The Secret German Tank that the Nazis Couldn't Control 

Yeah most are now weak playstation pussies

True that.

This is an exceptional example among millions... but it's true that the current young generation isn't even comparable to Knispl's.

Yeah that's bullshit, exceptional men have always and will always exist in times of war.

@@benolofson9732 Yeah....that's not...especially in large numbers like ww2. But hey, go back to your video game.

Yes. Him and Michael Wittman were the best in history.

It takes a team to run a tank.

wdym?

@@kerryspagnoli2363 out of every single war fought in history . Wittman and Knispel were the best ever. Not just in kills but in every way.

WW2 is also by far the only war in history that gave tankers as many opportunities as were given to him. His stats are heavily skewed because of this, and there needs to be comparisons to other famous tankers using metrics that are comparable. Similar to how median and per capita stats are used to help accurately determine information. To give another example of this: In baseball, pitchers are rarely allowed to pitch full games, and will be pulled out with little leniency. Because of this, records for strikeouts and innings pitched will forever go unbreakable even though there are pitchers that are objectively better today. I’m not doubting he’s the most successful tanker in history, I’m just saying that if all tankers in history were put in the same situations as he was in, he might not be the best.

WW2 rendered so many true heroes - those that are one of a kind - especially on the German side and among all branches of the Armed Forces, in such huge numbers that a good lot of them have gone almost unheard of even after 80 years of the war's end. It's good to get to know about them through these YT videos.

@@rainbowseeker5930 especially on the German side? Lmao Found the wehraboo

@@fromulus - Dude, they fought for 6 years against the whole world, giving and taking ON ALL FRONTS, always heavily outnumbered , and yet they managed to keep within boundaries their countless and well-equipped enemies. That's why I wrote "especially...".

@@rainbowseeker5930 Don't mind the ignorant troll, he's most likely a boomer.

Never argue with a Tiger Ace

For Sure 👍

@@chalkie7534if they made it “woke” he’d be black and gay

@@forestfire2670 black gay na_i that hates na_i's LoL

Agreed

@@forestfire2670 Bwahahaha

I'd be curious how he'd do in a modern tank. Does the automation get in the way of his instincts? I believe 3 miles is about the upper limit now, and he did it with those crappy WWII sights.

@@recoil53 Zeiss doesn't make "crappy" ANYTHING. They were cutting-edge back then and, with updates in tech, would be usable now. Bet you modern versions of them are sourced for Leopard 2s. "Crappy" would be the puke that the Soviets used. If they even had optics...

@@fwinkler112 I know the quality of Zeiss optics. However, by any modern standard, those sights are garbage.

@@fwinkler112 Soviet optics were fine. The problem was their field stop limitation. German optics were 2.5:1 magnification and Soviet ones were 4:1, which was like looking down a straw.

Unfortunately, the sties about Kurt Knispel are mostly untrue.

And survive a T-34 shot ripping through his Pz.IV paper armor lol

@@FishingWithSails I could see maybe revenge getting in another one but if I made it through two I'm done man lol

@@guythatpaysforyourhandouts2478 You didn't have the luxury of declaring yourself as "done". Do it and you would be. Done, that is.

@@FishingWithSails "paper armor"? Sure put-paid on a whole lot of T-34s before the end. Think tense of thousands and you'd be getting the idea.

@@fwinkler112 That's funny the people that were actually there said otherwise. But why believe them when we got you right?

what made him different from the other tank commanders?

@@stayhungry1503 probably the 168 tank kills ^^

@@himhim3344 haha yes but i mean how did he manage to do it when so few others even came close. he must have had certain methods that others didnt use.

@@stayhungry1503I don’t know about his methods but he had incredible eyesight and depth perception.

NO, yet in the USA we have Nazism supporting Donald Trump.

Just as many other members of the Wehrmacht, they were not Nazis, but not many took a stance against what the Nazis were doing, as Knispel did.

@@billymcbread7136 even ss fought for fatherland

Dude aided Nazi actions. I'll give him props for his talent as a tanker but fuck honoring him.

I agree with this, too many are tarred with that nasty brush unnecessarily

So all best german soldiers are not nazis?

I don't understand. I thought 20/20 was as good as it got. Thanks for the info.

@@thejohn6614 20/20 is considered to be perfect vision. There are people who have better vision than 20/20. 20/10 by definition is twice as good as 20/20. The fact that he had 20/10 in both eye is not only remarkable but explains his incredible skill as a gunner.

@@joelex7966 I see. I didn't know that. I thought 20/20 was as good as it got. Thanks for the info and the reply.

@@thejohn6614 20/20 just means your vision is at a 1:1 scale, you see something 20 metres away as if it's 20 metres away. 20/10 means you see something 20 metres away as if it's 10. which means you have a much smaller field of view, however you have significantly better long range vision. 20/20 is seen as "perfect" because it's what we evolved to see

@@joelex7966 no... long sighted is not better than 20/20 because short sighted depth perception is virtually non existent... dude would've had to stand up to see his plate of food on the table LOL...

Agree lol

what exactly is that zielansprache? i'm interested to know what is still being taught as you say to new tankers

@@decimated550 It is basically a shortend version of REHLZ. You can exchange target information with the commander or the gunner in seconds. Knispel shortened it to REZ with numbers mixed into it. Das Verfahren der Zielansprache folgt dabei den Buchstaben des Merkwortes REHLZ Richtung (relativ zur Beobachtungs- oder Fahrtrichtung im Uhrzeigersinn oder nach Geländetaufe) (E)insehbares Gelände nach Vordergrund - Mittelgrund - Hintergrund Entfernung immer in Metern! geschätzt Hilfsziel als auffälliger Punkt im Gelände, niemals etwas, was sich bewegt Lage zum Ziel Ziel

@@haviiithelegogunner907 Danke fur den antword.

He’s become a poster boy for the alt-right in Germany. I’m not sure he would have wanted that.

"Zielansprache" ( Ziel ( exact discribed point for a hit ....Tank ,- House ,- Truck ,- enemy position etc. ) "Ansprache" is the exact (true) appearence of the "prey" in the inviroment ....... Example : A real good hunter "speak to himself ( automaticly and quietly in his thoughts ) the trues of the situation ,- the condition of the surroundings and the condition of the prey " ,- the whole situation boil down ,- or coagulate as a judge point to shoot ore not ! Sometimes there is just a small window ,- or crack ......to do so .... And the judgement can keep you automatically back ,- not to shoot .... "Keep the fingers straight" ... and seek for a better moment But also it can be the decission of shoot thrue this small gap and kow for sure you will hit right one All this shoot thrue the brain in short amount of time ..... Knispel could judge the situation and the shoot moment in just seconds and shorter automaticly ( I will say ) ,- because his brain was trained after experience ,- and get faster and faster and deatlier.... This can't be trained ! But you as a observer can see and pick out people with that kind of talent ! Hope I could paint a picture close to it @@decimated550

Copy it for yourself, maybe publish on the net then donate to a reputable museum?

You could make it into a book or publish it in a certain way.

If you ever translate it and put it up somewhere please let me know. I'd love to read it.

Well Publish it

Share it with the world. The experiences of these brave men deserve to be told.

He fought on the side given to him.

A lot of German soldiers back then didn't view anything wrong with the SS/Nazi party until it was too late. Its why I generally don't have a problem with most of your average german grunts just wanting to serve their country in WW2 and not knowing better. Its those who are war criminals and members of the SS/Nazi party that you should hate.

History has no "sides", it's only events & a timeline.

It was an SS Guard , not an officer, did you listen to the video?

No he ... SHUT UP ... .. NO he didn't!

I agree 100%. The difference between a hero and a villain commonly comes down to if one is on the winning or losing side. Ability is the critical factor here, and Herr Knispel sure had that, and he also showed compassion.

Not in WWII the sides.were.clear.Hitler needed to go and so did stalin. He was skilled he was.not cruel. He was not honorable he was a german.

@@michaelcauser474 Most of this is myth.

he dont we dont need to glorify killer name

Yes he was too busy being a warrior and with that sense of justice too not interested being part of the nazi party

To true

Audie Murphy. How many did he get before they made him 2nd Lieutenant?

Why? They didn’t earn it yet?

@M!CAH T!ME we all know they like the own getting medals of enlisted since the beginning of time. Even stealing credit for courageous enlisted men.

@Kreistor God only knows. He did not want to be an officer. But got pressured into it by the brass. He wanted to stay with his men.

If he was amercian we would have about a dozen by now

Few days ago watched "White tiger" on YT. Russian movie with English subs. Movie is a fiction but I see the parallel with this dude.

Most of this is myth.

@@thethirdman225 Copy and paste Mr. Sour grapes.

@@marchellochiovelli7259 No sour grapes here, Marchello. Just a thirst for accuracy. Pretty much everything in this video has been debunked. Almost all of it comes from a writer called Franz Kurowski, who was basically a propagandist, ‘clean Wehrmacht’ proponent and war fantasist. It’s only in the period since his death in 2011 that we have learnt what a lot of people already knew. Kurt Knispel was - by the standards of the time - an unremarkable tankie. Interviews of his fellow soldiers, including his commanding officer, by Dr Roman Toeppel reveal that there is almost nothing in this legend. Knispel was well-liked and a survivor of many campaigns. He might even have destroyed as many tanks as has been claimed. But the fact is that nobody knows because, despite what Kurowski claims, nobody kept score. Thanks to Kurowski, who wrote under a dozen other pen names, we now have BS stories about him having 20/10 eyesight and laser rangefinder vision, how he punched an SS officer over treatment of prisoners, didn’t claim half the kills he’s supposed to have done and was passed over for the Ritterkreutz four times. All of that is BS, exaggeration to the point of outright lies. Alfred Bruddel - Knispel’s CO - described him as popular but not a particularly good soldier and one who occasionally got himself into trouble. Bruddel scoffed at pretty much all of this and he was not alone. The stories about Knispel have taken on a life of their own. The fact that almost endless lists can be found on the internet, tracking ‘confirmed kills’ is basically meaningless. They all come from Kurowski or one of his dozen other pseudonyms. It’s worth pointing out that Kurowski no longer enjoys WP:RS status on Wikipedia and is now described as a historical novelist. It’s been left to those with a greater loyalty to the facts to clean up the persistent stain he left behind.

I had the same thought and then saw your comment. The Knispel photo even looks similar to Oddball.

@@mbuchart2927 same here , very similar

Poor Knispel, after coming out alive of hundreds of battles inside his tank, he found death just a week before the end of the war. May he rest in peace, he is not forgotten.

Kurt deserves his own movie.

Although I understand what you want to say, I have you disagree about the "doing his duty" part. NO ONE'S duty is to serve a mad man like Hitler or anyone like him. Our DUTY is to take the mad men down and don't give them any power. NEVER!

@@hariszark7396 His duty was to destroy enemy tanks before they could destroy his.

@@himhim3344 Oh yeah? What was "his tank" doing in a foreign country shooting and killing people defending their homes or just trying to live their lives? Was that "his duty" too? Clearly you have not understand anything I said. Read my comment again pls.

@@hariszark7396 So dumb in that time you couldnt choose whom you gonna fight for

And the cheque is in the mail...

@@fwinkler112 Excuse me? You do realize that people CAN have honest opinions without getting paid? I mean, sorry that its me that brakes that down to you.

by the current standards, all the people of european heritage that fought in WW2 were "nazis"

Being a Nazi is bad?

I actually think that most german soldiers were just soldiers.

wanna hear something wild ? Not all Nazis were bad. Being a Nationalsocialists, as crazy as this sounds, doesnt have to mean youre a murderous psychopath.

sabaton is gay

He wasn’t protecting his country

@@MattKearneyFan1 Well, they were fighting Russia so that makes him a good guy.

@@iam5085 fighting a country they invaded early does not make him a good guy

@@MattKearneyFan1 Russians had a pact with the Nazies when they invaded the Eastern-Europe, so they were both 'evil', no worse than the other.

@@iam5085 and yet the Germans invaded their nation and murdered innocent people. Payback is a bitch for those nazis

im pretty sure every German tank ace, was a real German tank ace, lmao

​@@SpookyScaryGangRapingSkeleton we are talking about true tank aces, i.e. guys that had a very impressive personality.

...ahhmm...schuss!?...

100 prozentiger bullshit, niemand sagt das.

I am 40 years old, lived in all parts of Germany and serviced in the army and noone ever said anything with "knispel" to me.

@@tilmerkan3882 and what do you wanna tell me? I mean I think you maybe never heard: Ränftl, Motschekiepsche, Hitsch .... and so on. You never heard it, ok, it still exists 🤷‍♂️

Knispeln is another word for basteln, fummeln, werkln, friemeln...🤓

He used his tank as a tank, that being offensively in tank-in-tank combat. His long-range scores are very impressive considering the tech at the time.

He was also the victim of Franz Kurowski, a propagandist and Nazi fantasist, who turned this poor man into something he was not. If you want to find out about Kurt Knispel, search for a video called The Truth About Panzer Aces.

Knispel was buried in a common grave along with several other German soldiers in the village where they met their fate in '45, and remained so until recently, when someone cared enough to look for the grave, exhume the remains, perform DNA analyses , discover which one was Knispel's , and finally bury him in a decent single grave, with a proper tombstone bearing his name and his birth/death dates. RIP.

I was thinking of the same thing.

The SS and every other person who joined the Wehrmacht had to have heard some sort of indoctrination. They elected Hitler, they mostly voluntarily followed him, and they reaped the fruits of those decisions.

And you know Ukraine was part of soviet union and Stalin was from Georgia but Russia bad year ago you don't even know where Ukraine was on the map

Do not mix up Waffen-SS and SS. Regular SS was nothing but a troop of uniformed murderers. Waffen-SS were elite units of the Heer (Army) and most "volunteers" serving in them were just drafted, especially after 1943. The exception was 3. Waffen-SS Panzerdivision, it mainly consisted of former regular SS concentration camp guards who should "be given a chance to prove themselves in proper combat", and was commanded by the chief inspector for all CCs, Theodor Eicke, himself a murderer, sadist and passionate supporter of the nazi cause.

Nazi*

@@MikeWalksWithJesus what is a Nazi? It's a political party the National socialist. Many soldiers were not associated with the party, the SS however is a different story. History is important to learn!

@@lazerbehm8681 very true.

@@lazerbehm8681 Fighting to achieve the ends of the Nazi party is just as good as being in it. You are still helping them take over the free world for fascism and no one who did that will ever be a hero.

@@filonin2 that's no different than saying everyone in the United States military is democrats/ or Republican, because that's the current party in power. Which is not true!!!!

Quite honestly, it's unsettling to think about how close they were to success, thanks to their military prowess and technological achievements alone.. their ideology and execution were both horribly lacking, had they not been so radical, who knows....

Russia is about to find out with the Lepard tanks being sent to Ukraine.

@@Frosty_tha_Snowman if you minus 80 years of liberal & communist propaganda.. their ideology wasn't horrible. liberal democracy has bombed more civilian cities than any other ideology (on purpose knowing they were filled with civilians). communism has starved and murdered more civilians than any other ideology (on purpose). but fascism is "THE MOST EVIL WORK OF THE DEVIL EVER!".. *ridiculously propagandized people

@Longji Dalu not really. A tank is nothing without a well trained crew and tactics.

Not really.

The Allied air superiority in France in 1944 wasn't reflected in the number of tanks destroyed. But since tanks and infantry are mutually supportive and mutually dependent, Allied air power was able to successfully separate them, weakening the total package. The biggest problem the Allies had in France was that the Germans held all the high ground and controlled all the fire lanes. Air attacks only destroyed about 2% of the total.

So some or much of this story is made up? That’s bad. I remembered it as a Mark Felton video and that would have been hard to question but Darkdocs… cannot vouch for them. So I guess the Knispel story got conflated and eventually wrong?

@@CharlesWestinghIII There’s a video by ‘Military History Not Visualized’ channel called ‘Truth About Panzer Aces’. Those two guys are serious professional historians. This is way worse than Mark Felton, though doubtless it’s the sort of thing he subscribes to.

@@CharlesWestinghIII Dark Docs, Dark Skies, etc.. are all as bad as each other. They’re probably the least reliable source of military history on RU-vid. I have them listed as ‘Do not recommend channel’.

Imagine calling any german soldier nazi poster boy as if they didn't Serve of the front like Kurt.

I can imagine it as it is still done to this day. Reprehensible but true. @@tiagomonteiro130

So, you believed _everything?_

🤣👍

He still deserves the medal. The only war crime is loosing.

Germany is fucked, mate

no you're not a German, you're a foreigner pretending to be one. The attitude and culture is nowhere near the same as before, don't call yourself that.

@@rayhogan796 wow, unfortunately this is true

He also fought "for" Germany in the wrong countries. Also known as "invasion". Not only that, but a genocidal one. After the tanks came the butchers of civilians. The Slav untermensch, the Jew, the communist.

Look up the "Ye Olde Pub" and it's friendly bf109G6/10 escort fighter...

But, wouldn't it be even MORE courageous for someone to speak up against an SS guard who has NOT the skills, kills and reputation of a Kurt Knispel? I am pretty sure there were more guys like him, we just never heard of them because they got discharged, imprisoned or worse. It's the same thing with modern actors. I applaud actors like Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman for standing up to the producers and insisting on the dark ending of Se7en (the producers wanted a cheesy and ordinary showdown in a factory). They are the reason this movie is a classic now, however, they could only do this because they Pitt and Freeman, any lesser actor would just have been fired and replaced.

Eloquently put!

Beautifully well put my friend. Greetings from Melbourne , Australia.

Amen!

But he deserved to be well-known as many other war heroes.

Well, he was a one-man-crew in its own. he was commander AND GUNNER, he "knew" when an enemy tank came around, he judged the range as good as any modern laser range finders, so he was some kind of "superman", because this abilities helped him to be as good as he was. Wittmann forced the Knights cross for his gunner, normally it was the crew who counted. Knispel had that talent to improve all soldiers around him, either by giving them kills he achived (so his tally is propably 50+ higher) and by his kind way. But he was also hated by other companies, because he was a thief who steals everything from others (just like in the US movies like that one with the pink submarine.. just that he was that guy in real)

@niksandy7125 Often those who goes against the established narrative, proving it is wrong are labelled misfits or worse. And rarely will the establishment admit they are wrong but still when shit happens you are welcome to save their ass.

Except these stats are a lie. When determining the success of tankers, the normal method would be to give the credit for succesfull kills to the crew commander. If he apply this method to Knispel, his combat record would be 42 kills, not 168. He knocked out the other 126 tanks, being a gunner in the crew of different commanders. This means that when calculating according to the generally accepted methodology, the total score should be divided among several commanders, and Knispel accounts for only a quarter of the declared victories. Still an exceptional and talented tanker, but nowhere near the mythological hero, Greatest of All Time Without Peer, and all that other silly stuff.

You like many others always forget Bölters and esp. Carius. Wittmann was impressive because he destroyed so many Anti Tank guns.. in this he is the world record holder... he was VERY brave and a very good soldier, but the hype the germans did around him is overblown. He took large risks and did pay the price, on the other hand he ruined a british day at Caen :D

According to his comrades he _was_ an ordinary soldier. Well liked but not what is made out here.

He's in Valhalla now!

@@joskarifinaukr6503 He wasn't Swedish.

@@thethirdman225 Swedes aren't the only Folk who may choose to believe in the Aesir.

@@joskarifinaukr6503 Still BS.

If only there had been we might have smashed international Communism once and for all.

Yet, MW was a stout supporter of the nazi cause and that is the major difference between the two. And what is the reason for capitalising all words when that sentence does not work as a headline?

He did write a memoir.." Tiger Im Shlamm" ( Tigers in the mud) about his time as a tank driver gunner and commander.

@@compaq2441 That was Otto Carius, not Michael Wittmann. Carius survived the war, Wittmann was killed in Normandy

Wittman was from 101st SS Heavy Panzer battalion while Kurt was from 503rd Heavy Panzer battalion.

Too bad it’s almost entirely fictitious.

@@thethirdman225 would you care to substantiate that, or is this a hit'n'run?

they were NAZI

@@95valero same :D

Well, except for the little-known (apparently) fact that the German Government doesn't hand-out RKs any more. Sort of ended in May '45. That and the fact that they're all pussy-whipped peace-nicks. Makes handing out awards for heroes hard politically.

Unless he made a habit of it. The Nazi regime had little use for those who didn't fit in and crushed them as an example to others.

The Waffen*-SS was under the command of the Army (Heer) and all "SS tank units" were Waffen-SS.

Depends on the tank you're in and what you're hitting. Pz IV or Tiger vs BT tanks, it's like shooting Down Syndrome rats in a barrel. Pz IV or Tiger vs Sherman diesel or E8 Firefly, not so much..

Who said anything about one-shot one kill? Not to diminish his achievements in any way but the results are all that matters in warfare and whether it took one shell or three didn't matter. Too bad that this clip didn't really make much mention of that fateful last day when Knispel's King Tiger was ambushed by superior numbers of Soviet tanks and he fought on, destroying many until that last shell found him and his crew mates who were then buried nearby, lost until discovered in 2014.

@@rosiehawtrey Sherman Diesel? So it made better fuel economy before it went kablooie? No one in a Tiger or Panther had any worries about single Allied tanks, or even small groups of them; it was only overwhelming numbers that carried the day for the Allies. That and tankers willing to put all on the line to stop the Germans. The Firefly was only a Sherman with -finally- a worthwhile gun. Just as pathetic in terms of armour but at least mechanically -usually- reliable. Depending on the engine that that variant carried.