Kurt Knispel
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Kurt Knispel | |
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| 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 dairies of the units he served in[6] and postwar “Panzer ace” literature that historians now treat as inaccurate or false. Only the German "tank aces" Michael Wittmann and Otto Carius achieved a similarly high number of kills.[7]
Knispel's supposed "126 confirmed kills", as extensively portrayed in the second installment of the popular historical fiction series Panzer Aces written by Franz Kurowski, were challenged by Knispel's superior officer during the war, Alfred Rubbel who disputed Kurowski's retelling of Knispel's alleged tank kills and awards. 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
[edit | edit source]- German Cross in Gold on 20 May 1944 as Unteroffizier in the 1./schwere Panzer-Abteilung 503[10]
References
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- ^ Grabstätte von Kurt Knispel
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