List of Knight's Cross recipients 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian)

The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) was one of the thirty-eight divisions fielded as part of the Waffen-SS during World War II. The Handschar division was a mountain infantry formation. They were used to conduct operations against Yugoslav Partisans in the puppet state of Nazi Germany known as "Independent State of Croatia" from February to December 1944 and spent the remainder of the war fighting against the advancing Soviets in southern Hungary. Sixty percent of its recruits were composed of Muslim Bosniaks, gradually supplemented by ethnic Albanians and Catholic Croatians, while the rest were Yugoslav Volksdeutsche who made up the majority of its officers and NCOs.

Contents

• Grades
• Recipients
• References

The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its higher grades were based on four separate enactments. The first enactment Reichsgesetzblatt I S. 1573 of September 1, 1939 instituted the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. As the war progressed some of the recipients distinguished themselves further and a higher grade, the Oak Leaves to Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was instituted. To qualify for the Knight's Cross, a soldier had to already hold the 1939 Iron Cross First Class, though the Iron Cross I Class was awarded concurrently with the Knight's Cross in rare cases. Unit commanders could also be awarded the medal for exemplary conduct by the unit as a whole. The Oak Leaves, as they were commonly referred to, were based on the enactment Reichsgesetzblatt I S. 849 of June 3, 1940. In 1941 two higher grades of the Knight's Cross were instituted. The enactment Reichsgesetzblatt I S. 613 of September 28, 1941 introduced the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. At the end of 1944 the last and final grade, the Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, based on the enactment Reichsgesetzblatt 1945 I S. 11 of December 29, 1944 concluded the variants of the Knight's Cross.