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Posted on 09/02/2003 12:00:25 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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The incident which became known as "the Malmedy Massacre" happened at the Baugnez Crossroads in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium on December 17, 1944, the second day of fighting in the famous Battle of the Bulge, where American troops suffered 81,000 casualties, including 19,000 deaths, in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. The German army suffered 70,000 casualties with 20,000 dead in the month-long battle, which didn't stop even for Christmas Day. It was during this decisive battle that a number of American soldiers were taken prisoner by Waffen-SS soldiers who were fighting in the battle group named Kampfgrüppe Peiper, which was spearheading the German attack.  The photograph above shows some of the 72 bodies which were recovered after they were left lying in the snow until January 13, 1945, four weeks after they were killed. The reason given by the US Army QM unit which eventually retrieved the bodies was that there was still heavy fighting in the area, which was not true, according to American soldiers who participated in the fighting in the vicinity of the Massacre. According to one veteran of the battle, an American Infantry Captain who is now deceased, the alleged massacre was a cover-up to explain why the US Army waited four weeks to collect combat fatalities after they had been notified about the bodies by local Belgian citizens. Another 12 bodies were recovered four months later after all the snow had melted, making a total of 84 victims. On the day of the incident, Peiper's assignment had been to capture the bridge over the Muese in the Belgian town of Huy, and hold it to the last man until General Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army could cross over it, then rush across the northern Belgian plain to take the great supply port of Antwerp, which was the main objective of Hitler's Ardennes Offensive. Hitler had personally picked the route that Peiper was to take, but heavy artillery fire from the 2nd US Infantry Division had forced him to take an alternative route through the tiny village of Malmedy, close to the Baugnez Crossroads.  Peiper's Battle Group never reached its objective, which was the bridge over the Muese. Many of Peiper's tanks were destroyed by the Allies, and after Peiper ordered his men to destroy the remaining tanks and vehicles, the survivors escaped by wading and swimming across the river. Peiper's men were forced to retreat on foot, at a killing pace, on Christmas Eve 1944. Out of the 5,000 men in Peiper's unit, only 800 survived the Battle of the Bulge. Almost one out of ten of the survivors was indicted as a war criminal by the victorious Allies. The Baugnez Crossroads was known to the Americans as Five Points because it was the intersection of 5 roads. There is considerable disagreement about what actually happened at Five Points on that Sunday afternoon in 1944 when the blood of American soldiers was spilled in the snow. The victims were members of Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. The function of this lightly-armed technical unit was to locate enemy artillery and then transmit their position to other units. No two accounts of the tragedy agree, not even on the number that were killed. The official report said 86 were shot and there are 86 names on the Memorial Wall that has been erected at the site, but the Malmedy Massacre trial was based on the murder of the 72 soldiers whose bodies were autopsied after they were recovered on January 13, 1945, buried under two feet of snow. According to the story that was pieced together by the American survivors, Peiper's assault unit had destroyed around a dozen American army spotter planes that day and had captured a group of American soldiers, who had been forced to ride along as Peiper's men continued down the road on their tanks. At the crossroads, the German tanks caught up with the American soldiers of Battery B, 285th Battalion which had just left the village of Malmedy and were traveling the same road, bound for the same destination. At the crossroads, a US Military Policeman, Homer Ford, was directing traffic as a column of artillery vehicles, led by Lt. Virgil Lary, passed through the intersection, headed for the nearby village of St. Vith.  A five-minute battle ensued in which approximately 50 Americans were killed. Some of the Americans tried to escape by hiding in the Cafe Bodarme at the crossroads, but Peiper's SS soldiers set the cafe on fire and then heartlessly gunned down those who tried to run out of the building. Survivors of the massacre said that the SS soldiers then assembled those who had surrendered after the battle in a field beside the Cafe. There were three eye-witnesses to the event: the owner of the Cafe, Madame Bodarme, a 15-year-old boy and a German-born farmer, Henri Le Joly. None of these witnesses were called to testify at the military tribunal in Dachau. According to Charles Whiting in his book entitled The Traveler's Guide to The Battle for the German Frontier, "The Americans huddled in a field to the right of the pub, some of them with their hands on their helmets in token of surrender; others smoking and simply watching the SS armor pull away, leaving their POWs virtually unguarded. It was so quiet that Mme Bodarme and Le Joly came out of hiding to watch what was going on." Peiper's tank unit continued down the road, after leaving behind a few SS men to guard the prisoners. Legend has it that Lt. Col. Peiper, who had an excellent command of the English language, passed the scene and called out to the American prisoners, "It's a long way to Tipperary." According to Whiting's book, Peiper had heard that an American General was in the next village and he was on his way to capture him. General Dwight D. Eisenhower mentioned in his autobiography, "Crusade in Europe," that there was some concern among the American generals about being captured, although he didn't mention Peiper by name.  Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper At the Dachau proceedings, Lt. Virgil Lary was able to identify Pvt. 1st Class Georg Fleps, a Waffen-SS soldier from Rumania, who allegedly fired the first two shots with his pistol. Some versions of the story say that he fired a warning shot in the air when several prisoners tried to make a run for it. Other versions say that he deliberately took aim and shot one of the Americans. Panic ensued and the SS soldiers then began firing upon the prisoners with their machine guns. The survivors testified that they had heard the order given to kill all the prisoners: "Macht alle kaputt." According to the testimony of three survivors who played dead, the SS murderers were laughing as they walked among the fallen American soldiers and shot those who still showed signs of life. The autopsies showed that 41 of the Americans had been shot in the head and 10 had head injuries consistent with being bashed with a rifle butt. Curiously, most of the victims were not wearing their dog tags, although all of them were identified by their personal effects, since there were no wallets or watches taken by the Germans.  1st. Lt. Virgil Lary points out Sturmmann Georg Fleps Private Georg Fleps, who is shown in the photograph above, was sentenced to death by hanging, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison. Forty-two of the accused were sentenced to death, but all the sentences were commuted to life after a Congressional investigation determined that there had been misconduct by members of the prosecution team. The photograph below shows one of the survivors, an American soldier named Kenneth Ahrens, on the witness stand as he demonstrates how he held up his hands to surrender. Seated beside him is the interpreter who was responsible for translating his words into German for the benefit of the accused.  Kenneth Ahrens demonstrates how he surrendered The exact number of soldiers who surrendered to the Germans is unknown, but according to various accounts, it was somewhere between 85 and 120. After the captured Americans were herded into the field at the crossroads, they were allegedly shot down by Waffen-SS men from Peiper's Battle Group in what an American TV documentary characterized as an orgy motivated by German "joy of killing." Forty-three of the Americans taken prisoner that day managed to escape and lived to tell about it. Seventeen of the survivors ran across the snow-covered field, and made their way to the village of Malmedy where they joined the 291st Engineer Battalion. The massacre occurred at approximately 1 p.m. on December 17th and the first survivors were picked up at 2:30 p.m. on the same day by a patrol of the 291st Engineer Battalion. Their story of the unprovoked massacre was immediately sent to General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of the war in Europe, who made it a point to disseminate the story to the reporters covering the battle. One of the news reporters at the Battle of the Bulge was America's most famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was covering the war for Collier's magazine. When the gory details of the Malmedy Massacre reached the American people, there was a great outcry for justice to be done. To this day, the Malmedy Massacre is spoken of as the single worst atrocity perpetrated by the hated Waffen-SS soldiers. The Inspector General of the American First Army learned about the massacre three or four hours after the first survivors were rescued. By late afternoon that day, the news had reached the forward American divisions. In his book , entitled "The Ardennes, The Battle of the Bulge," Hugh Cole wrote the following: Thus Fragmentary Order 27 issued by Headquarters, 328th Infantry on 21 December for the attack scheduled for the following day says: "No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoners but will be shot on sight."  In his book called "The Other Price of Hitler's War: German Military & Civilian Losses Resulting from WW 2," author Martin Sorge wrote the following regarding the events that took place after the massacre: "It was in the wake of the Malmedy incident at Chegnogne that on New Year's Day 1945 some 60 German POWs were shot in cold blood by their American guards. The guilt went unpunished. It was felt that the basis for their action was orders that no prisoners were to be taken." Today, there are also "deniers" such as disgraced historian, David Irving, who claim that there was no massacre at all, and that these American soldiers were killed in a battle with the Germans which took place at the crossroads. Some of the SS men, who were convicted by the American Military Tribunal at Dachau, are still alive, but they tend to keep a low profile because even now, 58 years after the incident at the crossroads, they are afraid of losing their pensions or suffering reprisals if they speak out. The following description was given recently by a member of the 2nd SS Panzer Division of the Leibstandarte Hitler Jugend, who was convicted and sentenced to prison, together with a number of his comrades, for his involvement in the Malmedy Massacre. For obvious reasons, he wishes to remain anonymous. The following is his account:  "Our tanks were coming under American fire; the leading Tank was hit and its crew bailed out; the following tanks pushed it off the road and we kept going; a few kilometers on, a small group of (approximately 14) American infantrymen surrendered to us and they laid down their weapons. We radioed back to tell the troops behind us to gather up the American POWs and one of our soldiers was left behind to guard them. A short while later we got a call from our Infantry to say they had arrived at the scene to pick up the American POWs and had come under heavy fire; apparently the Americans who had previously surrendered had jumped and killed the soldier left to guard them and, together with more Americans that had arrived in the meantime, had laid an ambush for the SS that came to pick them up. Colonel Peiper sent some Tanks and ground troops back to assist. A heavy battle ensued, with hand-to-hand combat, whereby heavy casualties were taken on both sides. The Germans won the battle and gathered up their dead and wounded leaving the bodies of the Americans. It was later claimed the Americans killed in hand-to-hand combat were "beaten to death" by the SS, which is true, except it occurred in battle and not after they were captured. When the war ended, I was arrested along with the remaining members of my regiment and put on trial by the Americans. All of us were kept in cells with no lights and when we were taken out of the cells they put sacks over our heads and we were beaten almost daily. The men in my regiment who had taken part in the battle at the crossroads were tortured very badly; they had their noses broken and their testicles were crushed and they were beaten until they signed confessions that they had massacred the Americans. These men were sentenced to death. Because I had not been at the crossroads battle, but at the front a few kilometers away, I was given 20 years hard labor instead of the death sentence; even the crew of the tank that had been hit first and left kilometers behind were given 20 year sentences. It wasn't until an American Judge later discovered that the confessions had been tortured out of my comrades that many of the sentences were reduced."  SS Lt. Heinz Tomhardt listens as his death sentence is read The photograph above show a very young German SS soldier, as the death sentence is read to him while his defense attorney, Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett, stands on the right.
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Of course.
Actually I didn't realize she was still on here. Hadn't seen her since way back in the "canteen days".
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Air Power |
The F-5 is a lightweight, easy-to-fly, simple-to-maintain, and (relatively) cheap supersonic fighter. In configuration the F-5 is a low-wing monoplane equipped with an all-moving horizontal tall mounted in the low position; the fuselage is carefully contoured in accordance with the transonic area rule. Small side-mounted inlets supply air for the two General Electric J85 afterburning turbojet engines. The 4.8-percent-thick wing has 24 sweepback at the quarter chord line. The wing trailing edge is nearly straight, giving a trapezoidal shape to the planform. Lateral control is provided by small ailerons located near midsemispan; single-slotted high-lift flaps extend from the inboard end of the ailerons to the sides of the fuselage. Leading-edge flaps are used to improve maneuvering performance. (These flaps are not incorporated in the wings of the T-38.) Speed brakes are mounted on the bottom of the fuselage. Turning performance is enhanced by an aileron-rudder interconnect system, and handling characteristics are improved by artificial damping about the pitch and yaw axes. The F-5 is reported to have good handling characteristics and, in contrast with the F-4, does not have a propensity for entering unintentional spins.
The development of the Northrop F-5 began in 1954 when a Northrop team toured Europe and Asia to examine the defense needs of NATO and SEATO countries. A 1955 company design study for a lightweight supersonic fighter that would be relatively inexpensive, easy to maintain, and capable of operating out of short runways. The Air Force did not initially look favorably upon the proposal, since it did not need for a lightweight fighter. However, it did need a new trainer to replace the Lockheed T-33, and in June of 1956 the Air Force announced that it was going to acquire the trainer version, the T-38 Talon.
First flight of the prototype of the fighter version of the aircraft, designated F-5, occurred in July 1959. On April 25, 1962, the Department of Defense announced that it had chosen the aircraft for its Military Assistance Program (MAP). America's NATO and SEATO allies would now be able to acquire a supersonic warplane of world-class quality at a reasonable cost. On August 9, 1962 the aircraft was given the official designation of F-5A Freedom Fighter. Later known as the Tiger, initial deliveries of the F-5 were made to Iran in January 1965. Attracted by its performance, reliability, and low cost (in 1972, the cost of an F-5 was about one-third that of an F-4), other countries outside MAP soon began buying the F-5.
Optimized for the air-to-ground role, the F-5A had only a very limited air-to-air capability, and was not equipped with a fire-control radar. The F-5B was the two-seat version of the F-5A. It was generally similar to the single-seat F-5A but had two seats in tandem for dual fighter/trainer duties. The F-5 was originally designed as a daytime, air-to-air fighter, but it has also been extensively used as a ground-attack aircraft. Photoreconnaissance versions of the F-5 have also been produced. Armament for the air-to-air combat role consists of two 20-mm cannons and two Sidewinder missiles. Radius of a typical air combat mission with this armament and external fuel tanks is 375 miles, and average mission speed is 541 miles per hour. In the ground-attack mode, about 7000 pounds of external ordnance may be carried.
Although all F-5A production was intended for MAP, in October 1965, the USAF "borrowed" 12 combat-ready F-5As from MAP supplies and sent them to Vietnem with the 4503rd Tactical Fighter Wing for operational service trials. This program was given the code name of *Skoshi Tiger" ("little" Tiger). and it was during this tour of duty that the F-5 picked up its Tiger nickname. Evaluated in Vietnam by the USAF, the F-5 was later used by Vietnamese forces.
On November 20, 1970, the Northrop entry was declared the winner of the IFA (International Fighter Aircraft) to be the F-5A/B's successor. The emphasis was be on the air-superiority role for nations faced with threats from opponents operating late-generation MiG-21s. An order was placed for five development and 325 production aircraft. In January of 1971, it was reclassified as F-5E. The aircraft came to be known as *Tiger II*
The F-5E is a small, light aircraft. Its design gross weight of 15 745 pounds is only about 30 percent of the 53 848-pound design gross weight of the F-4. In performance, the F-5 has a Mach 1.51 capability at about 36000 feet and a sea-level rate of climb of 28 536 feet per minute - a good performance but not comparable with that of the F-4. Certainly, the load-carrying capability of the F-5 is much less than that of the larger aircraft.
Never a part of the USAF tactical forces, it has been used as an aggressor aircraft to represent a hostile fighter in simulated combat with U.S. fighters. Some of the characteristics of the F-5 resemble those of the Soviet-built MIG-21 in certain altitude ranges.
The US Navy Fighter Weapons School (the so-called "Top Gun" school) at NAS Miramar acquired a total of ten F-5Es and three F-5Fs for dissimilar air combat training. Because of the F-5's characteristics, which were similar to the MiG-21, was used as 'agressor' aircraft, equipping the FWS and VF-126 at NAS Miramar, plus VF-43 at NAS Oceana. All three units later disposed of their Tiger IIs in favor of the General Dynamics F-16N. These Tiger IIs were passed on to VF-95 at NAS Key West and VFA-127 at NAS Fallon. During FY 1996, VFC-13 moved from NAS Miramar, CA, to NAS Fallon, NV, and transitioned from 12 F/A-18 to 25 F-5 aircraft. VFC-13's flight hour program increased to offset the scheduled decommissioning of the two remaining Active Component adversary squadrons, VF-45 and VFA-127. This transition to the F-5 adversary aircraft provided Active and Reserve Navy pilots with air-to-air combat training at significant savings to the taxpayer. Recent estimates show that the F-5 can be operated at one third of what it costs to operate an F/A-18.
Specifications:
Primary Function: Fighter
Contractor: Northrop
Crew: One
Unit Cost: $756,000
Powerplant: Two General Electric J85s of 4,080 lbs. thrust each with afterburner
Dimensions:
Length: 47 feet, 2 inches
Wingspan: 25 feet 3 inches
Height: 13 feet 2 inches
Weights: Empty: 8,085 lb / Maximum Takeoff: 20,677 lb
Performance :
Speed: 925 mph (Mach 1.4) at 36,000 feet
Ceiling: 50,500 feet
Range: with maximum fuel -- 1387 miles
Armaments:
two 20-mm cannon in the fuselage nose.
Two AIM-9 Sidewinder at the wingtips
Five pylons carry up to 6200 pounds of ordinance or fuel tanks
loads can include four air-to-air missiles,
Bullpup air-to-surface missiles, bombs, up to 20 unguided rockets, or external fuel tanks.
All photos Copyright of Global Security.Org
David Irving denied many things:
Irving's tag as 'Holocaust denier' upheld
David Pallister
Saturday July 21, 2001
The Guardian
The discredited historian of the Third Reich, David Irving, may face bankruptcy after the court of appeal yesterday rejected his application to appeal against a libel trial ruling branding him a racist Holocaust denier who deliberately distorted historical facts.
He faces a final legal bill of more than £2m. Yesterday the court agreed that he could be asked immediately for an interim payment of £150,000.
Richard Rampton QC, counsel for Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, whose book, Denying the Holocaust, led to the case, said: "There lurks the real possibility of the need to take bankruptcy proceedings against Mr Irving."
He was not in court when the judgment - a ringing endorsement of the conclusions reached by Mr Justice Gray at the libel trial last year - was handed down by Lord Justice Pill with Lord Justice Mantell and Lord Justice Buxton. Mr Irving was "somewhere in a van on the south coast" trying to sell his latest book, Churchill's War, to bookshops, said his lawyers.
After Mr Justice Gray's devastating judgment that he was an apologist for Hitler, Mr Irving has been unable to find a mainstream distributor for the book, which he has published under his own imprint, Focal Point Press, with finance from American investors.
Mark Bateman, solicitor for Penguin, said: "[Today's ruling] is a very predictable outcome. It is a shame we have been dragged through the court of appeal when there was really no issue in Mr Justice Gray's judgment - his judgment was sound."
Lord Justice Pill said that the trial judge was right to conclude Irving "may be described as a Holocaust denier". He went on: "We acknowledge he has over the years modified, and in some respects, significantly modified, his views upon some of the relevant events.
"However, the respondents were justified in describing him as 'one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial' having regard to the views he has expressed and in some respects persisted in, and the manner and force with which he has expressed them.
"The use of the word 'dangerous' was justified by reason of his historiographical methods considered by the judge and in this judgment."
Last month Irving's counsel, Adrian Davies, had argued before the court that Mr Justice Gray's conclusions were wrong and unjust and that Irving had come to reasonable conclusions in his books based on the available evidence.
Lord Justice Pill said: "Mr Davies has not persuaded us that it is arguable that the judge's general conclusions were unjustified."
On the trial's central question of Auschwitz, said Lord Justice Pill, Mr Irving argued that the evidence for mass gassing at the camp was nowhere near so strong that it was perverse for him to entertain doubts about it. Mr Irving's view was that there were no gassings at Auschwitz 1 and only random gassings at Auschwitz 2, and had submitted there were good grounds for scepticism as to what had happened at Auschwitz.
Lord Justice Pill said that, having considered the evidence, they considered Mr Justice Gray "fully entitled" to reach his conclusion that "no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews".
Professor Lipstadt said she was gratified by the ruling: "I hope Mr Irving's six year battle against my attempt to tell the truth about him will end. I do not delude myself that, though my battle with Mr Irving may be over, the fight against those who will pervert the historical record for their own political and ideological goals has ended. That battle will continue for as long as history is written. Those of us writing history and those of us who care about truth and memory will have to be ever ready to stand against them."
Imagine, you merely try to conquer the world, crush smaller countries, exterminate Jews, gypsies, and other undesirables, and when you fail--they want to hang you for a few dozen Americans shot in the head.
Sorry, I cannot muster the bleeding heart sympathy of the defense attorney, Lt. Col. Everett.
The glorious Geneva Accords were trod under the boots of the mobilized Third Reich. Beginning in 1933, there was no question that Germany's destiny was conquest, legalities to the contrary notwithstanding.
A pity that Peiper died at the hands of french cowards thirty years after the fact--if there's a rub, it's that.
No doubt the forty Americans shot in the head (or the ten butted to death) were depressed in the style of Vince Foster.
To this day, Gerhardt Schroeder cannot speak straight and true. There is more karma to be worked out there.
Dachau
Dachau
Dachau, not Auschwitz
Thanks Johnny.
On 17 December 2007 at the Baugnez crossroads in eatern Belgium a new museum is to be opened at the site of the Malmedy Massacre. The following website talks about this unique venture at which a survivor is to be present.
http://www.dannysparker.com/modules/wfsection/viewarticles.php?category=6
Hear! Hear!
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