The Fรผhrer awarded General Theodor Eicke of the Waffen-SS, commander of an SS division, the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and sent him the following telegram: "In grateful appreciation of your heroic service in the fight for the future of our people, I award you, as the 88th soldier of the German Wehrmacht, the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Adolf Hitler."
While Obergruppenfรผhrer Eicke had already demonstrated in the Western Campaign what he was capable of with his fast-moving division, which was his own creation from its inception, he showed during the far longer and more arduous war in the East how perfectly at home he was. It was a situation of almost utter hopelessness that he mastered like few others; indeed, it was under this very duress that his strength seemed to grow to superhuman proportions. This embodies all the bull-neckedness of a fighter from Germany's darkest period, a fighter of a perseverance and loyalty such as we often encounter only in old songs, with a similarly simple beauty. It is now an open secret what an inferno he endured with his division and with considerable portions of the Wehrmacht that were placed under his command during this time. When the Bolsheviks, after weeks of a terrible winter battle, demanded his final surrender with a shield they had placed in front of our lines by a reconnaissance patrol, he answered on the same shield with a phrase that, while often used, was nonetheless remarkable. Obergruppenfรผhrer Eicke is a figure in the German military world for whom few of the usual measures would be appropriate. He is a soldier of the finest tradition and at the same time a thoroughly political activist; he is a man of culture and taste and can also be what we understand as an old warhorse of the fighting era. We know him as a man of great vision and clarity of thought, yet also as gruff and blunt towards the small things of everyday life. It would not be easy to do justice to a personality like Obergruppenfรผhrer Eicke within the framework of a report on the high and well-deserved honor bestowed upon him by the Fรผhrer. These lines cannot make such a claim. Rather, their author is content to merely stimulate his comrades to certain thoughts that are not fleeting. Thoughts about a man who deserves it as much as SS-Obergruppenfรผhrer Theodor Eicke.
Source: BArch N 756/119b Das Schwarze Korps "Das Eickenlaub fรผr Eicke", Folge 18, 30. April 1942 p.77
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