Maurice Rose (26 November 1899-30 March 1945) was a Major-General of the US Army who fought in World War I and World War II. Rose was killed-in-action during the last few months of the war near Paderborn, Germany; at the time, he was the highest-ranking Jew in the US military.
Biography[]
Maurice Rose was born on 26 November 1899 in Middletown, Connecticut, but he was educated in Denver, Colorado. In 1916 he enlisted in the Colorado National Guard in hopes of joining the Pancho Villa Expedition, but it was found out that he was underage and he was kicked out. In 1917, however, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant of the US Army and served with the US 89th Infantry Division in France in World War I and was wounded at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel before fighting in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. In 1940, he graduated from the Army Industrial College after attending several other military schools, and in World War II he served in three armored divisions. In August 1944, he was given command of the US 3rd Armored Division and was promoted to Major-General, and his unit was the first to penetrate Nazi Germany's Siegfried Line. On 30 March 1945, his convoy was ambushed by Wehrmacht troops near Paderborn, Germany, and Rose's jeep crashed. When a German soldier moved towards him with a machine-pistol, Rose attempted to reach for his gun, leading to the German killing him. They did not search the jeep, and they were unaware that they had just killed a general. Rose was the highest-ranking American officer killed on the Western Front of World War II, and Joseph Lawton Collins said that he was the "top-notch division commander" at the time of his death.