a German composer and big-band leader.
- Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen (April 3 1902 - June 8 1979) was a Major General in the German Wehrmacht during World War II, with the position of chief of intelligence-gathering on the Eastern Front. He was subsequently recruited by the U.S. military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union. He ran the West German intelligence apparatus until 1968, and is considered one of the most legendary Cold War spymasters.
- Ferdinand Schörner
Ferdinand Schörner was a General and later Field Marshal ("Generalfeldmarscha]") in the German Army ("Wehrmacht") during World War II.
- Germar Rudolf
Germar Rudolf (born 29 October 1964 in Limburg an der Lahn) is a German chemist and Holocaust denier.
- Donald Tusk
Donald Franciszek Tusk is a Polish politician, co-founder and now chairman of the liberal conservative and cristian-democtratik Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska). He was one of several vice-speakers of the Sejm (2001 -2005), the lower house of Polish parliament. Prior to co-founding the Citizens' Platform in 2001, …
- Wilhelm List
Siegmund Wilhelm List (May 14, 1880 - August 17, 1971), was a German field marshal during World War II, and at the start of the Second World War was based in Slovakia in command of the Fourteenth Army.
- Hans-Dietrich Genscher
Hans-Dietrich Genscher (born March 21, 1927) is a German politician and member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). He was Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1974-1992, making him Germany's longest serving Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor
- Hans Oster
Hans Oster was deputy head of the Abwehr, under Wilhelm Canaris, and a dedicated opponent of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He was a central resistance figure; as early as 1937 he was plotting a coup against Hitler, whereby Count Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal and other officers would march into the Reich Chancellery and arrest him. The plan was aborted when the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain adopted the policy of appeasement. After the outbreak of the Second World War, …
- Werner von Fritsch
Werner Freiherr von Fritsch (4 August 1880 - 22 September 1939) was a prominent Wehrmacht officer, member of the German High Command, and the first German general to die in the Second World War.
- Otto Ernst Remer
Otto Ernst Remer (August 18, 1912 - October 4, 1997) was a German Wehrmacht officer who played a decisive role in stopping the 1944 July 20 Plot against Hitler. After the war he co-founded the Sozialistische Reichspartei (SRP), and advanced Holocaust denial.
- Rudolf Augstein
Rudolf Karl Augstein (November 5, 1923 - November 7, 2002) was one of the most influential German journalists, founder and part-owner of "Der Spiegel" magazine. Born in Hanover, Germany, he was a radio operator and artillery observer in the German Wehrmacht during World War II. He founded "Der Spiegel" in 1946/1947, which became (and still is) the most important investigative weekly magazine in Germany. During the "Spiegel" scandal in 1961 and 1962, …
- Philipp von Boeselager
Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager is one of the last surviving members of the July 20 Plot, a conspiracy among high-ranking Wehrmacht officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. At the time Boeselager was a 25-year-old field lieutenant, …
- Lothar Rendulic
Lothar Rendulic (November 23, 1887 - January 18, 1971) was an Austrian Colonel General in the German Wehrmacht during WWII.
- Helmuth Weidling
Helmuth Weidling (November 2 1891 - November 17 1955) was a German Army general and the last German commander of the Berlin Defense Area during the Battle of Berlin. Weidling attempted to foil the final assault by Soviet forces on the city of Berlin just before the end of World War II in Europe. During Weidling's military career he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (see also Knight's Cross).
- Wilm Hosenfeld
Wilm Hosenfeld (full name: Wilhelm Hosenfeld; May 2 1895 in Mackenzell, Hessen-Nassau, Germany-August 13 1952 near Stalingrad), originally a teacher, was a German army officer who rose to the rank of captain by the end of the war. He helped, hid, or rescued several Poles, including Jews, in Nazi-occupied Poland. He is most remembered for saving Polish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman from death in the ruins of Warsaw.
- Werner von Haeften
Werner Karl von Haeften (9 October 1908 - 20 July 1944) was an Oberleutnant in the Wehrmacht, who took part in the military-based conspiracy against Adolf Hitler known as the July 20 Plot. Haeften and his brother Hans Bernd von Haeften were born in Berlin to Hans von Haeften, an army officer and President of the "Reichsarchiv". He studied law in his hometown and then worked for a bank in Hamburg until the outbreak of World War II, when he joined the German army.
- Hans Krebs
Hans Krebs (26 April 1888 in Iglau - 15 February 1947 in Prague) was a Nazi party member who is not to be confused with German contemporaries like the General Hans Krebs (1898 - 1945) or the biochemist Hans Adolf Krebs (1900 - 1981). Born in the Austrian Empire in the ancient frontier town Iglau between Moravia and Bohemia which would become the second largest German-speaking enclave of the Germans in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938), …
- Hermann Balck
Hermann Balck was a general in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II.
- Fritz Bayerlein
Fritz Bayerlein was a German panzer general during the Second World War. Fritz Bayerlein was born in Würzburg, Bavaria, Germany. During the First World War, Bayerlein was drafted into the 9th Bavarian Infantry in 1917 and fought on the Western front. He was wounded and received an Iron Cross when he was in the 4th infantry regiment. After the war Bayerlein was briefly a member of a volunteer battalion but was transferred to Regiment 45 in May 1919.
- Guy Sajer
Guy Sajer is the pseudonym of the author of the autobiography "The Forgotten Soldier". Other names used by the writer include Guy Mouminoux, Dimitri, and Dimitri Lahache. Sajer states he was an inhabitant of Alsace drafted into the German Wehrmacht at age 16 and subsequently fought in the elite Großdeutschland Division during World War II.
- Alexander Schmorell
Alexander Schmorell and then into the Wehrmacht (German Army during the Nazi era). In 1938, he took part in the annexation of Austria and eventually in the Wehrmacht invasion of Czechoslovakia. After his military service, the artistically gifted Alexander Schmorell began studies in medicine in 1939 in Hamburg. In the autumn of 1940, he went back with his student corps to Munich where he got to know Hans Scholl, and later Willi Graf.
- Karl Dietrich Bracher
Karl Dietrich Bracher is a German political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Born in Stuttgart, Bracher was awarded a Ph.D. in the Classics by the University of Tübingen in 1948 and subsequently studied at Harvard University between 1949-1950. During World War II, he served in the Wehrmacht and was captured by the Americans in 1943. He taught at the Free University of Berlin between 1950-1958 and at the University of Bonn from 1959.
- Anton Schmid
Anton Schmid was a German soldier who, during World War II in Vilnius, Lithuania, was executed by his superiors for helping 250 Jewish men, women, and children escape from extermination by the Nazi SS during the European Jewish Holocaust. He did this by hiding them, supplying them with false ID papers and helping them escape. Anton Schmid was an electrician who owned a small radio shop in Vienna. Drafted into the German army after the Anschluss of 1938, …
- Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (November 7, 1903 in Vienna - February 27, 1989 in Vienna) was an Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist, and ornithologist. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth. Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws.
- Kurt Zeitzler
Kurt Zeitzler (June 9, 1895 - September 25, 1963) was an officer in the German Reichswehr and its successor the Wehrmacht, most prominent for being the Chief of the Army General Staff from 1942 to 1944.
- Dietrich von Saucken
Dietrich von Saucken was a general in the German Army (Wehrmacht) during World War II. Born May 16, 1892 in Fischhausen, East Prussia, von Saucken joined the army in 1910 and achieved the rank of lieutenant in June 1912. As a colonel he served in the pre-war Wehrmacht and was promoted to the rank of major general on January 1, 1942. Appointed to command the 4th Panzer Division at the end of 1941, …
- Lea Rosh
Lea Rosh (born October 1, 1936 in Berlin; birth name Edith Renate Ursula Rosh) is a German television journalist and publicist. She is best known for being elected the "most embarrassing Berliner" ("peinlichste Berlinerin") by the readers of the magazine "Tip" in 2003. Her father was killed in the winter of 1944 as a Wehrmacht soldier in Poland.
- Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka (March 1, 1886-February 22, 1980) was an Austrian artist and poet of Czech origin, best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes. Kokoschka's early career was marked by intense portraits of Viennese celebrities. He served in the Austrian army in World War I and was wounded. At the hospital, the doctors decided that he was mentally unstable. Nevertheless, he continued to develop his career as an artist, …