Gustav Knittel

Gustav Knittel (27 November 1914 – 30 June 1976) was a Sturmbannführer (major) in the SS Division Leibstandarte (LSSAH) who was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

Born in 1914, Gustav Knittel volunteered for the SS on 15 April 1933 and the Nazi Party on 1 May 1933.

In August 1934, Knittel joined the Nazi Party's paramilitary force, which later became the Waffen-SS.

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

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

On 9 November 1938 he was inducted as SS-Untersturmführer.

With the SS-Regiment Deutschland, Knittel took part in the occupation of the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreement.

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

Serving with the Leibstandarte Division, Knittel took part in the Battle of France.

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

After taking part in the German attack on Yugoslavia and the Battle for Greece he next participated in Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

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

After recovery, he was posted to the SS Training camp Dachau.

He was awarded the Iron Cross 1st class and returned to his company in November.

In March 1942 he was appointed as the company commander of the armored halftrack company in the Reconnaissance Battalion LSSAH.

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

On 2 February 1943 he received orders to lead an ad hoc battlegroup and move behind enemy lines to cover the retreat of the 298 Infantry Division.

He 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.

When the reconnaissance battalion of LSSAH was encircled in Alexejewka, Knittel led one of the counterattacks against the Red Army on 13 February.

On 15 February Meyer and Wünsche wanted to reach the German lines held by Fritz Witt.

Knittel with his company was sent to Bereka to reconnoitre the planned route.

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

The next day the combined battlegroup of Meyer and Wünsche reached Yefremivka.

Ukrainian sources, including surviving witness Ivan Kiselev, who was 14 at the time of the massacre, described the killings at the villages of Yefremovka and Semyonovka on 17 February 1943.

On 12 February the LSSAH occupied the two villages, where retreating Soviet Army forces had wounded two SS troops.

In retaliation, five days later LSSAH troops killed 872 men, women and children.

Some 240 of these were burned alive in the church of Yefremovka.

Knittel could not have participated in the massacre: the casualty reports of the Aufklärungsabteilung 'LSSAH' and his medical records kept by the Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) show that due to the bullet wound in his thigh incurred in front of Bereka on 15 February he was hospitalized in Krasnohrad on 16 February 1943 and was transferred to a field hospital in Poltava on 18 February.

Divisional commander Wilhelm Mohnke ordered Knittel to return to the Leibstandarte.

On 13 December 1944 he arrived at the divisional headquarters near Euskirchen where he asked Mohnke to grant Emil Wawrzinek the command of the 1st SS reconnaissance Battalion LSSAH.

Wawrzinek had led the battalion since its return from France and had rebuilt it during the past months.

But the next day Mohnke insisted that Knittel lead the reinforced battalion that would become Schnelle Gruppe (fast group) Knittel.

That same day, 14 December, Knittel was briefed about the upcoming Operation Wacht am Rhein, the German attempt to break through the American lines and cut the allied forces in two.

With the Leibstandarte as spearhead of the 6th Panzer Army of Sepp Dietrich Schnelle Gruppe Knittel was to follow the battlegroups of Joachim Peiper and Max Hansen, then use its speed to capture a bridge across the Meuse River south of Liège enabling the Leibstandarte to move toward Antwerp.

The offensive started the next day, 16 December 1944.

Initially Knittel advanced quickly, following in the wake of Peiper and Hansen without enemy contact, through Hallschlag, Manderfeld, Holzheim, Honsfeld, Heppenbach, Amel and Born.

Sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering the illegal executions of 8 American prisoners of war, he was released in 1953.

On 15 December Knittel was further briefed at the headquarters of Hermann Prieß, the commanding officer of the 1st SS-Panzerkorps.

During this briefing Otto Skorzeny was introduced and the details of Operation Greif were revealed.

After this meeting Knittel drove to the command post of his battalion in Glaadt to pass the orders and specifics on to his company commanders.