Ferdinand Schörner, German field marshal (b. 1892)
Ferdinand Schörner (12 June 1892 – 2 July 1973) was a German military commander who held the rank of Generalfeldmarschall in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. He commanded several army groups and was the last Commander-in-chief of the German Army.
Schörner is commonly represented in historical literature as a simple disciplinarian and a slavish devotee of Adolf Hitler's defensive orders, after Germany lost the initiative in the second half of World War II in 1942/43. More recent research by American historian Howard Davis Grier and German historian Karl-Heinz Frieser depicts Schörner as a talented commander with "astonishing" organizational ability in managing an army group of 500,000 men during the fighting in late 1944 on the Eastern Front. He was harsh against superiors as well as subordinates and carried out operations on his own authority against Hitler's orders when he considered it necessary, such as the evacuation of the Sõrve Peninsula.Schörner was a dedicated Nazi and became well known for his ruthlessness. By the end of World War II, he was Hitler's favourite commander. Following the war he was convicted of war crimes by courts in the Soviet Union, and West Germany, and was imprisoned in the Soviet Union, East Germany and West Germany. At his death in 1973 he was the last living German field marshal. He is also considered by historians to be one of the main reasons why the German military did away with the rank of field marshal altogether.