The most famous award for military valor in Germany was established in 1813 - during the wars with Napoleonic France. The Iron Cross was revived with the outbreak of each new German war - in 1870, 1914 and finally in 1939. Hitler only continued and developed the German military tradition. During the Second World War, the Iron Cross was divided into a large number of degrees, and if a little more than seven thousand people received the Knight's Cross, then only one received the Knight's Cross with golden oak leaves, swords and diamonds - an assault pilot aviation Hans Ulrich Rudel. The award was truly democratic - everyone could (and did) receive it: from a private to a field marshal. The soldiers, officers and generals who received the highest degrees of the Knight's Cross were the real elite of the Wehrmacht. They showed miracles of courage, but, unfortunately, only for the sake of the triumph of the misanthropic ideas of National Socialism.