Knittel Group at the Crossroads

There is a famous series of pictures taken of some men of Schnellgruppe Knittel at the St. Vith - Malmedy crossroad. I won't repost those because we've all seen them - some guys in a schwimmwagen smoking cigarettes. This short series of photos is often misidentified as Jochen Peiper, but it is the lead elements of Knittel's recon group, a Company led by Hans-Martin Leidreiter.

Christian Bertholet of Verviers, Belgium, has found four additional photos of that event. For those who are interested in the Battle of the Bulge or collect such photos, I'll post them below.

These are totally new, at least to me.

 

Which are the 'new' ones?
I'm looking at After The Battle's book on the Bulge now & on page 155 are the 3 left hand ones & the second from right of the ones in your post.
That book came out in 1984.

 

Yes - I spotted them immediately as being from Pallud's book......

 

Ah, well, my bad! I had not seen the four on the left. The two on the right were included to ID the players.

 

In the 4 left hand ones he's ripping the US Army ''202 Ord Depot'' sign off & throwing it to the floor.
The uses a 'spare?' rifle to balance the Malmedy sign so it's level.

 

Does anyone know what day these pix were taken? I had recently posted an anecdote from a Belgian man about an encounter with Leidreiter on 18 December, 44. He was a very unpleasant person. It would be interesting to know if these pix above were taken before or after that encounter.

Posts 11 - 14: http://www.ww2f.com/topic/51669-battle-of-the-bulge/

 

page 152 has a couple of photos of Knittel & Goltz similar to the one you posted , says taken ''...afternoon of December 18 - a Monday. The place is the little hamlet of La Vaulx-Richard.''

 

That's about a kilometer east of the Stavelot Bridge, so it works very well with Jean-Marie's anecdote. The pix with the Malmedy/St. Vith sign must have been taken a few hours earlier and 3 or 4 miles southeast of La Vaulx-Richard. The signs would indicate that they are at one of the crossroads east of Recht where today's E42, N62, N660, N659 cross near each other.

 

The signpost was at Kaiserbaracke.

 

Perfect. Just east of Recht at the intersection of N659 and E421. That's about six or seven miles from Stavelot. When you zoom in on N659 it's known locally as Zur KaiserBaracke.

 

The photographer was SS-Unterscharführer Max Büschel (of Kursk fame) and the cameraman an SS-Unterscharführer Schäfer. Picture 1, 2, 3 and 4 are stills from the movie footage shot at the Kaiserbaracke cross roads by Schäfer on December 18, 1944. Photo 5 shows SS-Ostuf. Heinz Wägner, cdr of 4th company, SS-PzAA1 (KG Knittel), the same Wägner who occupied the Chateau de Petit Spai Martin visited and pictured. Pallud misidentifies him as Leidreiter. Photo 6 shows Knittel and Leidreiter (again a mixup by Pallud) a little later that morning in la Vaulx Richard.

Both Büschel and Schäfer were captured by the Americans later that day near Waimes with four undeveloped films.