Kaltenegger, Roland Generalfeldmarschall Ferdinand Schörner. Band 1: Vom Pour le mérite zum Ritterkreuz 1892-1943

In two parts, the biography documents the life and military career of German Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner. His military baptism of fire in the First World War and his work in the Weimar Republic are described in detail, along with his rise to power in the Third Reich and the Second World War.

Ferdinand Schörner was born in Munich on 12 June 1892 and spent his childhood and youth here. As the young high school graduate intended to become a teacher, he decided to do his military service as a one-year volunteer with the elite Royal Bavarian Infantry Regiment.
He travelled with it to the First World War as part of the newly formed Alpine Corps. He first attracted attention as a lieutenant in 1917 when he stormed Mount Matajur on the Isonzo Front and was awarded the highest German decoration for valour, the Order of Merit.
In the post-war turmoil, he initially stood up for the democratic order of the Weimar Republic and sided with the government during the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch of 1923. Only later did he become a convinced National Socialist, so that Hitler came to appreciate him more and more as a "persevering general".
During the Balkan campaign, Schörner marched into the Greek capital with his 6th Mountain Division in 1941 as the "victor of Athens". Due to his fearless leadership and iron toughness, he was transferred to the Arctic Ocean front in autumn 1941, where he saved the legendary Lapland Army from a "Stalingrad of the North".
In the war years from 1943 to 1945, he finally rose to become the only field marshal of the German mountain troops. Volume II of this first comprehensive and scientifically sound biography of one of the most controversial German army leaders of the Second World War covers these years up to his death in 1973.