Generalmajor Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikowski was a dressage rider who won the gold medal with the German team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and finished 10th in the individual competition. A professional soldier, he was a front officer in World War I and in 1920 joined the German Reichswehr. After World War II he was a civil engineering consultant involved in the reconstruction of the German Bundeswehr. In 1964 he worked as a riding instructor for the Canadian Olympic dressage team.
At the beginning of the World War II von Oppeln-Bronikowski was commander of the reconnaissance battalion of the infantry division in Poland, and from 1941-45 as a tank commander of the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. After a war injury in 1943 he became commander of a tank division in Normandy in 1944, and in 1945 was appointed Generalmajor tank commander during the battles in Silesia. In April 1945, with his units at the Battle of Bautzen, he engaged in a successful campaign to complete the re-capture of the partially occupied city. After the German capitulation on 8 May 1945 Oppeln-Bronikowski first went into American, and then British captivity, from which he was released in 1947.
Germany