Knight's Cross
Jun. 28th, 2007 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyryThe Knight's Cross was the German equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Erwin Rommel was one of the few to win it twice, once in the First War for an exploit of his in Italy, and it was awarded again by Hitler in connection with the North African campaign.
During the second war the German government issued psotcards of Knight's cross winners, like baseball-cards I suppose. I stumbled across a group of them--for sale on e-bay I think--years ago. Here are the scans:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Anebo10/KnightsCross
Probably these faces relate to many selfess acts of heroism, unfortunately tainted with the stigma of that war and its leaders. Others were probably given out undeservedly for political gain by superiors whom 'unscrupulous' scarcely describes.
One I researched just now on the web, was Harald von Hirschfeld:
His Cross was awarded on 23 Dec. 1942. I have no idea for what, but since he was with the first mountain division I suspect he was fighting in the Caucasus. He eventually got his own division and was killed with it at Warsaw two years later.
The only further information I could find out about him concerned an atrocity he committed at the time of the Italian surrender in July of '43. At that time the Italian army was essentially ordered to switch sides, but rather than let that happen, the Germans destroyed it. In one instance, the island of Kephalonia was occupied by an Italian mountian division and by von Hirschfeld's battalion. The Germans had to keep control of the island to close off the Adriatic to Allied shipping. So von Hirschfeld attacked and destroyed the Itallian division, killing 4000 men in 4 hours. His second-in-comamnd served time in Spandau for it, so von H. inevitably would have too except for his intervening death. I must admit it was not a very nice action, but war never is. On the other hand, it just seems so typical--almost comic--that 800 Germans could so easily defeat 12,000 Italians.
The rest of the division, incidently, were taken as POWs and shipped back to Germany. 3000 more died when their transport ships were sunk by Allied action. That was also blamed on the Germans at Nurnburg. I agree they bore resposnisibility, but that instance is not as clear as many during the War were, and just shows how tangled things can become.
During the second war the German government issued psotcards of Knight's cross winners, like baseball-cards I suppose. I stumbled across a group of them--for sale on e-bay I think--years ago. Here are the scans:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Anebo10/KnightsCross
Probably these faces relate to many selfess acts of heroism, unfortunately tainted with the stigma of that war and its leaders. Others were probably given out undeservedly for political gain by superiors whom 'unscrupulous' scarcely describes.
One I researched just now on the web, was Harald von Hirschfeld:
His Cross was awarded on 23 Dec. 1942. I have no idea for what, but since he was with the first mountain division I suspect he was fighting in the Caucasus. He eventually got his own division and was killed with it at Warsaw two years later.
The only further information I could find out about him concerned an atrocity he committed at the time of the Italian surrender in July of '43. At that time the Italian army was essentially ordered to switch sides, but rather than let that happen, the Germans destroyed it. In one instance, the island of Kephalonia was occupied by an Italian mountian division and by von Hirschfeld's battalion. The Germans had to keep control of the island to close off the Adriatic to Allied shipping. So von Hirschfeld attacked and destroyed the Itallian division, killing 4000 men in 4 hours. His second-in-comamnd served time in Spandau for it, so von H. inevitably would have too except for his intervening death. I must admit it was not a very nice action, but war never is. On the other hand, it just seems so typical--almost comic--that 800 Germans could so easily defeat 12,000 Italians.
The rest of the division, incidently, were taken as POWs and shipped back to Germany. 3000 more died when their transport ships were sunk by Allied action. That was also blamed on the Germans at Nurnburg. I agree they bore resposnisibility, but that instance is not as clear as many during the War were, and just shows how tangled things can become.
