Anton Grasser
German General and Knight's Cross recipients (1891–1976)

Anton Grasser (3 November 1891 – 3 November 1976) was a German general during World War II who commanded several corps. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. Grasser joined the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Guards) in 1951, retiring in 1953.
In the 1950s, Grasser was involved in organizing an illegal underground army set up by Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans in the event of a Soviet invasion of West Germany. Grasser's role, as inspector general of the police and border police, was to provide this secret army with weapons from the police force in case of war. Grasser was connected to it through Albert Schnez, its leader, who had been Grasser's employer in the first post-war years.
Awards and decorations
Iron Cross (1914) 2nd Class (18 June 1915) & 1st Class (6 June 1916)
Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (21 May 1940) & 1st Class (8 June 1940)
German Cross in Gold on 11 March 1943 as Generalleutnant and commander of 25. Infanterie-Division
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
Knight's Cross on 16 June 1940 as Oberstleutnant and commander of Infanterie-Regiment 119
Oak Leaves on 5 December 1943 as Generalleutnant and commander of 25.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Anton Grasser” is german General and Knight's Cross recipients (1891–1976). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Anton, Grasser and German, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anton Grasser” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.