Paul Hausser also known as Paul Falk after taking his maiden name post war (7 October 1880 – 21 December 1972) was a German general and then a high-ranking commander in the Waffen-SS who played a key role in the post-war 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. Hausser was the highest-ranking officer in the Waffen-SS alongside Sepp Dietrich. Unlike Dietrich, Hausser was a trained staff officer before joining the SS. After the war he became a founding member and the first spokesperson of HIAG, a lobby group and a revisionist 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 ahistorical notions have since been discredited by historians. Early life and military career Hausser was born on 7 October 1880 in Brandenburg an der Havel into a Prussian military family and entered the army in 1892. In 1899, he graduated from a cadet academy and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 155th (7th West Prussian) Infantry Regiment. Hausser graduated from the Prussian Military Academy in Berlin in 1911. Hausser married Elisabeth Gerard in 1912; the couple had one daughter who was born in December 1913. They remained married until his death in 1972. During World War I he served in the German General Staff and in staff roles on the Eastern Front, primarily serving with the 109th Infantry Division between 1916 and 1918. He was promoted to major in 1918 and was retained in the postwar Reichswehr, reaching the