Kurt Knispel was born on September 20, 1921, in the small village of Salfeld, land that after the First World War had been absorbed into the new state of Czechoslovakia. He was of German descent, and when he was seventeen, he watched the German army march into his homeland as liberators in the eyes of the local ethnic German population. Adolf Hitler had promised to reclaim the Sudetenland, where three million ethnic Germans lived, and young Knispel, inspired by the moment, decided that his duty lay with Hitler’s Germany. He had little interest in politics.
He was known in his community as headstrong and tough, charismatic with girls but often at odds with authority. After completing an apprenticeship at a car factory in 1940, with the war showing no sign of ending, he volunteered for the Wehrmacht. Standing just over 160 centimeters tall, he was considered an ideal candidate for the armored units, whose early panzers were notoriously cramped. He was sent to a panzer replacement training battalion at Zagan, where he learned the basics of soldiering and operated obsolete Panzer I and II training tanks before graduating on September 30, 1940.
Assigned to the 3rd Company of the 29th Panzer Regiment, he found himself as a gunner on a Panzer IV armed with the short-barreled 75-millimeter gun. His gunnery skills impressed his superiors quickly, but as a relatively green crewman, he was initially relegated to the unglamorous role of loader. His unit was redeployed to southern Europe for the Balkans campaign, but to his disappointment, they saw no combat. Then news came that they would strike eastward against the Soviet Union.
At about 2:15 in the morning on Sunday, June 22, 1941, Knispel was awakened near the German-Soviet border and told that Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, was about to begin. He and his comrades were eager, and with the German army appearing almost unstoppable, they expected victory by Christmas. Charging over the border, Knispel’s first taste of combat came that afternoon when he loaded shells into his Panzer IV’s gun, firing on Soviet troops dug into a nearby village. In the following days, his unit advanced toward Minsk with consistent success, despite several close calls, including his tank taking multiple hits from Soviet armor.
Because he had grown up in the Sudetenland, Knispel had learned some rudimentary Russian, which helped his superiors interact with the local population. In August 1941, his division was transferred to the northern front. On August 25, while operating south of Leningrad, the vehicle’s gunner was wounded during the crew’s first encounter with the Soviet T-34. Knispel immediately took his place and knocked out a T-34 that appeared seemingly from nowhere with superbly aimed shots.
Fellow gunners called it luck at the time, but they would soon realize it was skill. Now permanently a gunner, his score grew in the coming weeks as the Germans fought stubborn Soviet resistance around Leningrad. It became clear that the invasion would not be over by Christmas. His senses became highly attuned to locating the enemy.
He had an almost clairvoyant ability to spot camouflaged tanks or movement at night. On one occasion, he destroyed a T-34 after spotting the faint glow of a crew member’s lit cigarette. He developed a reputation for being untouchable, coming out of many battles unscathed, even though his Panzer IV was initially ill-suited to combat against the Soviet T-34s and KV-series heavy tanks. His courage extended beyond the tank.
He personally led several scouting missions, and on November 13, 1941, he destroyed a T-34 by laying an anti-tank mine in its path while taking infantry fire. On December 16, 1941, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. Celebrations were short-lived. The Germans began retreating westward toward Estonia in the face of fresh Soviet offensives and disrupted supply lines.
The Soviet air force had matured from its lackluster opening performance, and German panzer crews came to fear the Il-2 attack plane. In January 1942, Knispel’s unit received the long-barreled 75-millimeter Panzer IV, much better suited to tank combat, though still not ideal against the heaviest Soviet armor. Fighting in dense woodland, ambushes were a constant danger, but Knispel always seemed to know where the enemy was. During one fight, his tank was knocked out, and he and his crew scrambled to nearby panzers, where he briefly commanded one of them for the first time.
By then, he was a proven ace as a gunner, respected by his comrades and mentioned in radio broadcasts to the German people, one of the highest honors in German society. He seemed on a fast track to glory. But an incident would forever hang over him and curtail his prospects within the Nazi leadership. In mid-1942, while transiting back to the Eastern Front with his commander Alfred Rubbel, outside Krakow in Poland he saw a prisoner from a nearby concentration camp being beaten by a guard.
Knispel demanded the guard stop. When the guard refused, Knispel pulled a pistol on him. The guard tried to raise his own weapon, but Knispel yanked it from his hands and struck him in the face. Many comrades saw the incident as a demonstration of honor.
His superiors did not. A few days later, military police attempted to arrest him, but members of his unit declared they would have to arrest the entire division as well. It was only the beginning of his falling out with the more fanatical members of the German armed forces. On one occasion, he stole coffee and cognac from sleeping Waffen-SS men and distributed them around the unit.
By the end of 1942, news of the battle at Stalingrad reached him, and he expected deployment to relieve the encircled Sixth Army. Instead, his unit relinquished its Panzer IVs and returned to Germany to re-equip with the new wonder tank, the Tiger. Training on the Tiger with its devastating 88-millimeter gun, Knispel found the vehicle exceeded every expectation, and he was eager to unleash it on the Soviets. By the time he arrived with the Tigers in mid-1943, the German army was stuck in a slow but steady retreat after the failed invasion of the Caucasus.
The Tiger arrived at a critical time, its superior armor and firepower helping hold off Soviet advances long enough for the main German force to withdraw. Knispel once remarked that the last thing a soldier wants is a fair fight. One-on-one, little could match the Tiger’s power. The Eastern Front was a target-rich environment where he excelled, knocking out twenty-seven Soviet tanks in and around the Kursk salient alone.
But he again faced the ire of German leadership when he refused an order from a Waffen-SS officer to open fire on a Soviet tank retreating with civilians on board. Only his skill and the respect of his comrades spared him serious punishment. His most famous achievement was knocking out a T-34 at a range of three kilometers, almost two miles, an impressive feat by any standard. While most men in his position might have tried to keep their heads down after becoming unpopular with commanders, Knispel seemed to relish their contempt.
He frequently let his hair grow, styled a goatee instead of shaving, and sported a tattoo, all in violation of strict German army regulations. Fellow tankers pleaded with him to conform, but he refused. He was his own man. As such, he was considered an undesirable topic for German propaganda, which had a preconceived notion of what a hero should look like.
He did not fit it. In early 1944, while lesser crews were projected onto cinema screens, Knispel was trundling through the mud and debris of Ukraine. Passing one hundred kills in May 1944, his unit was withdrawn from the Eastern Front and sent to an ordnance training camp. Now a tank commander, he helped spearhead the introduction of an even more powerful tank, the Tiger II, also known as the King Tiger.
On paper, it looked set to turn Germany’s fortunes around, with thick sloping armor and an improved 88-millimeter gun. Less than a month after arriving at the training camp, news came that the Western Allies had established a beachhead in Normandy, and the new Tigers were needed to push them back into the sea. Fighting in the West in 1944 was entirely different. Knispel had to contend with overwhelming Allied air superiority, making movement in daylight almost suicidal, even in the formidably armored King Tigers.
Within two months, not even his skill could save his battalion from almost total destruction. They lost all their new tanks. Re-equipped again in September, he returned to the Eastern Front, where the situation was no better. He threw himself into his duty and was in the thick of the fighting.
The King Tiger’s greatest weakness was exposed: its lack of mobility. It was so large and heavy that it often could not cross small bridges, traverse narrow roads, or keep up with the retreating German forces. In the chaos of the Third Reich’s final days, the Soviets now fielded the heavy Stalin tanks that could match the King Tiger, and the skies were at times blackened by Soviet fighter-bombers hunting German armor. On April 28, 1945, Knispel and his crew were in combat with Soviet forces in central Czechoslovakia, the land of his birth.
That day he destroyed a Soviet tank, bringing his tally to 168 confirmed kills. His own tank was soon damaged by Soviet self-propelled guns, forcing him to abandon it. He was helped out of the hatch by the commander of another King Tiger, who was killed in the process by a Soviet sniper. Knispel took command of his dead comrade’s tank, but it too was knocked out by superior Soviet forces.
During the retreat, mortars began landing on their position, and Knispel was seriously wounded. With help, he reached a nearby German field hospital, but the doctors could do little for him. He died a few hours later, just ten days before the war in Europe ended. His final tally is contested by many historians.
Based on the testimony of the men who fought with him, many claim the score was significantly higher, because Knispel would only count vehicles he knew for certain were destroyed. Many more were likely taken out of action without being counted. As a leader, he also liked to inspire less experienced men by weakening an enemy and then affording them the kill shot.
Taking these factors into consideration, his real tally of total or shared kills may be closer to two hundred, making him the greatest tank ace in history.