Gustav Knittel

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Gustav Knittel (born November 27, 1914 in Neu-Ulm , † June 30, 1976 in Ulm ) was a German SS leader of the Waffen-SS and war criminal .

Life

Knittel was born in 1914 and joined the SS (membership number 111.507) and the NSDAP (membership number 2.242.615) in the spring of 1933 . He attended the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz and courses in the Dachau concentration camp . In 1938 he was involved in the occupation of the Sudetenland as SS-Untersturmführer of the SS Regiment Germany ; later he was an adjutant in the SS motorcycle rifle reserve battalion in Ellwangen . During the French campaign he was chief of the heavy company of the reconnaissance department of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler .

Combat missions followed in the Balkan campaign and in Greece. During the German-Soviet War he was wounded in 1941 and awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class. In March 1942 he came back to the front as head of an armored company of the reconnaissance department of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. At the Battle of Kharkov in 1942 he participated in a relief attack to the 298th Infantry Division and further advances against the Red Army .

In February 1943, members of Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler's intelligence department murdered numerous civilians in the Ukrainian villages of Yefremovka and Semyonovka. 827 men, women and children were murdered, some of them burned alive in the church in Yefremovka. However, it has not yet been clearly proven that Knittel personally took part in this campaign. According to his files, he was wounded in fighting on the Bereka River on February 15 and was in a hospital at the time of the massacre.

In June 1944, Knittel served as the commander of SS Panzer Reconnaissance Department 1 in Normandy , and later he was commander of the SS field replacement battalion of Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. In December 1944, Knittel was a combat commander, now with the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer , involved in the Ardennes offensive . On the orders of Wilhelm Mohnke , Knittel led the Schnellgruppe Knittel or Kampfgruppe Knittel . This unit, the size of a battalion, was supposed to work with other SS units such as the Combat Group Peiper against the Allied troops and push them back. On December 17, the second day of the offensive, soldiers from Knittel's combat group shot 11 African American GIs in the Wereth massacre . Numerous shootings of Belgian civilians and also of prisoners by Knittel's men followed. a. at Trois-Ponts, Parfondruy, Renardmont and Stavelot. Overall, the number of civilians who were murdered in the combat area of ​​the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler is estimated to be over 250. Most of them were carried out by soldiers who were subordinate to Knittel. The advance of the Germans quickly got stuck, the Knittel fighting group suffered heavy losses at the end of December 1944 on the Amel by the 3rd Armored Division and the 30th Infantry Division . The remaining soldiers withdrew to the east and later to the Bastogne area. Knittel's command post at Vielsalm was bombed by the USAAF on December 31 , causing severe traumatic brain injury .

After a long stay in a hospital, he withdrew in May 1945 so as not to be taken prisoner of war . He made his way to Ulm and then to Stuttgart , where he hid on a farm. In January 1946 he was arrested there by members of the Counter Intelligence Corps , including Michel Thomas . He was interned in a prison camp near Schwäbisch Hall . Participation in the Malmedy massacre could be excluded, but he admitted to having ordered the execution of 8 American prisoners of war at Trois-Ponts on December 21, 1944 . He was sentenced to life imprisonment by a military tribunal , but the sentence was later reduced to 15 and 12 years, respectively. Knittel was pardoned and released in 1953 . He then worked as a car salesman at Opel and died in 1976 in a hospital in Ulm.

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ War diary LAH RS / 1215 (Federal Archives-Military Archives)
  2. ^ Timo R. Worst: Career, crimes and trial of SS-Sturmbannführer Gustav Knittel. 2016.
  3. ^ Danny S. Parker: Hitler's Warrior: The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper. 2014.
  4. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Knittel, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer of the Waffen SS and war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH New Ulm
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1976
Place of death Ulm