1st class

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem "First they came ...". The poem exists in many versions; the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me."
Niemöller was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite. He became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches. He opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk (German: [ˈfʁants fɔn ˈpaːpn̩] ; 29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) was a German conservative politician, reactionary, diplomat, Prussian nobleman and General Staff officer. He served as the chancellor of Germany in 1932, and then as the vice-chancellor under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1934.
Born into a wealthy family of Westphalian Catholic aristocrats, Papen served in the Prussian Army from 1898 onward and was trained as a German General Staff officer. He served as military attaché in Mexico and the United States from 1913 to 1915, while also covertly organising acts of sabotage in the United States and quietly backing and financing Mexican forces in the Mexican Revolution on behalf of German military intelligence.
After being expelled as persona non grata by the United States State Department in 1915, he served as a battalion commander on the Western Front of World War I and finished his war service in the Middle Eastern theatre as a lieutenant colonel.
Asked to become chancellor of the Weimar Republic by President Paul von Hindenburg in 1932, Papen ruled by presidential decree. He launched the Preußenschlag coup against the Social Democratic Party-led Government in the Free State of Prussia. His failure to secure a base of support in the Reichstag led to his removal by Hindenburg and replacement by General Kurt von Schleicher.
Determined to return to power, Papen, believing that Adolf Hitler could be controlled once he was in the government, pressured Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor and Papen as vice-chancellor in 1933 in a cabinet ostensibly not under Nazi Party domination. Seeing military dictatorship as the only alternative to a Nazi Party chancellor, Hindenburg consented. Papen and his allies were quickly marginalized by Hitler and he left the government after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, during which the Nazis killed some of his allies and confidants. Subsequently, Papen served the German Foreign Office as the ambassador in Vienna from 1934 to 1938 and in Ankara from 1939 to 1944. He joined the Nazi Party in 1938.After the Second World War, Papen was indicted for Nazi war crimes in the Nuremberg trials before the International Military Tribunal but was acquitted of all charges. In 1947, a West German denazification court found Papen to have acted as the main culprit in crimes relating to the Nazi government. Papen was given a sentence of eight years' imprisonment at hard labour, but was released on appeal in 1949. Franz von Papen's memoirs were published in 1952 and 1953; he died in 1969.

Alexander I (Russian: Александр I Павлович, romanized: Aleksandr I Pavlovich, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsandr ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ]; 23 December [O.S. 12 December] 1777 – 1 December [O.S. 19 November] 1825), nicknamed "the Blessed", was Emperor of Russia from 1801, the first king of Congress Poland from 1815, and the grand duke of Finland from 1809 to his death in 1825. He was the eldest son of Emperor Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg.
The son of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Paul I, Alexander succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered. He ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars. As prince and during the early years of his reign, Alexander often used liberal rhetoric, but continued Russia's absolutist policies in practice. In the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social reforms and (in 1803–04) major liberal educational reforms, such as building more universities. Alexander appointed Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest, as one of his closest advisors. The Collegia were abolished and replaced by the State Council, which was created to improve legislation. Plans were also made to set up a parliament and sign a constitution. Alexander also was hostile towards European powers. Unlike his predecessors who tried to westernize Russia so it could compete with European nations, Alexander was a Russian nationalist and Slavophilist who wanted Russia to develop on the basis of Russian culture rather than European.
In foreign policy, he changed Russia's position towards France four times between 1804 and 1812 among neutrality, opposition, and alliance. In 1805 he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after suffering massive defeats at the battles of Austerlitz and Friedland, he switched sides and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and joined Napoleon's Continental System. He fought a small-scale naval war against Britain between 1807 and 1812 as well as a short war against Sweden (1808–09) after Sweden's refusal to join the Continental System. Alexander and Napoleon hardly agreed, especially regarding Poland, and the alliance collapsed by 1810. Alexander's greatest triumph came in 1812 when Napoleon's invasion of Russia proved to be a catastrophic disaster for the French. As part of the winning coalition against Napoleon, he gained territory in Finland and Poland. He formed the Holy Alliance to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe which he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He also helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements.
During the second half of his reign, Alexander became increasingly arbitrary, reactionary, and fearful of plots against him; as a result he ended many of the reforms he made earlier. He purged schools of foreign teachers, as education became more religiously driven as well as politically conservative. Speransky was replaced as advisor with the strict artillery inspector Aleksey Arakcheyev, who oversaw the creation of military settlements. Alexander died of typhus in December 1825 while on a trip to southern Russia. He left no legitimate children, as his two daughters died in childhood. Neither of his brothers wanted to become emperor. After a period of great confusion (that presaged the failed Decembrist revolt of liberal army officers in the weeks after his death), he was succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I.

Johannes Streich (16 April 1891 – 20 August 1977) was a German general in the Wehrmacht during World War II who commanded the 5th Light Division during the early stages of the North African Campaign. Sacked for his poor performance during the Siege of Tobruk, he later briefly commanded the 16th Motorised Infantry Division during the advance on Moscow. A veteran of World War I, he was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

Bernhard Gottfried Max Hugo Eberhard, Graf von Schmettow, usually shortened to Eberhard Graf von Schmettow, (17 September 1861 – 21 January 1935) was a German general of World War I.

Nina Frisak (born 28 November 1950) is a Norwegian judge and civil servant. She was the Secretary to the Government from 2001 to 2016.She was born in Oslo. She graduated from the University of Oslo with the cand.jur. degree in 1977, and was a lawyer's trainee in London from 1977 to 1978 and in Oslo from 1979 to 1981. She then worked as an assistant secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police from 1981 to 1988. From 1988 to 1991 she was a lawyer in the Nordisk Defence Club. She was then a presiding judge in Eidsivating Court of Appeal from 1991 to 1995, went back to the bureaucracy as deputy under-secretary of state in the Norwegian Office of the Prime Minister from 1995 to 2000, and then became a judge again; a Supreme Court Justice from 2000 to 2001.In 2001 she was hired as permanent under-secretary of state in the Office of the Prime Minister, succeeding Bjørn T. Grydeland. This particular position was not called permanent under-secretary; rather Secretary General at the Office of the Prime Minister, but in November 2001 the name was changed to Secretary to the Government (Norwegian: regjeringsråd). The position is the highest-ranking civil servant position in Norway, and entails, besides leading the Office of the Prime Minister, to lead the secretariat of the entire Council of State. The first woman to hold this position, Frisak has been ranked among Norway's most powerful women on numerous occasions. The position is non-partisan.
Frisak is also the chancellor for the committee that awards the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. She was decorated as a Commander with Star of the Order in 2004. Frisak is holds the Grand Cross (First Class) of the Estonian Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana.
She is married to former organizational leader Øystein Dahle.

Otto Treßler, also Otto Tressler, (13 April 1871 – 27 April 1965) was a German-Austrian stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 40 films between 1915 and 1962. He was born in Stuttgart, Germany and died in Vienna, Austria. He was a close friend to Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria.

Rudolf Veiel (10 December 1883 – 19 March 1956) was a German general (General der Panzertruppe) during World War II.

Hermann Geyer (7 July 1882 – 10 April 1946) was a German general during World War II who commanded the IX Army Corps. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross of Nazi Germany. Geyer retired in 1943 and committed suicide in 1946.

Alfred Gause (14 February 1896 – 30 September 1967) was a German general during World War II.
Gause took part in World War I, and was awarded both the Iron Cross, both Second and First Class. In the interwar years he was among the 4,000 officers selected to remain in the Reichswehr, the restricted sized German army. He served primarily on the staff of the First Prussian Engineer battalion.During the Second World War he was a highly valued staff officer. Gause was initially sent to Africa with a large staff by Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), the German Army High Command, to act as a liaison officer with the Italian high command, Comando Supremo. Gause had specific instructions not to place himself under the command of Erwin Rommel, but did so when Rommel told him categorically that the command of all troops in Africa were vested in him. This was not correct, but Gause acceded to Rommel's authority, and served as his chief of staff. He proved invaluable to the famous desert commander, who was well known to direct his forces from the front and who frequently would lose touch with his command staff during operations. Gause spent two and a half years serving Rommel in the Afrika Korps. Though initially sent by OKH to keep an eye on the independent commander, they soon developed an excellent working relationship. In December, 1941 Gause was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. In early May 1943 he was rotated into the officer reserve force, and thus was off the continent when the Axis forces in Africa surrendered.

Gause rejoined Rommel in his postings in Italy and Northern France. In September 1944 he became Chief of Staff of the 6th Panzer Army, which he held through the end of November. In April he was assigned to Generalkommando II Armeekorps in Kurland (General staff of Army Corps, Kurland). Alfred Gause was captured by Soviet troops in the Courland Pocket in 1945 and was a prisoner of the Soviets until his release in 1955.