Ferdinand Piëch Ferdinand Piëch Ferdinand Karl Piëch (born 17 April 1937) is an Austrian business magnate, engineer and executive who was the chairman of the executive board ("Vorstandsvorsitzender") of Volkswagen Group in 1993-2002 and the chairman of the supervisory board ("Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender") of Volkswagen Group in 2002-2015. A grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, Piëch started his career at Porsche, before leaving for Audi after an agreement that no member of the Porsche or Piëch families should be involved in the day-to-day operations of the Porsche company. Piëch eventually became the head of Audi, where he is credited with evolving and growing Audi into a
Waffen-SS and during the Soviet counter-offensive were withdrawn to France to recover and be reformed as Panzergrenadier divisions. Due to the efforts of Himmler and "Obergruppenführer" Paul Hausser, the new commander of the SS Panzer Corps, the three SS Panzergrenadier divisions "Leibstandarte", "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. They each received nine Tiger tanks, which were formed into the heavy panzer companies. The Soviet offensive of January 1942 trapped a number of German