Kurt Knispel
Kurt Knispel | |
|---|---|
| Born | 20 September 1921 |
| Died | 28 April 1945 (aged 23) |
| Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
| Branch | German Army |
| Service years | 1940–1945 |
| Rank | Feldwebel |
| Unit | 12th Panzer Division 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion |
| Conflicts | World War II |
| Awards | German Cross in Gold |
Kurt Knispel (20 September 1921 – 28 April 1945[1]) was a German tank commander during World War II. Knispel was severely wounded on 28 April 1945 by shrapnel to his head when his Tiger II was hit in battle by Soviet tanks. He died two hours later in a German field hospital.[2]
On 10 April 2013, Czech authorities said that Knispel's remains were found with 15 other German soldiers behind a church wall in Vrbovec, identified by his dog tags.[3] On 12 November 2014, the German War Graves Commission reburied his remains at the Central Brno military cemetery in Brno.[4] He was buried with 41 other German soldiers who died in Moravia and Silesia.[5]
Knispel was credited with a total of 168 enemy tank kills (126, as a gunner, and 42, as a tank commander), a figure based on wartime German field diaries of the units he served in[6][7] and repeated by the postwar “Panzer ace” literature deemed by historians as containing inaccuracies up to falsehood. Only the German "tank aces" Michael Wittmann and Otto Carius achieved a similarly high number of kills.
Knispel's supposed "126 confirmed kills" were extensively portrayed in the second installment of the popular historical fiction series Panzer Aces written by Franz Kurowski. But according to Knispel's superior officer in 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion when he was a commander, Alfred Rubbel "it was one of Kurowski’s numerous fabrications that Knispel had (in vain) been nominated for the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross four times." Rubbel described Kurowski's writing on Knispel as "a sheer outrage. What he wrote in there, it is all made up. Alone the quotes he puts in my mouth. It is all completely untrue."[8][9]
Awards
- German Cross in Gold on 20 May 1944 as Unteroffizier in the 1./schwere Panzer-Abteilung 503[10]
References
- ^ "Detailansicht". Retrieved 2017-08-03.
- ^ Hans-Jörg Schmidt (2014-06-16). "Sudetendeutsche: Tschechien kümmert sich nicht um deutsche Gräber". Die Welt. Retrieved 2016-11-25.
- ^ "Archeologové objevili hrob největšího tankového esa 2. světové války — Zprávy — Zpravodajství Brno — Česká televize". Ceskatelevize.cz. 2013-04-09. Retrieved 2015-12-17.
- ^ Grabstätte von Kurt Knispel
- ^ "MZM - Uložení ostatků Kurta Knispela". Mzm.cz. Archived from the original on 2015-12-22. Retrieved 2015-12-17.
- ^ Forty, OBE, George (January 2009). Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II. Zenith Press. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-7603-3049-4.
- ^ Stark, Florian (2024-01-31). "Kurt Knispel: 168 Abschüsse machten ihn zum erfolgreichsten Panzerkommandanten". WeLT (in German). Berlin: PREMIUM-GRUPPE GmbH of Axel Springer. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
- ^ Töppel, Roman; Straub, Katharina (2018). "The War, One Great Adventure: The Writer and "Historian" Franz Kurowski (2018)". p. 10.
- ^ Töppel, Roman (2018). "Der ganze Krieg als Abenteuer. Der Schriftsteller und "Historiker" Franz Kurowski". Portal Militärgeschichte (in German). Arbeitskreis Militärgeschichte E.V. doi:10.15500/AKM12022018. ISSN 2198-6673.
- ^ Patzwall, Klaus D.; Scherzer, Veit (2001). Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 – 1945 Geschichte und Inhaber Band II [The German Cross 1941 – 1945 History and Recipients Volume 2] (in German). Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. p. 238. ISBN 978-3-931533-45-8. Patzwall & Scherzer 2001, p. 238.