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
1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler of 1942 refitting as a "panzergrenadier" division. Thanks to the efforts of "Reichsführer-SS" Heinrich Himmler, along with SS-"Obergruppenführer" Paul Hausser, the SS Panzer Corps commander, the three "SS Panzergrenadier" divisions (LSSAH), "Das Reich" and "Totenkopf" were to be formed with a full regiment of tanks rather than only a Battalion. This meant that the "SS Panzergrenadier" divisions were full-strength Panzer divisions in all but name. The division also received nine Tiger 1 tanks, and these were formed into the 13th ("schwere") Company/1st "SS Panzer Regiment". The collapse of the front around Stalingrad and the encirclement of the German Sixth Army