Iron Cross

They're ignorant.

Hitler was just a corporal in the army, despite having an Iron Cross.

And he's absolutely right.

Too superficial, short-sighted and biased judgments.

Nathexen, night witches, and they took them seriously.

A German pilot credited with shooting down one of these aircraft received the Iron Cross.

The Wehrmacht considered it a significant enough achievement to warrant that decoration.

Think about what that means.

A biplane trainer from 1927, they were giving out the Iron Cross to pilots who could find and kill one in the dark.

Nadia Popova flew 852 combat missions with the 588th.

852.

I fought for the fatherland in the First World War.

I have the Iron Cross.

Nothing can happen to me.

Well, they had a very rude awakening.

In July 1942, Mengele was caught up in bloody fighting against Russians on the Eastern Front.

It was here that the valiant rescue of wounded men from a burning tank earned Mengele the Iron Cross first class.

But Mengele's talents were soon deemed too great for the Russian front.

He had since his student days fostered a keen interest in the science of racial purity.

And actually, they'd fought for the Finns on the Russian front.

A number of them were awarded Iron Crosses from the Germans, but there was cases of them refusing them.

Really? Whether the Finns had made them aware that these were Jewish soldiers or not is unclear.

There's not a huge amount about it.

As we advanced, Leutnant Reinecke could be heard shouting, ''Forwards!'' from a dugout in the support line.

July 15th, Leutnant Reinecke has received the Iron Cross.

Now, sometimes friendly overtures from Germans opposite were misunderstood or it led to confusion, didn't it?

What do I mean? Well, some of the British units that wouldn't be directly involved in those overtures wouldn't actually understand what was going on.

And this is what Major William Lowe of the 18th Durham Light Infantry tells us.

It was a custom to pull the Bosch's leg.

On November 5th, an effigy of the Kaiser was displayed in German uniform with a large cardboard iron cross complete.

There was one unfortunate incident.

And here's the twist.

Just a few months earlier, the same German army that's about to execute her as a spy had given her the Iron Cross for her nursing because she was taking care of German soldiers.

So they decorated her, and then they tried to shoot her.

That's not exactly a Hollywood pitch, Dan.

And then something happens.

Her death sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.

And they did that specifically because of the Iron Cross.

She had been awarded by the Germans themselves for all the nursing work she'd been doing.

Um, yeah, it re- it resembles an X, but they looked straight up, so it looked a lot more like a, like a knights maltese-

Iron cross?

Yes.

Yeah, I, I like the iron cross.

Pretty cool.

Yeah.

One of the most famous of the imams was a Bosniak named Halim Malic.

He held the Iron Cross and a slew of other awards.

So these guys weren't just actors or stand-in propaganda elements.

And it also, this is a level of religious formalized, religious hierarchy and institutionalization, which basically, there's something brilliant about it.