21 Facts About Gustav Knittel

Gustav Knittel was a Sturmbannfuhrer in the SS Division Leibstandarte who was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

Gustav Knittel attended the SS-Junkerschule Bad Tolz as an SS officer candidate on 1 October 1937 and successfully took his final exams on 28 July 1938.

Subsequent Gustav Knittel was sent on a platoon leader course at SS training camp Dachau adjacent to the infamous Dachau concentration camp.

Gustav Knittel served with various SS units before becoming adjutant of SS Reserve Battalion Ellwangen in August 1939.

Gustav Knittel was then posted as commander of the heavy company in the reconnaissance battalion of the LSSAH.

Gustav Knittel led his company during the drive of the Leibstandarte on Zhytomyr; he was wounded on 11 July 1941.

Gustav Knittel led this company during the Third Battle of Kharkov and distinguished himself between 2 and 4 February 1943.

Gustav Knittel made contact with this division in Shevchenkove, was cut off by the advancing Red Army but fought his way back to the German lines with his battlegroup and a group of Wehrmacht soldiers.

Gustav Knittel found Bereka occupied by the Red Army and he was wounded in the following attack.

Gustav Knittel set up his command post in the Antoine Farm west of Stavelot.

In May 1945 Gustav Knittel returned to his family in Neu-Ulm but soon decided to hide on a farm near Stuttgart.

Gustav Knittel returned to his hometown later that year but when he met with his wife on 5 January 1946 he was captured by Counter Intelligence Corps agents Michel Thomas and Theodore Kraus.

Gustav Knittel was detained by the CIC in Ulm and interrogated by Thomas.

Gustav Knittel later claimed that he was physically abused by his guards, which Thomas denied.

However, Gustav Knittel was questioned about war crimes in the Stavelot area.

Gustav Knittel confessed that on 21 December 1944 he had ordered the murder of eight American prisoners of war at the command post of his heavy company near Petit-Spay, east of Trois-Ponts.

Gustav Knittel retracted his confession and, like other defendants, complained that the interrogations included psychological torture.

Gustav Knittel claimed to have been threatened with being handed over to the Belgians and that his interrogators suggested that signing a confession or not was the choice between fair American justice and Belgian revenge.

Gustav Knittel complained that his defence lawyers had not been allowed to use the war diaries of the American units which had opposed his Schnelle Gruppe during the Battle of the Bulge to prove that no Americans were murdered at the date and location he gave in his confession.

Gustav Knittel was released from Landsberg Prison on 7 December 1953 following a Christmas amnesty.

Gustav Knittel later worked as a car salesman for Opel in Ulm until health problems, including several cardiac arrests, forced him to retire in 1970.