FERDINAND ‘THE BLOODY’
HITLER’S DOGMATIC ‘YES MAN’?
He was denigrated by his comrades as ‘the Fuhrer’s lacky’, but Schörner sometimes disobeyed his leader
Schörner with the German leader in his Berlin bunker in 1945 – one of the last photos of the dictator before his suicide
Images: Alamy, Getty
In his book In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier’s Memoir of the Eastern Front, Gottlob Herbert Bidermann says of Schörner: “There was one generaloberst in particular whose highly esteemed rank insignia could… only be credited to the golden party badge he wore… placing his loyalty to the National Socialist Party above his loyalty to his troops whose lives were entrusted to him.”