4 Most Feared & Deadliest WWII German Soldiers

troops of the Third Reich but all over Europe North Africa the Atlantic Ocean and the Middle East during the Second World War they earned a formidable reputation as being professional and proficient soldiers regardless of reasons why they fought here we look at four soldiers who fought under the swastika and whose combat effectiveness earned them the begrudging respects and of course fear of the enemies they face these are four of the deadliest German soldiers of World War two [Music] you [Music] the war on land was arguably shaped by the armored units of both the axis and the Allies having tank superiority either because of superior vehicles tactics or sheer weight of numbers was often the deciding factor in mini and engagement like in all areas of the German war machine Nazi German culture looked to heroes to admire and inspire others but in the case of Germany's armored units one man stood head and shoulders above all the others but he was overlooked because he didn't fit the image the leadership wanted to portray Curtis bull wasn't born in Germany but instead born in the Soudan land an area neighbouring checklist valkia comprised largely of ethnic Germans that was formerly part of the austro-hungarian Empire and which was ceded to the new checklist of our nation after the end of World War one after the Nazis came to power in Germany the Sutton land was one of a number of territories that they set their sights upon seizing or reclaiming from their perspective an objective they achieved in 1938 this bull was born in Suez off near the town of submental and trained as a mechanic until 1940 with Germany having captured Poland and now preparing for the war with France and Great Britain he volunteered for military service and was assigned to Germany's prestigious armoured Corps training on obsolete Panzer one in Panther twos he eventually qualified as a loader on a Panzer 4 at the time one of the finest armored fighting vehicles in the world before qualifying to be a gunner his skill was quickly demonstrated as the German army went into action against the Soviets during Operation Barbarossa in 1941 Hollywood movies about the war are often awash with larger-than-life characters whose buck the military trend and toss out the rulebook to achieve victory that description could very easily be applied to knispel he frequently found himself at loggerheads with his commanding officers with his often unkept appearance and his insistence on growing a small goatee beard and non-regulation leg hair which flew in the face of the smartly turned out well shaven German soldier of the Nazi propaganda possibly the most serious act of insubordination committed by Dan Issel was when he saw a waffen-ss soldier beating a Soviet prisoner of war in this bowl intervened and punched the SS man in the face and act which risked municipal being accused of treason punishable by death however his skill on the battlefield saved him from such retribution but at the cost of his progression through the ranks he would never become an officer and there was some reluctance to adorn him with some of Germany's more prestigious medals nevertheless he continued to rack up an incredible tally of enemy tanks destroyed and was decorated several times for his courage and one stunning engagement he destroyed a Soviet t-34 tank at a range of three kilometers an incredible feat for the day he was also supremely confident of his skill and on several occasions used the formidable tiger tank to hold off superior enemy numbers sometimes single-handedly to allow friendly tanks to escape as the war turned against Nazi Germany in the final days of the war he commended the powerful tiger - also known as the keen tiger a true Goliath of the Second World War but not even this incredible machine could save Germany from its fate just ten days before the end of the war he and his crew were in action against Soviet forces near the village of wast it's when he was fatally wounded on April 28th 1945 his final official tally was 168 Allied tanks destroyed however those who served with him dispute this number saying that he would regularly give credit for his victories to his subordinates to boost their confidence in morale meaning his real number is likely much higher the first world war gave rise to a new kind of hero the fighter pilot and the greatest of them all was german manfred von Richtofen remembered as the Red Baron Richtofen scored an impressive 80 aerial victories in combat and earned himself a degree of immortality in the analysis of history however in the Second World War several German pilots would surpass his score although arguably not his fame while one German Luftwaffe pilot would achieve the highest number of air-to-air victories in the history of air warfare his name Erik Hartman born on April 19th 1922 Hartman spent much of his youth in China as his father sought worked there during the post-war economic hardship faced by Germany when the german air force was reconstituted he was taught to fly gliders by his mother Elizabeth Hartman who was one of the first female glider pilots in Germany he began his formal military career in October 1940 and one of his first official task was to ferry Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive-bombers to the frontlines in the Soviet Union once at the front he flew the legendary Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter plane with with the veteran JG 52 unit many of whose members had experienced combat against the Polish French and British in the first two years of the war they impressed their experience on Hartmann who began to apply their knowledge with great efficiency and ruthlessness in the air against the Soviet air force his score very quickly skyrocketed surpassing many of the older members of his unit between his first air combat on October 14th 1942 and September 20th 1943 he had downed 100 Soviet planes he had gained such a reputation not just within his own unit but amongst the Soviets themselves that a reward of 10,000 rubles was posted for anyone who killed him as war experienced was not without his fair share of close calls however on the contrary Hartman would find himself being forced to crash-land his aircraft 16 times often due to the damage he had sustained often from pieces falling off enemy aircrafts he had just destroyed on one occasion he was actually captured by Soviet soldiers but faked an injury leading his captors to put him on stretcher and then loading him onto a truck biding his time he waited for an opportunity to present itself before he escaped and made it back to German lines Hartman skills continued passing over 200 On February 26 1944 leading some and the German High Command to suspect he was either deliberately or unintentionally exaggerating his claims but repeated investigations only supported his success rates by the time the war ended Erik Hartman had 352 aerial victories to his credit all but two of which were Soviet planes the only exceptions were to American fighters shot down on separate occasions by contrast the highest-scoring allied pilot was Soviet pilot Ivanka's Adu with 66 victories after the war he was tried for war crimes by the Soviet Union who accused him of being part of a flight of German planes and machine-gunned a bread factory killing 780 Soviet civilians he was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was released in 1955 before joining the newly created West German Air Force flying American design jet fighters one such fighter was the Lockheed f-104 starfighter despite its blistering speed Hartman openly criticized the plane as a deathtrap for pilots noting his high accident rate this brought him into conflict with his superiors and he was forced to take an early retirement in 1970 Hartman died on September 20th 1993 three years later a Russian court issued him with a posthumous acquittal regarding his supposed war crimes stating that he was wrongly convicted throughout the history of warfare there have been those with an almost unnatural gift for destroying the enemy and one such individual was Malthus hatsan our like nibble while he fought for Nazi Germany he was actually born elsewhere specifically Austria which was absorbed into Germany during the Angelus of 1938 born on December 23 1924 in the idyllic alpine village of brixon impale he learned his shooting skills from his father as the poor family Rayleigh had to live off the land at age 17 he was drafted into the German army as the fighting on the Eastern Front broke out Heights an hour was assigned to train to use artillery and mortar weapons but his superiors noticed that he had exceptional rifle skills and this led him to being transferred to a sniper unit in this new role height Sanada went into combat in Hungary from August 1944 where his role was to hunt down Soviet snipers and take out key Soviet officers and commanders to hamper their ability to function properly it was exceptionally dangerous work as he often had to sneak behind enemy lines to reach his target and all the while he had to contend with the equally proficient Soviet snipers who were hunting him joining the battle fields so late in the war rights an hour would see combat for just ten months before Germany surrendered but this makes his final tally of three hundred and forty five kills all the more astonishing one of his most famous shots saw him take out a Soviet soldier at a range in the region of 1,100 yards or ten American football fields heights an hour survived the war but like Hartman in the air the Soviets wanted him to pay for his proficiency and he was kept in prison in appalling conditions along with other German prisoners until 1950 after his release he returned to Austria where he retrained as a carpenter he died in 2004 at the age of 79 [Music] war time British Prime Minister Winston Churchill when reflecting upon the war would state categorically that the one thing that genuinely frightened him during those dark days were the u-boats Germany's underwater warships appeared unstoppable during the opening months of the war as they took full advantage of how unprepared Britain was for being besieged by these stealthy lethal weapons you might expect the success of the u-boat commanders being measured by the number of enemy ships they sink however this is not the case instead you boat commanders measured their success in tonnage sank and to that end despite having a relatively short war u-boat commander auto customer would be responsible for sinking more tonnage than any other commander freshman was born in prussian Silesia on may 1st 1912 during the days of Imperial Germany before the area was ceded to Poland after the first world war prior to joining the post-war German Navy which was forbidden from possessing a submarine fleet he studied English and literature at Exeter University in England for eight months by 1936 Nazi Germany was again actively building up the country's u-boat fleet and crush move was transferred to the new force after completing his training he found himself assigned to the you 35 an early type VII a u-boat during a training cruise krishma had the misfortune of being on deck when the captain's side to dive the submarine leaving him floating in the freezing north sea waters it was only when the captain realized he was missing that he resurfaced and brought him back aboard before he succumbed to hypothermia in 1937 as Germany became entwined in the Spanish Civil War customers found himself placed in temporary command of U 35 while waiting for the u-boats new captain to arrive he never would for he was killed in a car accident and Christopher became captain his first assignment was to patrol the Bay of Biscay as part of Germany's contribution to fighting but no ships were sunk by the time World War two started in September 1939 krishma had transferred to you 23 and was assigned to patrol the North Sea and the British coastline on October 4th 1939 fresh marine u-23 sank the 876 ton merchant vessel fired off Scotland's northern coastline customary allow the crew to abandon the ship before he sunk it with a g7 a torpedo almost two months later he sank the 2,400 tonne Danish ship Scotia and then a month after that he sank the 1150 Norwegian ship Fred Ville in the early hours of February 18th 1940 he torpedoed the British destroyer HMS daring which brought his total tonnage up to that point of sixteen thousand three hundred and forty three tons on April 18th 1940 he assumed command of the newly commissioned type VII be a u-boat you 99 but while working his new command up to being combat ready the sub was attacked at sea four times in a week by German aircrafts the pilots of which mistook it for a British submarine Kretschmer and the you 99 achieved their first kill on July 5th 1942 thousand ton Canadian merchant ship Magog which had become separated from its convoy south of Ireland in terms of tonnage sunk customers tally would get a major boost when he sent three British armed merchant cruisers over the span of a month in late 1940 first was the 18,700 24 ton HMS Larrick on November 3rd followed by the 11300 14 tonne HMS Patroclus the very next day before he added the 16400 two-ton HMS for fire on December 2nd into 1941 more and more ships would be added to his list of successes his single biggest success was the 20,000 638 tonne tears that weekend sunk southeast of Iceland on March 7th 1941 then over a week and a half later on March 16th 1941 pressure bought a convoy hx1 one too and began a series of devastating attacks he would send six ships from the convoy to the bottom of the sea totalling forty three thousand eight hundred and nineteen tons in just a single day but during repeated debt charge attacks by the convoys escorts u99 was damaged to the point where it sank below his crush depth incredibly the submarine held its structural integrity long enough for customers crew to effect repairs to bring the submarine back to the surface with British warships bearing down on the submarine looking for revenge Kretchmer decided to order his crew to abandon and Scuttler crush Murr and all but three of his crew were rescued by the British ships and taken prisoner after arriving in Liverpool crush Murr was separated from his men who were forced to march through the city where they were the subject of a number of bricks and other objects being hurled at them by the angry Liverpudlians who had suffered terrible German bombings in the weeks before crush me was taken to the so called London cage where British intelligence interrogated valuable German prisoners he would later confess that during the journey he passed by bomb sites in the British capital including the Buckingham Palace and was appalled at what his countrymen had done to the city he would spend nearly seven years as a prisoner of war being held first in Cumbria and then later at a camp in Canada for his recognition of war service during his time in captivity the German Navy formally promoted him after the war he had a long and prestigious career in the West German Navy before retiring in September 1970 it is with some irony that a man who had sent so many ships the bondman sea should die in a boating accident while on holiday after he fell trying to climb a vertical ladder

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Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020