
Erhard Raus (8 January 1889 – 3 April 1956) was a Colonel-General of the German Wehrmacht during World War II. Originally from Austria, Raus was known as a panzer commander during the war with the Soviet Union.
Biography[]
Erhard Raus was born on 8 January 1889 in Wolframitz, Austria-Hungary, and he entered the military in 1909, seeing action in World War I. Raus would join the Wehrmacht armed forces of Nazi Germany after the Anschluss in 1938, and he became the commander of the 6th Panzer Division on 7 September 1941. His group took part in the Battle of Moscow in December 1941 during Operation Barbarossa, and he organized the Axis withdrawal from the Dnieper River in the aftermath of the Battle of Kursk. In December 1943, he became the acting commander of the 4th Panzer Army before leading two more panzer armies and a panzer corps. After the war, he wrote books on tank strategies, and he died in 1956; he was buried in Vienna, Austria with full military honors.