On 2 February 1943 he received orders to lead an ad hoc battlegroup and move behind enemy lines to cover the retreat of the 298 Infantry Division.

[2] He made contact with this division in Shevchenkove, was cut off by the advancing Red Army but fought his way back to the German lines with his battlegroup and a group of Wehrmacht soldiers.

[1] Ukrainian sources, including surviving witness Ivan Kiselev, who was 14 at the time of the massacre, described the killings at the villages of Yefremovka and Semyonovka on 17 February 1943.

On 13 December 1944 he arrived at the divisional headquarters near Euskirchen where he asked Mohnke to grant Emil Wawrzinek the command of the 1st SS reconnaissance Battalion LSSAH.

[7] That same day, 14 December, Knittel was briefed about the upcoming Operation Wacht am Rhein, the German attempt to break through the American lines and cut the allied forces in two.

Initially Knittel advanced quickly, following in the wake of Peiper and Hansen without enemy contact, through Hallschlag, Manderfeld, Holzheim, Honsfeld, Heppenbach, Amel and Born.

After leaving instructions for his company commanders he crossed the Amblève River bridge in Stavelot at noon to contact Peiper in La Gleize.

[8] The next day, 19 December, Mohnke ordered Knittel and the elements of his fast group that did manage to reach La Gleize back to Stavelot to recapture the town and open the advance route which was also essential in supplying battlegroup Peiper with fuel and ammunition.

[8] Increased pressure from American forces stalled the advance of the Leibstandarte and continued attempts from Knittel and Sandig to recapture Stavelot failed while Peiper had come to a halt in La Gleize.

[8] It had become clear that the Meuse River could not be reached and Peiper decided on 23 December to abandon his vehicles and retreat through the woods to escape capture.

He returned to his hometown later that year but when he met with his wife on 5 January 1946 he was captured by Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agents Michel Thomas and Theodore Kraus.

[8] Knittel confessed that on 21 December 1944 he had ordered the murder of eight American prisoners of war at the command post of his heavy company near Petit-Spay, east of Trois-Ponts.

[12] Following his self-incriminating confession, (and despite "fully expecting and accepting that he would shortly be executed"),[10] he was sentenced to life imprisonment on 16 July 1946 during the Malmedy massacre trial.

[1][16] Unaware of the contents of the war diary of the 82nd Airborne Division, in March 1948 the reviewing authority reduced his sentence to 15 years imprisonment.

4 rejected the claim that irregularities had occurred during the trial against Knittel but following the Simpson Report and the findings of the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services his sentence was further reduced to 12 years imprisonment.

[1] Knittel later worked as a car salesman for Opel in Ulm until health problems, including several cardiac arrests, forced him to retire in 1970.