| Eduard Dietl |
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Lieutenant General Eduard Dietl (Born 21 July 1890 , Bad Aibling , Died 23 June 1944 , Styria ) commanded the German 3rd Mountain Division that participated in the German Invasion Of Norway on April 9 and 10, 1940. Most of this division was landed at Narvik by a German naval force of ten Destroyer s, commanded by Commodore Friedrich Bonte , on 9 April. British naval forces led by the battleship Warspite destroyed all ten destroyers that had ferried Dietl's troops to Narvik and managed to recapture the town, but Dietl's mountaineers withdrew into the hills and later retook the town when Britain abandoned her efforts to evict the Germans from Norway. A convinced Nazi of the first hour, he was one of Hitler's favorite generals, the first German soldier to receive, on 19 June 1940, the oak leaves cluster to the Knight's Cross . Dietl subsequently commanded German forces in Norway and Finland and in Eastern Europe and rose to the rank of Generaloberst (four-star general), commanding an army on the Eastern Front. He died on 23 June 1944 in a plane crash. |
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