Ferdinand Porsche Nazi Party and allegedly the SS. He was a recipient of the German National Prize for Art and Science, the SS-Ehrenring and the War Merit Cross, and was called the "Great German Engineer" by Nazi officials. Porsche was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996 and won the Car Engineer of the Century award in 1999. Ferdinand Porsche was born to ethnic German parents in Liberec (), northern Bohemia, part of the Austrian Empire at that time, and today part of the Czech Republic. Ferdinand was his parents' third child. His father, Anton Porsche, was a master
Panzer ace by the Waffen-SS as part of its contributions to Nazi Germany's propaganda campaigns. In most German Army ("Heer") units, tank crews and commanders generally received awards for mission performance rather than tank kills. German highly decorated tank commanders were most often soldiers who served in units equipped with Tiger I or Tiger II tanks between mid-1943 and mid-1944. The Allies did not have any tanks capable of easily defeating the Tigers during this period. Few soldiers who operated Panther tanks at this time received the same high decorations, as these tanks were more vulnerable to Allied tanks and less mechanically