Paul Hausser

Schutzstaffel (SS) Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces 1880–1972 ○ Natural causes

Waffen-SS general who led the spearhead on the southern face at Kursk and later spoke for the campaign to rehabilitate the SS

Born into a Prussian military family, he was a staff officer in the First World War, retired as a lieutenant general in 1932, moved to the SS armed formations in 1934 and was instrumental in forming the Waffen-SS. In February 1943 he withdrew his troops from Kharkov against Hitler's explicit orders and retook the city in March; at Kursk in July he led the II SS Panzer Corps, the main southern blow, as far as Prokhorovka, and he fought again in Normandy in 1944. After the war, as first spokesperson of HIAG, the Waffen-SS veterans' lobby, he portrayed its troops as "soldiers like any other" with no part in war crimes, a claim mainstream historians reject.