The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Malmedy Massacre (12/17/1944) - Sep. 2nd, 2003

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[SAMWolf]

The Battle of the Bulge was no ordinary battle; it was the one of the biggest land battles of World War II and resulted in the highest number of American casualties. There had long been rumors that Hitler was secretly developing a "miracle weapon," and it was at the Battle of the Bulge that the jet airplane was first used by the Germans. The area in Belgium where the battle was fought had been the scene of similar battles in 1870, 1914 and 1940. This was Hitler's last stand, the last counteroffensive of the German army, and the Germans knew that if this battle was lost, the war would most likely be lost. The battle was very intense with the Germans putting everything they had into it. As John Toland wrote, regarding the gallant battle fought by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge: "Boys of fourteen and fifteen died, rifles frozen to their hands; men in their fifties were found in cellars, feet black with putrefaction." Hitler was counting on Dietrich's Sixth Panzer Army, whose soldiers had fought heroically against the Soviet Communists on the Eastern front, to save the Fatherland from the Bolsheviks by winning this crucial battle in Belgium.



Dietrich assigned Peiper the great honor of leading the battle group which would spearhead the attack. Peiper was a veteran of the greatest tank battle of all time, fought between the German Tiger tanks and the Russian T-34 tanks at Kursk in July 1943. At almost 30 years of age, Peiper was the youngest combat colonel in the Waffen-SS and he was on track to becoming the youngest General in this elite German army. He had been awarded the Iron Cross first class for bravery in battle, and was regarded as one of Germany's leading experts in tank warfare. Under his command, Peiper's 1 SS Panzer Korps had disabled more than one hundred Russian tanks in combat. Such was Peiper's reputation as a panzer ace that his defense attorney made the suggestion that he should be brought to America as a consultant in America's Cold War with the Soviet Union. In fact, General Heinz Guderian, Germany's leading expert in armored strategy, had been brought to Ft. Knox after the war to advise the American Army on tank warfare. Peiper and his men had already been interviewed extensively in prison by US Army tactical experts.

In the first few days of the battle, there was mass confusion caused by a team of 28 Germans dressed in American uniforms, led by the famous commando Otto Skorzeny. Riding in stolen American jeeps, they created havoc by directing American troops down the wrong road, changing signposts and cutting telephone wires to General Bradley's field headquarters. Four of the team were captured and when they confessed their mission, the American army immediately broadcast the news that there were thousands of Germans operating behind enemy lines. Skorzeny and his men were later brought before the American military tribunal at Dachau in another proceeding.


Otto Skorzeny, famous German commando

John Toland described the opening scene of the battle in the following passage from his book entitled Adolf Hitler:

By midnight the Ardennes battlefield was in turmoil, a scene of indescribable confusion to those involved in the hundreds of struggles. No one - German or American, private or general - knew what was really happening. In the next two days a series of disasters struck the defenders. On the snowy heights of the Schnee Eiffel at least 8000 Americans - perhaps 9000 for the battle was too confused for accuracy - were bagged by Hitler's troops. Next to Bataan, it was the greatest mass surrender of Americans in history.

The enlisted men among the Malmedy Massacre defendants averaged less than 22 years in age. There were only 30 men who were original members of the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler, including Lt. Col. Peiper and General Sepp Dietrich. Many of the accused SS soldiers were baby-faced, uneducated 18 and 19-year-olds with little combat experience, but a few others were some of the toughest and most battle-hardened men in the German armed forces, who had been in combat for six years. They had fought some fierce battles on the Eastern front and seen unbelievable atrocities committed by our Russian allies, including mutilated bodies on the battlefield, sodomy on German POWs and cannibalism in which parts of the bodies of German POWs had been sliced off and eaten. The photograph below, taken in the fall of 1941 on the eastern front, was published in a book by Professor Franz W. Seidler who found it in the files of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, Case 304, after the war.


Body of German soldier in Russian POW Camp 2, Stalag 305, 1941

Because the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention of 1929, the Germans were not required to observe the international rules of warfare with regard to our Russian allies who were committing the most sickening atrocities on the battlefield with no regard for the unwritten rules of civilized warfare. During the proceedings, the prosecution contended that Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper had instructed his men to fight as they had fought against the Russians, disregarding international law about the treatment of prisoners of war. The defendants testified that they had been instructed to take no prisoners, but they understood this to mean that because they were fighting in a tank unit, they were supposed to send POWs to the rear to picked up by infantry units.


Gen. Sepp Dietrich is No. 11, Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper is No. 42

In the photograph above, General Sepp Dietrich is No. 11; he was sentenced to death by hanging. Next to him is Prisoners No. 33, General Fritz Krämer, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Prisoner No. 45 is General Hermann Priess who was sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was commuted to 20 years. No. 42 is Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper who was sentenced to death by hanging.

Besides the killing of 72 American soldiers at the Baugnez Crossroads, near the village of Malmedy, there were many other charges against the 73 accused. The charge sheet specifically stated that the 73 accused men

"did....at, or in the vicinity of Malmedy, Honsfeld, Büllingen, Lignauville, Stoumont, La Gleize, Cheneux, Petit Thier, Trois Ponts, Stavelot, Wanne and Lutre-Bois, all in Belgium, at sundry times between 16 December 1944 and 13 January 1945, willfully, deliberately, and wrongfully permit, encourage, aid, abet, and participate in the killings, shooting, ill treatment, abuse and torture of members of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, then at war with the then German Reich, who were then and there surrendered and unarmed prisoners of war in the custody of the then German Reich, the exact names and numbers of such persons being unknown aggregating several hundred, and of unarmed civilian nationals, the exact names and numbers of such persons being unknown."

In all, the accused were charged with murdering between 538 to 749 nameless Prisoners of War and over 90 unidentified Belgian civilians in the locations mentioned on the charge sheet, which is quoted above. The accused SS men claimed that the civilians, who were killed, had been actively aiding the Americans during the fighting. According to the rules of the Geneva Convention, shooting partisans was allowed.

The prosecution claimed that General Sepp Dietrich, on direct orders from Hitler himself, had urged the SS men to remember the German civilians killed by the Allied bombing, and to disregard the rules of warfare that were mandated by the Hague Convention of 1907 and the Geneva convention. This meant that all of the accused were charged with participating in a conspiracy of evil that came from the highest level, the moral equivalent of the Nazi conspiracy to exterminate all the Jews in Europe, which was one of the charges against the major German war criminals at Nuremberg.

[SAMWolf]

The Malmedy Massacre proceedings were conducted like a US Army court martial, except that only a two-thirds majority vote by the panel of 8 judges was needed for conviction. Each of the accused was assigned a number because it was hard to keep the names of the 73 men straight. They all wore their field uniforms, which had been stripped of the double lighting bolt SS insignia and all other military emblems and medals. The proceedings lasted for only two months, during which time both the prosecution and the defense presented their cases. Fearful that they might incriminate themselves on the witness stand, their defense attorney, Lt. Col. Everett, who believed that they were guilty, persuaded most of the SS soldiers not to testify on their own behalf. Col. Joaquim Peiper, volunteered to take all the blame if his men could go free, but this offer was declined by the court.

The courtroom was in the Dachau complex where the former concentration camp was located. The blackened chimney of the Dachau crematorium loomed in the distance, only a quarter of a mile away from where the Jewish "law member" of the court sat under a huge American flag pinned to the wall. It had been only a little more than a year since soldiers in the American Seventh Army had discovered the horror of the gas chamber at Dachau and dead bodies piled up in the morgue of the crematorium building.

After only 2 hours and 20 minutes of deliberation by the panel of judges, all 73 of the accused SS soldiers, who were on trial, were convicted. Each of the accused was required to stand before the judges with his defense attorney, Lt. Col. Everett, by his side, as the sentence was read aloud.


Waiting for the Malmedy Massacre verdict outside the courtroom

Forty-two of the accused were sentenced to death by hanging, including Col. Peiper. Peiper made a request through his defense attorney that he and his men be shot by a firing squad, the traditional soldier's execution. His request was denied. General Sepp Dietrich was sentenced to life in prison along with 21 others. The rest of the accused were sentenced to prison terms of 10, 15 or 20 years.

None of the convicted SS soldiers were ever executed and by 1956, all of them had been released from prison. All of the death sentences had been commuted to life in prison. As it turned out, the Malmedy Massacre proceedings at Dachau, which were intended to show the world that the Waffen-SS soldiers were a bunch of heartless killers, became instead a controversial case which dragged on for over ten years and resulted in criticism of the American Occupation, the war crimes military tribunals, the Jewish prosecutors at Dachau and the whole American system of justice. Before the last man convicted in the Dachau proceedings walked out of Landsberg prison as a free man, the aftermath of the case had involved the US Supreme Court, the International Court at the Hague, the US Congress, Dr. Johann Neuhäusler who was a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp and a Bishop in Munich, and the government of the new Federal Republic of Germany. All of this was due to the efforts of the defense attorney, Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett.

James J. Weingartner, the author of "A Peculiar Crusade: Willis M. Everett and the Malmedy Massacre," wrote the story of the Dachau proceedings from information provided by Everett's family and gleaned from his letters and diary. According to Weingartner, shortly before the proceedings were to begin, defense attorney Lt. Col. Everett interviewed a few of the 73 accused with the help of an interpreter. Although the accused were being held in solitary confinement and had not had the opportunity to consult with each other, most of them told identical stories of misconduct by their Jewish interrogators. The accused claimed that they had already had a trial, which was conducted in a room with black curtains, lit only by two candles. The judge was a Lt. Col. who sat at a table draped in black with a white cross on it. After these mock trials in which witnesses testified against the accused, each one was told that he had been sentenced to death, but nevertheless he would have to write out his confession. When all of them refused to write a confession, the prosecution dictated statements which they were forced to sign under threats of violence. There was no question that these mock trials had actually taken place, since the prosecution admitted it during the investigation after the Dachau proceedings ended.


Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper on the witness stand, June 17, 1946

According to Weingartner, Lt. Col. Peiper presented to Everett a summary of allegations of abuse made to him by his soldiers. They claimed that they were beaten by the interrogators and that one of the original 75 accused men, 18-year-old Arvid Freimuth, had hanged himself in his cell after being repeatedly beaten. A statement, supposedly written by Freimuth, although portions of it were not signed by him, was introduced during the proceedings as evidence against the other accused. As in the Nuremberg IMT and the other Dachau proceedings, the accused were charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes, as well as with specific incidents of murder, so Freimuth's statement was relevant to the case, even after he was no longer among the accused himself.

An important part of the defense case was based on the fact that the accused were classified as Prisoners of War when they were forced to sign statements incriminating themselves even before they were charged with a war crime. As POWs, they were under the protection of the Geneva Convention of 1929 which prohibited the kind of coercive treatment that the accused claimed they had been subjected to in order to force them to sign statements of guilt. Article 45 of the Geneva Convention said that Prisoners of War were "subject to the laws, regulations and orders in force in the armies of the detaining powers." That meant that they were entitled to the same Fifth Amendment rights as American soldiers. After being held in prison for an average of five months, the SS Malmedy veterans were charged as war criminals on April 11, 1946, a little over a month before their case before the American military tribunal was set to begin. By virtue of the charge, they were automatically reduced to the status of "civilian internee" and no longer had the protection of the Geneva Convention.

As quoted by Weingartner, the defense made the following argument at the trial:

"As previously outlined, International Law laid down certain safeguards for treatment of prisoners of war, and any confession or statement extracted in violation thereof is not admissible in a court martial or any subsequent trial under a code set up by Military Government. If a confession from a prisoner of war is born in a surrounding of hope of release or benefit or fear of punishment or injury, inspired by one in authority, it is void in its inception and not admissible in any tribunal of justice.

Could anyone, by artifice, conjure up the theory that the Military Government Rules and Ordinances are superior to the solemn agreements of International Law as stated in the Geneva Convention of 1929? Is this court willing to assume the responsibility of admitting these void confessions?....It is not believed that the Court will put itself in the anomalous position of accepting statements into evidence which were elicited from prisoners of war in contravention of the Geneva Convention and therefore a violation of the Rules of Land Warfare on the one hand and then turn squarely around and meet out punishment for other acts which they deem violations of the same laws. To do so would be highly inconsistent and would subject the Court and all American Military Tribunals to just criticism."


Col. Peiper listens to closing statement with his arms folded

Lt. Col. Rosenfeld ruled against a defense motion to drop the charges, based on the above argument, by proclaiming that the Malmedy Massacre accused had never been Prisoners of War because they became war criminals the moment they committed their alleged acts and were thus not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention of 1929. (Both Rosenfeld and Everett may have been unaware of the fact that on August 4, 1945, an order signed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower reduced the status of all German POWs to that of "disarmed enemy forces," which meant that they were no longer protected under the rules of the Geneva Convention.) Moreover, as the law member of the panel of judges, Lt. Col. Rosenfeld ruled that "to admit a confession of the accused, it need not be shown such confession was voluntarily made...." Contrary to the rules of the American justice system, the German war criminals were presumed guilty and the burden of proof was on them, not the prosecution.

The prosecution case hinged on the accusation that Adolf Hitler himself had given the order that no prisoners were to be taken during the Battle of the Bulge and that General Sepp Dietrich had passed down this order to the commanding officers in his Sixth Panzer Army. This meant that there was a Nazi conspiracy to kill American prisoners of war and thus, all of the accused were guilty because they were participants in a "common plan" to break the rules of the Geneva Convention. Yet General Dietrich's Sixth Panzer Army had taken thousands of other prisoners who were not shot. According to US Army figures, there was a total of 23,554 Americans captured during the Battle of the Bulge.


US Army Major Harold D. McCown testified as a witness for Col. Peiper

Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper was not present during the alleged incident that happened at the crossroads near Malmedy. The specific charge against Peiper was that he had ordered the killing of American POWs in the village of La Gleize. Major Harold D. McCown, battalion commander of the 30th Infantry Division's 119th Regiment of the US Third Army, testified for the defense at the trial. McCown had been one by Peiper's prisoners at La Gleize; he claimed that he had talked half the night with the charismatic Peiper, who allegedly didn't sleep for 9 straight nights at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. McCown had heard the story of Peiper's men shooting prisoners at the crossroads near Malmedy and he asked Peiper about the safety of the Americans at La Gleize. By this time, Peiper's tanks were trapped in the hilltop village of La Gleize and he had set up his HQ in the cellar of the little schoolhouse there. McCown testified that Peiper had given him his word that the American POWs at La Gleize would not be shot, and McCown also testified that he had no knowledge that any prisoners were actually shot there.

The main evidence in the prosecution case was the sworn statements signed by the accused even before they were charged with a war crime, statements which defense attorney Everett claimed were obtained by means of mock trials and beatings in violation of the rules of the Geneva Convention of 1929. The war crimes with which they were charged were likewise violations of the Geneva Convention of 1929, a double standard which didn't seem right to defense attorney, Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett.

Another double standard that bothered Everett was that there had been many incidents in which American soldiers were not put on trial for killing German Prisoners of War, but the defense was not allowed to mention this. Any of the accused men who inadvertently said anything about American soldiers breaking the rules of the Geneva Convention were promptly silenced and these comments were stricken from the record.


Peiper poses for his mug shot at Schwabish Hall prison

Eventually all 73 of the convicted German war criminals in the Malmedy Massacre case were released from Landsberg prison, including Col. Peiper who was freed on December 22, 1956, the last of the accused to finally walk out of Landsberg.

Peiper had been born on January 30, 1915, so he was just short of his 30ieth birthday when the Malmedy Massacre happened. He spent 11 of the best years of his life in prison, including 55 months on death row. After he was freed, he could not overcome the stigma of being a convicted war criminal. He took a series of jobs, but was unable to keep any of them. Finally, in 1972, he moved to the French village of Traves. Just as he was starting to write a book on the Malmedy Massacre, Peiper was killed on July 14, 1976 when his house was firebombed. Peiper had been warned to leave, but he refused; he died as he had lived, with a weapon in his hands, refusing to be driven out of his home. His charred body was found in the ruins of his burned home. The date of July 14th was the French Bastille Day, the equivalent of the American 4th of July. A group of Frenchmen, wearing ski masks were photographed as they announced "We got Peiper." This photo was published on November. 7, 1976 in the New York Times Magazine.

The bodies of the Malmedy Massacre victims were buried in temporary graves at Henri-Chappelle, 25 miles north of the village of Malmedy. The temporary cemetery was made into a permanent military cemetery after the war, and 21 of the murdered heroes of the Battle of the Bulge are still buried there. A stone wall has been erected as a memorial in honor of all the victims of the Malmedy Massacre near the site of the tragedy.

Additional Sources:

ardenne44.free.fr
www.xs4all.nl/~hulsmann
http://users.skynet.be/bulgecriba/malmedy.html
www.qmmuseum.lee.army.mil

[SAMWolf]

In the second day of the World War II German Counter Offensive (known as the Battle of the Bulge) elements of the 1st SS Panzer Division moving through Belgium captured and subsequently killed nearly 80 US prisoners of war. Victims of the "Malmedy Massacre" were left unattended under a shroud of new-fallen snow for weeks until mortuary affairs troops could arrive.

During the week of 13-18 January 1945 the 4th Platoon, 3060th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company set up a collection point nearby and carefully combed the killing fields for remains and personal effects.

Although many in the unit were former combat soldiers, and had received little mortuary training, seasoned NCOs led the way -- showing them how to use laundry markings and other items for identification, do fingerprinting, fill out the necessary forms, and so on.

In the end, despite the almost complete absence of dog tags, 100 percent of the victims recovered were positively identified, and buried with all due honor -- as befitted United States soldiers who paid the ultimate price in the name of freedom.

[SAMWolf]

[SAMWolf]

Mash the picture

Dear Foxhole Readers,

I am going to be out of town starting today, Sept. 2nd until late in the evening of Sept. 4th.

I will be working on a "special" thread while I'm gone so it's not really a vacation.

I will be leaving in the next few hours. My daughter, tmprincesa, will be posting the Foxhole on Sept. 3rd and Sept. 4th (At least I hope she will, she has been threatened with dire consequences if the Foxhole does not get posted and she ruins our perfect record). She will be posting the thread before she leaves for class in the mornings, so she will not be around during the day to answer any pings.

I am not sure what the availabilty of on-line access will be for me during this time, but I will attempt to check in whenever I can.

I hope all of you enjoy the Foxhole Threads and will see you again on Sept. 5th.

SAMWolf

P.S. You ROTC guys at U of P better not give Tracy a hard time about having to post the Foxhole! :-)

[snippy_about_it]

.......FALL IN to the FReeper Foxhole!

.......Good Tuesday Morning Everyone!


If you would like added or removed from our ping list let me know.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning.

LOL!

Beat ya!

[snippy_about_it]

Mash Here

Well I'll be! SAMWolf, if you're taking a vacation I'm going to take one also. So there!

Oh yeah, I'll be "working" on a thread too. LOL.

Dear Foxhole readers, please help yourself to discussion amongst yourselves on the threads while we're away. We really hate to leave but we are on a very special mission and we're planning to tell you all about it on the Foxhole thread this coming Friday.

As SAM said, we are not sure how or when we will be able to access the internet but we will do our best to check in when we can. Otherwise, we will be back in front of the computer by Friday morning to post the "Special Project" thread.



Thank you tmprincesa for posting the Threads for your Dad while we're away. ;)

[RadioAstronomer]

Indeed you did :-) Morning to you as well. :-)

[snippy_about_it]

Ha ha! Trust me, it's only because as we posted, we are about to leave, otherwise I'd be snoozing.

It was fun though!

[SAMWolf]

Good Morning RA!

[SAMWolf]

Hey! Are Snippy's allowed vacations?

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning SAM.

LOL. Yep. Snippy's allowed as many vacations as she chooses, Lord willing. ;)

I'll see you real soon. Woo-hoo!

[snippy_about_it]

Love the tagline today. LOL.

[snippy_about_it]

HENRI-CHAPELLE AMERICAN CEMETERY AND MEMORIAL

[RadioAstronomer]

Hi! :-)

[E.G.C.]

Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.

Did some lawnmowing, cleaning oout the dog fod and water bowls and some Labor Day joyriding. Hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day holiday.:-D

[SAMWolf]

Heading out the door.

See ya all when I get the chance or Friday when I get back.

You all behave and be nice to tmprincesa!

[aomagrat]

Today's classic warship, HMS Neptune

Neptune class battleship
Displacement: 19,680 tons
Lenght: 546'
Beam: 85'
Draft: 28'6"
Speed: 21 knots
Compliment: 759
Armament: 10 12", 16 4", 4 3pdr, 3 18" tt

Built at Portsmouth navy Dockyard and launched on the 30th September 1909, HMS Neptune was the first British Battleship to be able to fire all ten of her 12-inch guns broadside, by allowing the two wing turrets to fire across deck. But this was found to be of little advantage as it strained the hull. HMS Neptune also failed to reach her contractual speed on trials, but did achieve (using Welsh coal ) a speed of 21.129 knots during her acceptance trials on the 17th November 1910.

In May 1911 HMS Neptune became the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet and in May 1912 she joined the 1st Battle Squadron. She was still serving in this squadron when in April 1916 she collided with a merchant ship but was not seriously damaged. She was at the Battle of Jutland and was reported to have scored several hits on the German Battleship Lutzow. She did not have any casualties during the action.

On the 1st of February 1919 she was put into reserve and eventually scrapped in September 1922.

The 12 inch guns of HMS Neptune in action

Big Guns in action!

[manna]

Present!