Paul Hausser

Paul Hausser, also known by his birth name Paul Falk post war (7 October 1880 – 21 December 1972), was a German general and, together with Sepp Dietrich, one of the two highest ranking commanders in the Waffen-SS. He played a key role in the post-war revisionist efforts by former members of the Waffen-SS to achieve historical and legal rehabilitation.

Hausser served as an officer in the Prussian Army during World War I and attained the rank of general in the inter-war Reichsheer. After retirement, he joined the SS and was instrumental in forming the Waffen-SS. During World War II, he rose to the level of army group commander. He led Waffen-SS troops in the Third Battle of Kharkov, the Battle of Kursk and the Normandy Campaign.

After the war he became a founding member and the first spokesperson of HIAG, a lobby group and a negationist veterans' organisation, founded by former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel in West Germany in 1951. It campaigned for the restoration of legal and economic rights of the Waffen-SS employing a multi-prong propaganda campaign to achieve its aims.

Hausser wrote two books, arguing the purely military role of the Waffen-SS and advancing the notion that its troops were "soldiers like any other", according to the title of the second book. Under Hausser's leadership, HIAG reshaped the image of the Waffen-SS as a so-called pan-European force that fought honorably and had no part in war crimes or Nazi atrocities. These notions have been rejected by mainstream historians.