MILITARY PERSONNELS from Germany

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary German Military Personnels of all time. This list of famous German Military Personnels is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of German Military Personnels.

1. Karl Dönitz (1891 - 1980)

With an HPI of 81.38, Karl Dönitz is the most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 75 different languages on wikipedia.

Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz; German: [ˈdøːnɪts] ; 16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government following Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies days later. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II. He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding UB-68, and was taken prisoner of war by British forces. As commander of UB-68, he attacked a convoy in the Mediterranean while on patrol near Malta. Sinking one ship before the rest of the convoy outran his U-boat, Dönitz began to formulate the concept of U-boats operating in attack groups Rudeltaktik (German for "pack tactic", commonly called a "wolfpack") for greater efficiency, rather than operating independently. By the start of the Second World War, Dönitz was supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat arm (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU)). In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral) and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Dönitz was the main enemy of Allied naval forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. From 1939 to 1943 the U-boats fought effectively but lost the initiative from May 1943. Dönitz ordered his submarines into battle until 1945 to relieve the pressure on other branches of the Wehrmacht (armed forces). 648 U-boats were lost—429 with no survivors. Furthermore, of these, 215 were lost on their first patrol. Around 30,000 of the 40,000 men who served in U-boats perished. On 30 April 1945, following the suicide of Adolf Hitler and in accordance with his last will and testament, Dönitz was named Hitler's successor as head of state in what became known as the Goebbels cabinet after his second-in-command, Joseph Goebbels, until Goebbels' suicide led to Dönitz's cabinet being reformed into the Flensburg Government instead. On 7 May 1945, he ordered Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to sign the German instruments of surrender in Reims, France, formally ending the War in Europe. Dönitz remained as head of state with the titles of President of Germany and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces until his cabinet was dissolved by the Allied powers on 23 May de facto and on 5 June de jure. By his own admission, Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and supporter of Hitler. Following the war, he was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression; and crimes against the laws of war. He was found not guilty of committing crimes against humanity, but guilty of committing crimes against peace and war crimes against the laws of war. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment; following his release, he lived in a village near Hamburg until his death in 1980.

2. Erwin Rommel (1891 - 1944)

With an HPI of 80.09, Erwin Rommel is the 2nd most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 88 different languages.

Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel (pronounced [ˈɛʁviːn ˈʁɔməl] ; 15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944) was a German Generalfeldmarschall (field marshal) during World War II. Popularly known as the Desert Fox (German: Wüstenfuchs, pronounced [ˈvyːstn̩ˌfʊks] ), he served in the Wehrmacht (armed forces) of Nazi Germany, as well as in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and the army of Imperial Germany. Rommel was injured multiple times in both world wars. Rommel was a highly decorated officer in World War I and was awarded the Pour le Mérite for his actions on the Italian Front. In 1937, he published his classic book on military tactics, Infantry Attacks, drawing on his experiences in that war. In World War II, he commanded the 7th Panzer Division during the 1940 invasion of France. His leadership of German and Italian forces in the North African campaign established his reputation as one of the ablest tank commanders of the war, and earned him the nickname der Wüstenfuchs, "the Desert Fox". Among his British adversaries he had a reputation for chivalry, and his phrase "war without hate" has been uncritically used to describe the North African campaign. A number of historians have since rejected the phrase as a myth and uncovered numerous examples of German war crimes and abuses towards enemy soldiers and native populations in Africa during the conflict. Other historians note that there is no clear evidence Rommel was involved or aware of these crimes, with some pointing out that the war in the desert, as fought by Rommel and his opponents, still came as close to a clean fight as there was in World War II. He later commanded the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion of Normandy in June 1944. After the Nazis gained power in Germany, Rommel gradually accepted the new regime. Historians have given different accounts of the specific period and his motivations. He was a supporter of Adolf Hitler, at least until near the end of the war, if not necessarily sympathetic to the party and the paramilitary forces associated with it. In 1944, Rommel was implicated in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Because of Rommel's status as a national hero, Hitler wanted to eliminate him quietly instead of having him immediately executed, as many other plotters were. Rommel was given a choice between suicide, in return for assurances that his reputation would remain intact and that his family would not be persecuted following his death, or facing a trial that would result in his disgrace and execution; he chose the former and took a cyanide pill. Rommel was given a state funeral, and it was announced that he had succumbed to his injuries from the strafing of his staff car in Normandy. Rommel became a larger-than-life figure in both Allied and Nazi propaganda, and in postwar popular culture. Numerous authors portray him as an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of Nazi Germany, although other authors have contested this assessment and called it the "Rommel myth". Rommel's reputation for conducting a clean war was used in the interest of the West German rearmament and reconciliation between the former enemies – the United Kingdom and the United States on one side and the new Federal Republic of Germany on the other. Several of Rommel's former subordinates, notably his chief of staff Hans Speidel, played key roles in German rearmament and integration into NATO in the postwar era. The German Army's largest military base, the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks, Augustdorf, and a third ship of Lütjens-class destroyer of the German Navy are both named in his honour. His son Manfred Rommel was the longtime mayor of Stuttgart, Germany and namesake of Stuttgart Airport.

3. Adolf Eichmann (1906 - 1962)

With an HPI of 79.19, Adolf Eichmann is the 3rd most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 73 different languages.

Otto Adolf Eichmann ( EYEKH-mən, German: [ˈʔɔto ˈʔaːdɔlf ˈʔaɪçman]; 19 March 1906 – 1 June 1962) was a German-Austrian official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Following this, he was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and Nazi extermination camps across German-occupied Europe. He was captured and detained by the Allies in 1945, but escaped and eventually settled in Argentina. In May 1960, he was tracked down and apprehended by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, and put on trial before the Supreme Court of Israel. The highly publicised Eichmann trial resulted in his conviction in Jerusalem, following which he was executed by hanging in 1962. After doing poorly in school, Eichmann briefly worked for his father's mining company in Austria, where the family had moved in 1914. He worked as a travelling oil salesman beginning in 1927, and joined both the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. He returned to Germany in 1933, where he joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, "Security Service"); there he was appointed head of the department responsible for Jewish affairs – especially emigration, which the Nazis encouraged through violence and economic pressure. After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Eichmann and his staff arranged for Jews to be concentrated in ghettos in major cities with the expectation that they would be transported either farther east or overseas. He also drew up plans for a Jewish reservation, first at Nisko in southeast Poland and later in Madagascar, but neither of these plans was carried out. The Nazis began the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and their Jewish policy changed from coerced emigration to extermination. To coordinate planning for the genocide, Eichmann's superior Reinhard Heydrich hosted the regime's administrative leaders at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. Eichmann collected information for him, attended the conference, and prepared the minutes. Eichmann and his staff became responsible for Jewish deportations to extermination camps, where the victims were gassed. After Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, Eichmann oversaw the deportation of much of the Jewish population. Most of the victims were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where about 75 per cent were murdered upon arrival. By the time the transports were stopped in July 1944, 437,000 of Hungary's 725,000 Jews had been killed. Dieter Wisliceny testified at Nuremberg that Eichmann told him he would "leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction." After Germany's defeat in 1945, Eichmann was captured by US forces, but he escaped from a detention camp and moved around Germany to avoid recapture. He ended up in a small village in Lower Saxony, where he lived until 1950 when he moved to Argentina using false papers he obtained with help from an organisation directed by Catholic bishop Alois Hudal. Information collected by Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, confirmed his location in 1960. A team of Mossad and Shin Bet agents captured Eichmann and brought him to Israel to stand trial on 15 criminal charges, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people. During the trial, he did not deny the Holocaust or his role in organising it, but said he was simply following orders in a totalitarian Führerprinzip system. He was found guilty on all of the charges, and was executed by hanging on 1 June 1962. The trial was widely followed in the media and was later the subject of several books, including Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, in which Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe Eichmann.

4. Erich von Manstein (1887 - 1973)

With an HPI of 76.42, Erich von Manstein is the 4th most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 56 different languages.

Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Manstein (born Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Lewinski; 24 November 1887 – 9 June 1973) was a German Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) in the Heer (Army) of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was subsequently convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. Born into an aristocratic Prussian family with a long history of military service, Manstein joined the army at a young age and saw service on both the Western and Eastern Front during the First World War (1914–18). He rose to the rank of captain by the end of the war and was active in the inter-war period helping Germany rebuild its armed forces. In September 1939, during the invasion of Poland at the beginning of the Second World War, he served as Chief of Staff to Gerd von Rundstedt's Army Group South. Adolf Hitler chose Manstein's strategy for the invasion of France of May 1940, a plan later refined by Franz Halder and other members of the OKH. Anticipating a firm Allied reaction should the main thrust of the invasion take place through the Netherlands, Manstein devised an innovative operation to invade France – later known as the Sichelschnitt ("sickle cut") – that called for an attack through the woods of the Ardennes and a rapid drive to the English Channel, thus cutting off the French and Allied armies in Belgium and Flanders. Attaining the rank of general at the end of the campaign, he was active in the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. He led the Axis forces in the siege of Sevastopol (1941–1942) and the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula, and was promoted to field marshal on 1 July 1942, after which he participated in the siege of Leningrad. In December 1942, during the catastrophic Battle of Stalingrad, Manstein commanded a failed relief effort ("Operation Winter Storm"). Later known as the "backhand blow", Manstein's counteroffensive in the Third Battle of Kharkov (February–March 1943) regained substantial territory and resulted in the destruction of three Soviet armies and the retreat of three others. He was one of the primary commanders at the Battle of Kursk (July–August 1943). His ongoing disagreements with Hitler over the conduct of the war led to his dismissal in March 1944. He never obtained another command and was taken prisoner by the British in August 1945, three months after Germany's defeat. Manstein gave testimony at the main Nuremberg trials of war criminals in August 1946, and prepared a paper that, along with his later memoirs, helped cultivate the myth of the clean Wehrmacht – the myth that the German armed forces were not culpable for the atrocities of the Holocaust. In 1949 he was tried in Hamburg for war crimes and was convicted on nine of seventeen counts, including the poor treatment of prisoners of war and failing to protect civilian lives in his sphere of operations. His sentence of eighteen years in prison was later reduced to twelve, and he served only four years before being released in 1953. As a military advisor to the West German government in the mid-1950s, he helped re-establish the armed forces. His memoir, Verlorene Siege (1955), translated into English as Lost Victories, was highly critical of Hitler's leadership, and dealt with only the military aspects of the war, ignoring its political and ethical contexts. Manstein died near Munich in 1973.

5. Friedrich Paulus (1890 - 1957)

With an HPI of 76.27, Friedrich Paulus is the 5th most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 60 different languages.

Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus (23 September 1890 – 1 February 1957) was a German Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) during World War II who is best known for his surrender of the German 6th Army during the Battle of Stalingrad (July 1942 to February 1943). The battle ended in disaster for the Wehrmacht when Soviet forces encircled the Germans within the city, leading to the ultimate death or capture of most of the 265,000-strong 6th Army, their Axis allies, and collaborators. Paulus fought in World War I and saw action in France and the Balkans. He was considered a promising officer; by the time World War II broke out, he had been promoted to major general. Paulus took part in the invasions of Poland and the Low Countries, after which he was named deputy chief of the German Army General Staff. In that capacity, Paulus helped plan the invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1942, Paulus was given command of the 6th Army despite his lack of field experience. He led the drive to Stalingrad but was cut off and surrounded in the subsequent Soviet counter-offensive. Adolf Hitler prohibited attempts to break out or capitulate, and the German defense was gradually worn down. Paulus surrendered in Stalingrad on 31 January 1943, the same day on which he was informed of his promotion to field marshal by Hitler. Hitler expected Paulus to take his own life, repeating to his staff that there was no precedent of a German field marshal being captured alive. While in Soviet captivity during the war, Paulus became a vocal critic of the Nazi regime and joined the Soviet-sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany. In 1953, Paulus moved to East Germany, where he worked in military history research. He lived out the rest of his life in Dresden.

6. Arminius (-17 - 21)

With an HPI of 76.05, Arminius is the 6th most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 72 different languages.

Arminius (; 18/17 BC–AD 21) was a chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe who is best known for commanding an alliance of Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, in which three Roman legions under the command of general and governor Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed. His victory at Teutoburg Forest precipitated the Roman Empire's permanent strategic withdrawal from Germania Magna, and modern historians regard it as one of Rome's greatest defeats. As it prevented the Romanization of Germanic peoples east of the Rhine, it has also been considered one of the most decisive battles in history and a turning point in human history. Born a prince of the Cherusci tribe, Arminius was part of the Roman-friendly faction of the tribe. He learned Latin and served in the Roman military, which gained him Roman citizenship, and the rank of eques. After serving with distinction in the Great Illyrian Revolt, he was sent to Germania to aid the local governor Publius Quinctilius Varus in completing the Roman conquest of the Germanic tribes. While in this capacity, Arminius secretly plotted a Germanic revolt against Roman rule, which culminated in the ambush and destruction of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest. In the aftermath of the battle, Arminius fought retaliatory invasions by the Roman general Germanicus in the battles of Pontes Longi, Idistaviso, and the Angrivarian Wall, and deposed a rival, the Marcomanni king Maroboduus. Germanic nobles, afraid of Arminius's growing power, assassinated him in 21. He was remembered in Germanic legends for generations afterwards. The Roman historian Tacitus designated Arminius as the liberator of the Germanic tribes and commended him for having fought the Roman Empire to a standstill at the peak of its power. During the unification of Germany in the 19th century, Arminius was hailed by German nationalists as a symbol of German unity and freedom. Following World War II, however, Arminius' significance diminished in Germany due to his association with militaristic nationalism; the 2,000th anniversary of his victory at the Teutoburg Forest was only lightly commemorated in Germany.

7. Heinz Guderian (1888 - 1954)

With an HPI of 75.77, Heinz Guderian is the 7th most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 61 different languages.

Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (German: [haɪnts ˈvɪlhɛlm ɡuˈdeːʁi.an]; 17 June 1888 – 14 May 1954) was a German general during World War II who, after the war, became a successful memoirist. An early pioneer and advocate of the "blitzkrieg" approach, he played a central role in the development of the panzer division concept. In 1936, he became the Inspector of Motorized Troops. At the beginning of the Second World War, Guderian led an armoured corps in the Invasion of Poland. During the Invasion of France, he commanded the armoured units that attacked through the Ardennes forest and overwhelmed the Allied defenses at the Battle of Sedan. He led the 2nd Panzer Army during Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The campaign ended in failure after the German offensive Operation Typhoon failed to capture Moscow, after which Guderian was dismissed. In early 1943, Adolf Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops. In this role, he had broad responsibility to rebuild and train new panzer forces but saw limited success due to Germany's worsening war economy. Guderian was appointed Acting Chief of the General Staff of the Army High Command, immediately following the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler. Guderian was placed in charge of the "Court of Honour" by Hitler, which in the aftermath of the plot was used to dismiss people from the military so they could be tried in the "People's Court" and executed. He was Hitler's personal advisor on the Eastern Front and became closely associated with the Nazis. Guderian's troops carried out the criminal Commissar Order during Barbarossa, and he was implicated in the commission of reprisals after the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Guderian surrendered to the United States forces on 10 May 1945 and was interned until 1948. He was released without charge and retired to write his memoirs. Entitled Panzer Leader, the autobiography became a bestseller, widely read to this day. Guderian's writings promoted several post-war myths, including that of the "clean Wehrmacht". In his autobiography, Guderian portrayed himself as the sole originator of the German panzer force; he omitted any mentions of crimes that he authorised or condoned. Guderian died in 1954 and was buried in Goslar. Guderian was born in Kulm, West Prussia (since 1920 Poland), on 17 June 1888, the son of Friedrich and Clara (née Kirchhoff). His father and grandfathers were Prussian officers and he grew up in garrison towns surrounded by the military. In 1903, he left home and enrolled at a military cadet school. He was a capable student, although he performed poorly in his final exam. He entered the army as an officer cadet on 28 February 1907 with the 10th Hanoverian Light Infantry Battalion (Hannoversche Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 10) , under his father's command. He became a second lieutenant on 27 January 1908, receiving his patent backdated to 22 June 1906. On 1 October 1913 he married Margarete Goerne, with whom he had two sons: Heinz Günther (1914–2004) and Kurt (1918–1984). At the outbreak of World War I, Guderian served as a communications officer and the commander of a radio station. In November, 1914 he was promoted to first lieutenant. Between May, 1915 and January, 1916 Guderian was in charge of signals intelligence for the 4th Army. He fought at the Battle of Verdun during this period and was promoted to captain on 15 November 1915. He was then sent to the 4th Infantry Division before becoming commander of the Second Battalion of Infantry Regiment 14. On 28 February 1918, Guderian was appointed to the General Staff Corps. Guderian finished the war as an operations officer in occupied Italy. He disagreed with Germany signing the armistice in 1918, believing that the German Empire should have continued the fight. Early in 1919, Guderian was selected as one of the four thousand officers allowed by the Versailles Treaty in the reduced-size German army, the Reichswehr. He was assigned to serve on the staff of the central command of the Eastern Frontier Guard Service which was intended to control and coordinate the independent freikorps units in the defense of Germany's eastern frontiers against Polish (who were not attacking Germany) and Soviet forces engaged in the Russian Civil War in conjunction with the Estonian War of Independence. In June, 1919 Guderian joined the Iron Brigade (later known as the Iron Division) as its second General Staff officer. In the 1920s, Guderian was introduced to armored warfare tactics by Ernst Volckheim, a World War I tank commander and a prolific writer on the subject. He studied the leading European literature on armored warfare and, between 1922 and 1928, wrote five papers for Military Weekly, an armed forces journal. While the topics covered were mundane, Guderian related them to why Germany had lost World War I, a controversial subject at the time, and thus raised his profile in the military. There were some trial maneuvers conducted in the Soviet Union and Guderian academically evaluated the results. Britain was experimenting with armoured units under General Percy Hobart, and Guderian kept abreast of Hobart's writings. In 1924, he was appointed as an instructor and military historian at Stettin. As a lecturer he was polarizing; some of his pupils enjoyed his wit, but he alienated others with his biting sarcasm. In 1927, Guderian was promoted to major and in October he was posted to the transport section of the Truppenamt, a clandestine form of the army's General Staff, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. By the autumn of 1928, he was a leading speaker on tanks; however, he did not set foot in one until the summer of 1929, when he briefly drove a Swedish Stridsvagn m/21-29. In October, 1928 he was transferred to the Motor Transport Instruction Staff to teach. In 1931, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and became chief of staff to the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops under Oswald Lutz. This placed Guderian at the center of Germany's development of mobile warfare and armored forces. In the 1930s, Guderian played a significant role in the development of both the panzer division concept and a doctrine of mechanized offensive warfare that would later become known as blitzkrieg. Guderian's 3rd Motor Transport Battalion became the blueprint for the future German armored force. However, his role was less central than he claimed in his memoirs and that historians repeated in the postwar era. Guderian and his immediate superior Lutz had a symbiotic relationship. Both men worked tirelessly with the shared aim of creating a panzer force. Guderian was the public face advocating mechanized warfare and Lutz worked behind the scenes. Guderian reached into the Nazi regime to promote the panzer force concept, attract support and secure resources. This included a demonstration of the concept to Hitler himself. Lutz persuaded, cajoled and compensated for Guderian's often arrogant and argumentative behavior towards his peers. The modern historian Pier Battistelli writes that it is difficult to determine exactly who developed each of the ideas behind the panzer force. Many other officers, such as Walther Nehring and Hermann Breith, were also involved. However, Guderian is widely accepted as having pioneered the communications system developed for the panzer units. The central tenets of blitzkrieg – independence, mass and surprise – were first published in doctrinal statements of mechanized warfare by Lutz. During the autumn of 1936, Lutz asked Guderian to write Achtung – Panzer! He requested a polemical tone that promoted the Mobile Troops Command and strategic mechanized warfare. In the resulting work, Guderian mixed academic lectures, a review of military history and armored warfare theory that partly relied on a 1934 book on the subject by Ludwig von Eimannsberger. While limited, the book was in many respects a success. It contained two important questions which would require answering if the army was to be mechanized: how will the army be supplied with fuel, spares and replacement vehicles; and how to move large mechanized forces, especially those that are road-bound? He answered his own questions in discussions of three broad areas: refueling; spare parts; and access to roads. In 1938, Hitler purged the army of personnel who were unsympathetic to the Nazi regime. Lutz was dismissed and replaced by Guderian. In the spring of that year, Guderian had his first experience of commanding a panzer force during the annexation of Austria. The mobilization was chaotic: tanks ran out of fuel or broke down and the combat value of the formation was non-existent. Had there been any real fighting Guderian would certainly have lost. He stood beside the Führer in Linz as Hitler addressed Germany and Austria in celebration. Afterwards, he set about remedying the problems that the panzer force had encountered. In the last year before the outbreak of World War II, Guderian fostered a closer relationship with Hitler. He attended opera with the Führer and received invitations to dinner. When Neville Chamberlain, in his policy of appeasement, gave Hitler the Sudetenland, it was occupied by Guderian's XVI Motorized Corps. During August, 1939 Guderian took command of the newly formed XIX Army Corps. At short notice he was ordered to spearhead the northern element of the invasion of Poland which began on 1 September. Under his corps command was one of Germany's six panzer divisions; Guderian's corps controlled 14.5 per cent of Germany's armoured fighting vehicles. His task was to advance through the former West Prussian territory (which included his birthplace of Kulm), then travel through East Prussia before heading south towards Warsaw. Guderian used the German concept of "leading forward", which required commanders to move to the battlefront and assess the situation. He made use of modern communication systems by travelling in a radio-equipped command vehicle with which he kept himself in contact with corps command. By 5 September, XIX Corps had linked up with forces advancing west from East Prussia. Guderian had accomplished his first operational victory and he gave a tour of the battlefield to Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. The next day, he shifted his corps across East Prussia to participate in the advance on Warsaw. On 9 September his corps was reinforced by 10 Panzer Division and he continued deeper into Poland, finishing at Brest-Litovsk. In ten days Guderian's XIX Corps advanced 330 kilometres (210 mi), at times against strong resistance. The tank had proven itself to be a powerful weapon, with only 8 destroyed out of 350 employed. On 16 September, Guderian launched an attack on Brest Litovsk; the next day the Soviet Union invaded Poland. He issued an ultimatum to the city—surrender to the Germans or Soviets – the garrison capitulated to the Germans. The Soviet Union's entry into the war shattered Polish morale and Polish forces began to surrender en masse to Guderian's troops. At the conclusion of the campaign, Guderian was awarded a Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The historian Russell Hart writes that Guderian supported the invasion because he "despised the Catholic, Slavic Poles who now occupied parts of his native, beloved Prussia". Foremost in his mind was the "liberation" of his former family estate at Gross-Klonia; Guderian ordered the advance on Gross-Klonia at night and through fog, leading to what he subsequently admitted were "serious casualties". During the invasion, the German military mistreated and killed prisoners of war, ignoring both the Geneva Convention and their own army regulations. Guderian's corps withdrew before the SS began its ethnic cleansing campaign. He learned of murder operations and of Jews being forced into Nazi ghettos from his son, Heinz Günther Guderian, who had witnessed some of them. There is no record of his having made any protest. Guderian was involved in the strategic debates that preceded the invasion of France and the Low Countries. The plan was being developed by his classmate at the 1907 War Academy, Erich von Manstein. The Manstein Plan shifted the weight of the armoured formations away from a head-on attack through the Low Countries to one through the Ardennes. Guderian confidently proclaimed the feasibility of taking armor through the hilly Ardennes Forest and was subsequently told he may have to command the spearhead of the attack himself. He then complained about the lack of resources until he was given seven mechanized divisions with which to accomplish the task. The plan established a force for the penetration of the forest that comprised the largest concentration of German armor to that date: 1,112 out of Germany's total of 2,438 tanks. Guderian's corps spearheaded the drive through the Ardennes and over the Meuse River. He led the attack that broke the French lines at the Battle of Sedan. Guderian's panzer group led the "race to the sea", ending with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French forces trapped at Dunkirk. A British counter-attack at Arras on 21 May slowed down the German advance and allowed the BEF to establish defenses around points of evacuation, while Hitler, conscious of potential reverses and of allowing unsupported armor into urban fighting, issued the order to halt. A general resumption of the attack was ordered on 26 May, but by that time the Allied forces rallied, offering stiff resistance. On 28 May, with his losses mounting, Guderian advised the abandonment of the armoured assault in favor of a traditional artillery-infantry operation. Guderian was then ordered to advance to the Swiss border. The offensive started at the Weygand Line on 9 June and finished on 17 June with the encirclement of the Maginot Line defences and the remaining French forces. Despite the success of the invasion, French defeat was not inevitable; the French had better, more numerous military equipment and were not overwhelmed by a numerically or technologically superior military force. Instead, the French loss stemmed from poor army morale, faulty military strategy and a lack of coordination among Allied troops. Hitler and his generals became overconfident after their historic victory, and came to believe they could defeat the Soviet Union: a country with significantly more natural resources, manpower and industrial capacity. In Guderian's 1937 book Achtung – Panzer! he wrote that "the time has passed when the Russians had no instinct for technology" and that Germany would have to reckon "with the Eastern Question in a form more serious than ever before in history". However, during the planning for Operation Barbarossa—the German invasion of the Soviet Union—he had become optimistic about the supposed superiority of German arms. By May, 1941 Guderian had accepted Hitler's official position that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike. He had accepted some core elements of National Socialism: the Lebensraum concept of territorial expansion and the destruction of the supposed Judeo-Bolshevik threat. Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group began its offensive on 22 June by crossing the Bug River and advancing towards the Dnieper. The combined forces of 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups closed the Minsk pocket, taking 300,000 prisoners before attacking towards Smolensk. Guderian was awarded a Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves on 17 July 1941. Following the conclusion of the Battle of Smolensk, which ended with the encirclement and destruction of the Soviet 16th, 19th and 20th Armies, General Franz Halder, Chief-of-Staff of the OKH, argued in favor of the all-out drive toward Moscow. Halder had Guderian fly to Führer Headquarters to argue the Army's case for continuing the assault against Moscow. Guderian, who had just recently been vehemently opposed to Hitler's plan for the drive to the south, unexpectedly sided with the dictator. This abrupt change of heart angered both Halder and Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group Centre, and turned Guderian into somewhat of a pariah amid Army leaders. By 15 September, German forces including the 1st and 2nd Panzer Groups had completed the largest encirclement in history: the Battle of Kiev. Owing to the 2nd Panzer Group's southward turn during the battle, the Wehrmacht destroyed the entire Southwestern Front east of Kiev, inflicting over 600,000 losses on the Red Army by 26 September. However, the campaign had been costly; the German forces had just half the tanks they had three months earlier. They were bogged down in a war of attrition for which the Wehrmacht was not prepared. Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group was in the worst shape; it had just 21 per cent of its tanks in working order. In mid-September, he was ordered to make a drive for Moscow. On 30 September the Battle of Moscow began. On 4 October, the 4th Panzer Division, part of the 2nd Panzer Group, suffered a severe setback at Mtsensk, near Oryol. Guderian demanded an inquiry into the realities of tank warfare on the Eastern Front, eventually suggesting in November to senior German tank designers and manufacturers that the quickest solution was to produce a direct copy of the Soviet T-34 tank. By November, the attack by the 2nd Panzer Group on Tula and Kashira, 125 km (78 mi) south of Moscow, achieved limited success, while Guderian vacillated between despair and optimism, depending on the situation at the front. Facing pressure from the German High Command, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge finally committed the weaker south flank of his 4th Army to the attack on 1 December. In the aftermath of the battle, Guderian blamed slow commitment of 4th Army to the attack for the German failure to reach Moscow. This assessment grossly overestimated the capabilities of Kluge's remaining forces. It also failed to appreciate the reality that Moscow was a metropolis that German forces lacked the numbers to either encircle or to capture in a frontal assault. In the aftermath of the German failure, Guderian refused to pass on Hitler's 'stand fast' order and fell out with Kluge, the new commander of the Army Group Centre. Guderian was relieved of command on 25 December. The German formations on the Eastern Front ubiquitously implemented the criminal Commissar Order and the Barbarossa Decree. For all divisions within Guderian's panzer group where files are preserved, there is evidence of illegal reprisals against the civilian population. In his memoirs, Guderian denied having given the Commissar Order. However, General Joachim Lemelsen, a corps commander within Guderian's panzer group, is documented as saying "prisoners, who could be shown to have been commissars, had to be immediately taken aside and shot" – and that the order came directly from Guderian. Reporting to the OKW, Guderian is documented as saying his panzer group had "shunted off" 170 commissars by the beginning of August. On 1 March 1943, after the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops. The latter had successfully lobbied to be reinstated, resulting in the new posting. Guderian's responsibilities were to oversee the panzer arm and the training of Germany's panzer forces. He established a collaborative relationship with Albert Speer regarding the manufacture and development of armored fighting vehicles. The military failures of 1943 prevented Guderian from restoring combat power to the armored forces to any significant degree. He had limited success with improved tank destroyers and fixing flaws in the third generation of tanks, the Panther and the Tiger. Operation Citadel, the last major German offensive operation in the east, was an attempt by the German army to regain the initiative. Guderian opposed the offensive, on the grounds that a victory would be extremely costly and would achieve little, saying "it is a matter of profound indifference to the world whether we hold Kursk or not". In a conversation with Hitler prior to the offensive, Guderian said: "Why are we attacking in the east at all this year?" Hitler responded, "You are right. Whenever I think of this attack, my stomach turns over." Guderian concluded, "Then you have the right attitude towards this situation. Leave it alone." Guderian became the Acting Chief of the General Staff of the Army High Command with the responsibility of advising Hitler on the Eastern Front. He replaced General of the Infantry Kurt Zeitzler, who had abandoned the position on 1 July after losing faith in Hitler's judgement and suffering a nervous breakdown. Germany was already heading to inevitable defeat, and Guderian could not shape the military situation nor Hitler's strategic decisions. Hitler placed Guderian in charge of the "Honour Court": a kangaroo court for those accused of involvement in the 20 July Plot. Guderian himself denied any involvement with the plot; nevertheless, he had unexpectedly retired to his estate on the day of the assassination attempt. The court discharged those found guilty of participating in the plot from the armed forces so that they could be tried by the People's Court, set up for the purpose of prosecuting the alleged plotters. Those accused were tortured by the Gestapo and executed by hanging. Some plotters were hanged by a thin hemp rope, by Hitler's direct orders, so that they slowly strangled to death after a lengthy agony. Post-war, Guderian claimed that he had attempted to get out of this duty and that he had found the sessions "repulsive". In reality, Guderian had applied himself to the task with the vigour of a Nazi adherent, which perhaps was due to the desire to deflect attention from himself. Hart writes that he fought to save Rommel's chief of staff, Hans Speidel, because Speidel could have implicated Guderian in the plot. As head of the OKH, Guderian was faced with the pressing issues of the staff work being impacted by arrests, which among the OKH staff and their families eventually ran into the hundreds. Guderian had to fill serious gaps, such as one created by the suicide of General Eduard Wagner, the quartermaster general, in July. Even with vacancies filling up, a key problem remained: too many of the personnel were new to their roles and lacked institutional knowledge, including Guderian himself. Guderian relied heavily on Colonel Johann von Kielmansegg who was the most senior staff officer with experience at the OKH, but he was himself arrested in August. The situation was not improved by Guderian's long-standing bias against the General Staff which he blamed for having allegedly opposed his attempts to introduce modern armored doctrine into the army back in the 1930s. The latter months of 1944 were marked by the ever-increasing strife between the OKH and the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht), as the two organizations competed for resources, especially in the run-up to the last-ditch German December, 1944 offensive on the Western Front. After the war, Guderian blamed Hitler for frittering away the last German reserves in the operation; nonetheless, Germany's strategic situation was such that even twenty or thirty extra divisions would not have helped. Guderian completed the total Nazification of the army general staff with a 29 July order that demanded that all officers join the party. He also made the Nazi salute obligatory throughout the armed forces. He supported the politicization of the military, but failed to see why other officers perceived him as a Nazi. As chief-of-staff of the OKH, Guderian did not object to the orders that Hitler and Himmler issued during the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising nor the atrocities being perpetrated against the civilian population of the city. At a Volkssturm rally in November, 1944, Guderian said that there were "95 million National Socialists who stand behind Adolf Hitler". After the war, Guderian claimed that his actions in the final months as head of the OKH were driven by a search for a solution to Germany's increasingly-bleak prospects. This was supposedly the rationale behind Guderian's plans to turn major urban centers along the Eastern Front into so-called fortress cities (feste Plätze). This fantastical plan had no hope of succeeding against the mobile operations of the Red Army. In any event, most of the "fortresses" were poorly provisioned and staffed by older garrison troops. On 28 March, following the failed operation to retake the town of Küstrin (now Kostrzyn nad Odrą in Poland), Guderian was sent on leave. He was replaced by General Hans Krebs. Guderian cultivated close personal relationships with the most powerful people in the regime. He had an exclusive dinner with Himmler on Christmas Day, 1944. On 6 March 1945, shortly before the end of the war, Guderian participated in a propaganda broadcast that denied the Holocaust; the Red Army in its advance had just liberated several extermination camps. Despite the general's later claims of being anti-Nazi, Hitler most likely found Guderian's values to be closely aligned with Nazi ideology. Hitler brought him out of retirement in 1943 and especially appreciated the orders he issued in the aftermath of the failed plot. Guderian and his staff surrendered to US forces on 10 May 1945. He avoided being convicted as a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials because there was no substantial documentary evidence against him at that time. He answered questions from the Allied forces and denied being an ardent supporter of Nazism. He joined the US Army Historical Division in 1945 and the US refused requests from the Soviet Union to have him extradited. Even after the war, Guderian retained an affinity with Hitler and National Socialism. While interned by the Americans, his conversations were secretly taped. In one such recording, while conversing with former Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and former General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, Guderian opined: "The fundamental principles [of Nazism] were fine". Guderian was released from internment in 1948. Many of his peers were ill-fated. Von Manstein was sentenced to 18 years and Albert Kesselring was given a life sentence. Guderian had informed on his ex-colleagues and co-operated with the Allies, which had helped him evade prosecution. He retired to Schwangau near Füssen in Southern Bavaria and began writing. His most successful book was Panzer Leader. He remained an ardent German nationalist for the rest of his life. Guderian died on 14 May 1954 at the age of 65 and is buried at the Friedhof Hildesheimer Straße in Goslar. After the Second World War, the Central Intelligence Agency was highly interested in using Guderian to rally the German right to the Atlanticist cause. Guderian's post-war autobiography Panzer Leader was a success with the reading public. He cast himself as an innovator and the "father" of the German panzer arm, both before the war and during the blitzkrieg years. This allowed him to re-imagine himself as the master of the blitzkrieg between 1939 and 1941; however, this was an exaggeration. Guderian's German memoirs were first published in 1950. At that time they were the only source on the development of panzer forces, German military records having been misplaced or lost. Consequently, historians based their interpretation of historical events upon Guderian's self-centred autobiography. Subsequent biographers supported the myth and embellished it. In 1952 Guderian's memoirs were reprinted in English. British journalist and military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart gained access to a group of German generals, imprisoned in the No. 1 POW camp in Grizedale Hall in the north of England from 9 August 1945, as a Political Intelligence Department lecturer taking part in the Re-education programme, in an effort to use that to re-establish his reputation as a military theorist and commentator. He asked Guderian to say that he had based his military theories on Liddell Hart's; Guderian obliged. Liddell Hart, in turn, became an advocate for West German rearmament. In newer studies, historians began to question Guderian's memoirs and criticize the myth that they had created. Battistelli, examining Guderian's record, said he was not the father of the panzer arm. He was one of a number of innovators. He stood out from his arguably more able compatriot, Lutz, for two reasons. Firstly, he sought the limelight, and secondly, he fostered a close relationship with Hitler. In portraying himself as the father of blitzkrieg and ingratiating himself with the Americans, he avoided being handed over to the Soviet Union. Battistelli writes that his most remarkable skill was not as a theoretician or commander, it was as an author. His books Achtung-Panzer! and Panzer Leader were a critical and commercial success upon publication and continue to be discussed, researched and analysed many years after his death. Guderian was a capable tactician and technician, leading his troops successfully in the Invasion of Poland, the Battle of France and during the early stages of the invasion of the Soviet Union: especially in the advance to Smolensk and the Battle of Kiev. Liddell Hart writes that most of his success came from positions of substantial advantage, and he was never able to accomplish victory from a position of weakness. Hart suggests that his strengths were outweighed by his deficiencies, such as deliberately creating animosity between his panzer force and the other military arms, with disastrous consequences. His memoirs omitted mention of his military failings and his close relationship with Hitler. James Corum writes in his book The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform that Guderian was an excellent general, a first-rate tactician and a man who played a central role in developing Panzer divisions, irrespective of his memoirs. Freelance historian Pier Battistelli argues that Guderian rewrote history in his memoirs, but notes that the biggest re-writing of history comes not in his putative fathering of the panzer force but in the cover-up of his culpability for war crimes during Operation Barbarossa. Units under his command carried out the Commissar Order, which entailed the murder of Red Army political officers. He also played a large role in the commission of reprisals after the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Like other generals, Guderian's memoirs emphasized his loyalty to Germany and the German people; however, he neglected to mention that Hitler bought this loyalty with bribes, including landed estates and a monthly payment of 2,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁. Guderian wrote in his memoirs that he had been given a Polish estate as a retirement gift. Worth 1.24 million ℛ︁ℳ︁, the estate covered an area of 2,000 acres (810 ha) and it was located at Deipenhof (now Głębokie, Poland) in the Warthegau area of occupied Poland. The occupants had been evicted. Guderian also did not mention that he had initially requested an estate three times larger, but he was turned down by the local Gauleiter, with support from Himmler. The Gauleiter balked at giving such an opulent estate to someone with the rank of only a Colonel-General. In 1950, Guderian published a pamphlet entitled Can Europe Be Defended?, where he lamented that the Western powers had picked the wrong side to ally themselves with during the war, even as Germany "was fighting for its naked existence", as a "defender of Europe" against the supposed Bolshevik menace. Guderian issued apologetics for Hitler, writing: "For one may judge Hitler's acts as one will, in retrospect his struggle was about Europe, even if he made dreadful mistakes and errors". He claimed that only the Nazi civilian administration (not the Wehrmacht) was responsible for atrocities against Soviet civilians, and scapegoated Hitler and the Russian winter for the Wehrmacht's military reverses, as he later did in Panzer Leader; in addition, he wrote that six million Germans died during their expulsion from the Eastern territories by the Soviet Union and its allies, while also writing that the defendants executed at the Nuremberg trials (for war crimes such as the Holocaust) were "defenders of Europe". Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies, in their book The Myth of the Eastern Front, conclude that Guderian's memoirs are full of "egregious untruths, half truths, and omissions", as well as outright "nonsense". Guderian claimed, contrary to historical evidence, that the criminal Commissar Order was not carried out by his troops because it "never reached [his] panzer group". He also lied about the Barbarossa Decree that preemptively exempted German troops from prosecution for crimes committed against Soviet civilians, claiming that it was never carried out either. Guderian claimed to have been solicitous towards the civilian population, that he took pains to preserve Russian cultural objects and that his troops had "liberated" Soviet citizens. David Stahel writes that English-speaking historians too readily presented a distorted image of German generals in the post-war era. In his book Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East, Stahel wrote: "The men in control of Hitler's armies were not honourable men, carrying out their orders as dutiful servants of the state. With resolute support for the regime, the generals unquestioningly waged one war of aggression after the other, and, once Barbarossa began, willingly partook in the genocide of the Nazi regime". Guderian's memoirs remain popular. The favourable descriptions started with the British journalist and military theorist B.H. Liddell Hart, who described Guderian as one of the "Great Captains of History" in a book published by the mass-market Ballantine Books in 1957. As late as 2002, for the 55th anniversary of the first publication of the book, The New York Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker and other outlets published positive reviews, reinforcing the tenets of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. The reviews stressed the separation between the professional soldiers and the Nazi regime, while The New York Times Book Review described the book as one of the best written by former German generals. Kenneth Macksey in his biography eulogized Guderian, inflating his true accomplishments. In 1976, the leading wargaming magazine, Strategy and Tactics, spotlighted Guderian in a featured game of the month called Panzergruppe Guderian. The magazine cover included a photo of Guderian in military dress, with his Knight's Cross and a pair of binoculars, suggesting a commanding role. The magazine featured a glowing profile of Guderian in which he was identified as the originator of blitzkrieg and lauded for his military achievements. Adhering to the postwar myths, the profile posited that a commander like this could "function in any political climate and be unaffected by it". Guderian thus came across as a consummate professional who stood apart from the crimes of the Nazi regime. Guderian, Heinz (1937). Achtung – Panzer! (reissue ed.). Sterling Press. ISBN 0-304-35285-3. Guderian reviews the development of armoured forces in the European nations and Soviet Russia, and describes what he felt was essential for the effective use of armoured forces. Guderian, Heinz (1942). Mit Den Panzern in Ost und West [With the Panzers in the East and West]. Volk & Reich Verlag. OCLC 601435526. Guderian, Heinz (1950). Kann Westeuropa verteidigt werden? [Can Western Europe Be Defended?]. Plesse-Verlag. OCLC 8977019. Guderian, Heinz (1952). Panzer Leader. Da Capo Press Reissue edition, 2001. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81101-4. Originally published in German, titled Erinnerungen eines Soldaten (Memories of a Soldier) (Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, Heidelberg 1950; 10th edition 1977). Iron Cross (1914) 2nd Class (17 September 1914) 1st Class (8 November 1916) Knight 2nd class of the Friedrich Order with Swords (Württemberg) (15 December 1915) Saxe-Ernestine House Order Commander 2nd Class with Swords (1 July 1935) Wehrmacht Long Service Award 1st Class (1 October 1936) Royal Hungarian War Memorial Medal with Swords (14 January 1937) Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 War Memorial Medal with Swords (Austria) (9 March 1937) Anschluss Medal (13 March 1938) Order of St. Sava 1st Class (21 November 1939) Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (5 September 1939) 1st Class (13 September 1939) Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves Knight's Cross on 27 October 1939 as General der Panzertruppe and commanding general of the XIX. Army Corps 24th Oak Leaves on 17 July 1941 as Generaloberst and commander-in-chief of the 2nd Panzer Group Guderian-Plan – for the fortification of the German East Front in 1944

8. Wilhelm Keitel (1882 - 1946)

With an HPI of 75.62, Wilhelm Keitel is the 8th most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 63 different languages.

Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (German pronunciation: [ˈkaɪ̯tl̩]; 22 September 1882 – 16 October 1946) was a German field marshal who held office as chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the high command of Nazi Germany's armed forces, during World War II. He signed a number of criminal orders and directives that led to numerous war crimes. Keitel's rise to the Wehrmacht high command began with his appointment as the head of the Armed Forces Office at the Reich Ministry of War in 1935. Having taken command of the Wehrmacht in 1938, Adolf Hitler replaced the ministry with the OKW and Keitel became its chief. He was reviled among his military colleagues as Hitler's habitual "yes-man". After the war, Keitel was indicted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as one of the "major war criminals". He was found guilty on all counts of the indictment: crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, criminal conspiracy, and war crimes. He was sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1946.

9. Michel Ney (1769 - 1815)

With an HPI of 73.74, Michel Ney is the 9th most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 51 different languages.

Michel Ney, 1st Prince de la Moskowa, 1st Duke of Elchingen (pronounced [miʃɛl nɛ]; 10 January 1769 – 7 December 1815), was a French military commander and Marshal of the Empire who fought in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The son of a cooper from Saarlouis, Ney worked as a civil servant until 1787 when he enlisted in a cavalry regiment, right before the outbreak of French Revolution. Distinguishing himself as a cavalry officer in the War of the First Coalition, he quickly rose through the ranks and, by the Battle of Hohenlinden (1800), he had been promoted to divisional general. On Napoleon's proclamation of the French Empire, Ney was named one of the original 18 Marshals of the Empire. He played an instrumental role during Napoleon's subsequent campaigns, seeing action at Elchingen (1805), Jena (1806) and Eylau (1807). Ney commanded the French rearguard during the disastrous invasion of Russia, for which he was lauded "the bravest of the brave" by the emperor. After Napoleon's defeat by the Sixth Coalition in 1814, Ney pressured the emperor to abdicate and pledged his allegiance to the restored Bourbon monarchy. He rejoined Napoleon during the Hundred Days but met defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (1815), after which he was charged with treason by the restored monarchy and executed by firing squad.

10. Baron Munchausen (1720 - 1797)

With an HPI of 73.59, Baron Munchausen is the 10th most famous German Military Personnel.  His biography has been translated into 52 different languages.

Baron Munchausen (; German: [ˈmʏnçˌhaʊzn̩]) is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The character is loosely based on baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen. Born in Bodenwerder, Hanover, the real-life Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire during the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. After retiring in 1760, he became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career. After hearing some of Münchhausen's stories, Raspe adapted them anonymously into literary form, first in German as ephemeral magazine pieces and then in English as the 1785 book, which was first published in Oxford by a bookseller named Smith. The book was soon translated into other European languages, including a German version expanded by the poet Gottfried August Bürger. The real-life Münchhausen was deeply upset at the development of a fictional character bearing his name, and threatened legal proceedings against the book's publisher. Perhaps fearing a libel suit, Raspe never acknowledged his authorship of the work, which was only established posthumously. The fictional Baron's exploits, narrated in the first person, focus on his impossible achievements as a sportsman, soldier, and traveller; for instance: riding on a cannonball, fighting a forty-foot crocodile, and travelling to the Moon. Intentionally comedic, the stories play on the absurdity and inconsistency of Munchausen's claims, and contain an undercurrent of social satire. The earliest illustrations of the character, perhaps created by Raspe himself, depict Munchausen as slim and youthful, although later illustrators have depicted him as an older man, and have added the sharply beaked nose and twirled moustache that have become part of the character's definitive visual representation. Raspe's book was a major international success, becoming the core text for numerous English, continental European, and American editions that were expanded and rewritten by other writers. The book in its various revised forms remained widely read throughout the 19th century, especially in editions for young readers. Versions of the fictional Baron have appeared on stage, screen, radio, and television, as well as in other literary works. Though the Baron Munchausen stories are no longer well known in many English-speaking countries, they are still popular in continental Europe. The character has inspired numerous memorials and museums, and several medical conditions and other concepts are named after him.