Commander of the reconnaissance battalion (Aufklärungsabteilung) of the SS motorized infantry brigade "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" (SS-Infanterie-Brigade (mot) "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler") Knight's Cross Sturmbannführer SS Kurt
Kurt Meyer (Kurt Adolf Wilhelm Meyer; 12/23/1910 - 12/23/1961) was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on June 19, 1941 for successfully commanding a battalion during the Greek campaign. Subsequently, he was awarded Oak Leaves for the capture of Kharkov in March 1943 and Swords for the battles in Normandy in 1944. In June 1944, after the death of Fritz Witt (Fritz Witt; 05/27/1908 - 06/14/1944) in the rank of SS Standartenfuehrer, Mayer was appointed commander of the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend" (12. SS-Panzer-Division "Hitlerjugend"), becoming the youngest divisional commander in the entire German army. Mayer was promoted to SS Brigadeführer on 25 August.
On September 6, 1944, the car in which Meyer was driving was ambushed, he managed to escape with the driver Max Bornheft, but they were surrounded by Belgian partisans in the village of Durnal, the wounded driver and Meyer were captured. Later, Mayer was beaten by American soldiers tore off the Knight's Cross. Then Mayer and Bornheft were sent to Namur, where Bornheft was shot by the Belgians. Mayer himself miraculously escaped identification as an SS man and imminent reprisals, destroying his documents and introducing himself as a colonel of the 2nd Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht (probably helped by the fact that he was wearing a camouflage suit without any insignia, presumably made from captured Italian fabric - that is, not similar in color to the SS).
In December 1945, a Canadian military tribunal found Mayer guilty of inciting his troops to mercilessly against the enemy and for killing him by troops of eighteen Canadian prisoners at the Abbaye Ardenne, but was acquitted of a direct order to kill prisoners of war. This served as the basis for the appeal and the commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment.
The USSR also wanted to get Mayer into its own hands for the court, because he was suspected of committing war crimes on the territory of the Kharkov region in 1943, but nothing came of it. As a result, Mayer was transported to Canada to serve his sentence, in 1951 he was transferred to a British military prison on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Mayer spent a total of 9 years in prison, after which he was pardoned by the FRG authorities.
