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GUSTAV KNITTEL - the Biography
Career, crimes and trial of SS-Sturmbannführer Gustav Knittel Commander of the Aufklärungsabteilung ´LSSAH´
- Format: 170mm x 240mm
- Pages: 571
- Photos: 213 b/w
- Maps: 31 b/w
- Language: ENGLISH
- First print : June 2016
- Paper: 115 grs machine coated (silk)
Select your preferred binding of the English version :
Introduction
In the summer of 1946, Gustav Knittel, a 31-year old former SS officer from the Bavarian town of Neu-Ulm, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders his battalion, Schnelle Gruppe Knittel, had committed in and around the Belgian town of Stavelot during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.
The author, Timo R. Worst, reconstructed Knittel’s personal life, his military career in the Waffen-SS and both his personal involvement in the grim story of that horrendous week in the Ardennes and the role the men under his command played in the murder of over a hundred civilians and unarmed prisoners of war.
Not content with the published works about the beastly behaviour of the SS in Stavelot and the surrounding hamlets, he felt compelled to visit the Ardennes himself, to search the archives and ultimately to contact veterans of Knittel’s battalion and to consult his family.
By providing the available pieces of the puzzle, Worst allows the reader to follow Knittel’s footsteps: his entry in the SS, the units he led traversing Europe from France and Greece to Italy, Ukraine and Belgium, the men under his command, the battles he fought and awards he won, but also his doubts about the outcome of the war and how this effected his state of mind, the massacres, his arrest, the trial and his post-war life.
The resulting book enables the reader to see through the multiple smoke screens created not only by Knittel, his defence lawyers and his wartime comrades, but also by his captors, his interrogators and the prosecution, all who knowingly fudged, were evasive or downright lied about the facts in order to ensure the success of their own personal motives and political.
Table of content
1.1 Childhood and school years
1.2 The Allgemeine SS
1.3 SS-Standarte ‘Deutschland’
1.4 Officer course at the SS-Junkerschule in Bad Tölz
1.5 Motorcyclist
2.1 Baptism of fire
2.2 Formation of the Aufklärungsabteilung ‘LSSAH’
2.3 Operation ‘Marita’
2.4 The invasion of the Soviet-Union
2.5 Formation of the 3. (le. SPW) Kompanie
2.6 Turning the tide at Kharkiv
2.7 The ‘Schrippenbäcker von Ulm’ becomes battalion commander
2.8 Operation ‘Citadel’
2.9 Disarming the Italians and guarding their ‘Duce’
3.1 The Soviet Juggernaut
3.2 “You want to call yourself Leibstandarte?”
3.3 The German Cross in Gold and the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross
3.4 The long road to marriage
3.5 Rebuilding the Aufklärungsabteilung in Belgium
3.6 Invasion!
3.7 Operation ‘Lüttich’
3.8 Hell in the Falaise Pocket
3.9 Doubts about the Final Victory
4.1 The horrible week in the Ardennes begins
4.2 The massacre in Wéreth
4.3 “They’ve killed a good few at the crossroads”
4.4 The killings in la Vaulx Richard
4.5 The American counterattack on Stavelot
4.6 Back to Stavelot
4.7 The advance on Stavelot
4.8 The war crimes in Ster, Renardmont Parfondruy and Trois-Ponts
4.9 Failed attempt to outflank the defenders
4.10 The massacre in the garden of the Legaye house
4.11 The American response
4.12 The murders near the Château de Petit-Spay
4.13 The American attacks on Ster, Renardmont and Parfondruy
4.14 Stavelot is lost
4.15 Retreat from the Amblève Pocket
5.1 Until the end of the war
5.2 The search for Knittel
5.3 Imprisonment in Ulm
5.4 Schwäbisch Hall
5.5 On trial
5.6 War Criminals Prison No. 1
5.7 The lone wolf
Recommended by Danny S. Parker, author
In this new biography of Waffen-SS officer Gustav Knittel, Timo Worst documents the life of a man who would become the head of the reconnaissance battalion of the 1st SS Panzer Division in Hitler’s Third Reich. Knittel’s life mirrors the prospects and war path of other officers in the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler – a formation which developed an infamous reputation for brutality and war crimes in the Second World War.
How did this state of affairs come to be? Worst gives us many details which amount to a war-time mosaic of what it meant to be an SS officer in Hitler’s most favoured combat formation. With Knittel’s life as a central pivot, we gain new insight into the savage actions in which his reconnaissance battalion became engaged, both on the Eastern Front and in the West. It is then hardly surprising that as the combat heir to Kurt Meyer, Knittel’s command developed a savage reputation.
Nor did the affair end with the war. As we learn about the post war Malmédy trial and how Knittel and the others under him successfully campaigned to escape the hangman at Landsberg prison. Ultimately, they were released into a Germany that bore little resemblance to the one for which they had fought from 1939-45.
While SS officers such as Peiper, Meyer and Mohnke have previously been covered in recent literature this is a new contribution with revealing details and revelations regarding Gustav Knittel. Recommended.
Danny S. Parker
80 years ago, December 1944
Fragment from :
Career, crimes and trial of SS-Sturmbannführer
GUSTAV KNITTEL
Commander of the Aufklärungsabteilung 'LSSAH'
From chapter 4.4 The killings in La Vaulx Richard
The monument erected in la Vaulx Richard lists the victims :
Walter W. Arter (Staff Sergeant)
Edward Kadluboski (Staff Sergeant, serial no. 32148866)
Carl N. Millard (Private First Class, 37237041)
Belen Reyes (Private First Class, 32543811)
Rolf O. Runge (Private 1st Class)
Dave H. Glotzer (Private, 32349242)
Myrl L. Gion (Private)
Donald A. Hoffer (Private)
William G. Edmonds (Technician 5th Class)
Donald A. Spencer (Technician 5th Class)
Klaas Visser (Technician 5th Class)
Harry P. Czatlinski (Technician 5th Class)
The Americans were part of Company ‘A’ of the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion which was part of ‘Combat Command B’ (CCB) of the 9th US Armored Division: their names and unit are listed on the monument erected in la Vaulx Richard after the war. In the afternoon of the previous day, the 17th of December, Peiper’s ‘Gepanzerte Gruppe’ had surprised the supply trains of CCB in the Faymonville-Ligneuville sector. Captain Seymour Green, supply officer of the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion and acting commander of CCB supply trains, had been captured along with most men and supply trucks from his outfit and from the 16th Armored Field Artillery Battalion. The majority of the prisoners, including Green, were sent to the rear and from there were transported to prisoner of war camps in Germany, but eight of them were massacred in Ligneuville. Some GIs obviously managed to get away before the supply trains surrendered to Peiper’s men and no doubt tried to make their way to the west where they hoped to find friendly units. These stragglers probably realised that they had to get across the Amblève River in or near Stavelot. Even in a relatively straight line it is an eleven kilometre walk from Ligneuville to Stavelot. Taking into account that they would have been confronted with the German traffic jam on the road leading to Stavelot, they likely arrived in the vicinity of la Vaulx Richard in the morning or early afternoon of the 18th. Whether or not civilians helped them to keep their heads low while they waited for a chance to sneak across the river after nightfall seems impossible to ascertain after all these years but Gartner’s testimony proves that SS soldiers found them near the little hamlet and took them along at gunpoint. SS-Schütze Ernst Mahl, corroborated Gärtner’s story. He stated that a group of officers consisting of SS-Obersturmführer Coblenz, SS-Obersturmführer Goltz, SS-Untersturmführer Dröge, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Hann and an unidentified SS-Untersturmführer from the 2. (le.SPW) Kompanie, had a conversation in the hamlet which he described as a discussion which occurred shortly after the air raid. This means it must have been approximately 17.00hrs and at that time the darkness was already setting in. Mahl stated that from observing the gestures of the aforementioned officers he understood that they were discussing the group of prisoners who stood next to a nearby house and he noticed that it seemed like the doctor did not agree with the others. With the enemy airplanes finally gone, the Stabskompanie was about to continue its march on Stavelot and it seems evident that this sealed the fate of their prisoners. Mahl wrote that he witnessed how SS-Unterscharführer Wolf together with two other SS soldiers led their American prisoners and three civilians, whom he described as an elderly man, a younger one and a woman, up a hill and into the forest. When they were out of sight, he heard four or five bursts of nine to ten rounds each from a machine pistol. Approximately thirty minutes later he saw Wolf but he never saw the prisoners again. Gärtner said that he learned two days later that the prisoners had been shot……….
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