the Venlo Incident led to a new assignment as head of a small com-
mando group in France in June 1940.
Following France’s capitulation, Knochen, based at the Hôtel du
Louvre in Paris, became the main representative of Heinrich Him-
mler in the occupied zone, although the German military administra-
tion tenaciously resisted any encroachments on its domain. During
the conspiracy against Adolf Hitler of 20 July 1944, Knochen was
arrested under orders of the military governor, Carl Heinrich von
Stülpnagel. Despite being released after the coup’s failure, he was
recalled to Berlin by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, stripped of his rank, and
transferred to the Waffen-SS for the duration of the war. Afterward,
two separate tribunals dealt with his fate. In June 1946, a British
court found Knochen guilty of the execution of captured airmen and
sentenced him to life imprisonment. Several months later, he was ex-
tradited to France and, after a long internment, tried before a Parisian
military tribunal for his involvement in the deportation of 200,000
Jews to extermination camps. A presidential decree, however, com-
muted his death sentence to life imprisonment in April 1958. Four
years later, he was given a full pardon and allowed to return to Ger-
many. He died in Offenbach am Main (Hesse) on 4 April 2003.KNOPPE, WOLF-DIETHARDT (1935– ). A West German pilot
who sold stolen military equipment to the KGB, Wolf-Diethardt
Knoppe joined the Bundesluftwaffe in 1956. Working in conjunction
with Manfred Ramminger, a freelance architect, and his Polish-born
employee, Josef Linowski, Knoppe removed various items from the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization air base at Zell, Bavaria, between
1966–1968. One of those items was a Sidewinder air-to-air missile,
which was transported by car from the base, disassembled, and then
shipped to the Soviet Union. On 7 October 1970, a Düsseldorf court
sentenced Knoppe to three years in prison; Ramminger and Linowski
each received a four-year term.
KNUTH, MARIA (1907–1955). An agent of the Polish secret service,
Maria Knuth (born Maria Holzportz) was active in the Federal Re-
public of Germany (FRG). Knuth had suffered partial facial paralysis
as the result of a bombing attack in the closing months of World War
II. An aspiring actress, she was recruited under the code name agnes
236 • KNOPPE, WOLF-DIETHARDT