AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
![]() ![]() Upon his release, the decorated panzer commander and one-time adjutant to SS chief Heinrich Himmler declared himself rehabilitated and took a job with the car maker Porsche. Military officials commuted the sentences Peiper served just 11 years in Landsberg Prison. While evidence against the Nazi officer was damning, controversy erupted following the trial when it was alleged that confessions from many of the accused were coerced using torture. He was tried for war crimes and sentenced to death in 1946 along with more than 40 of his soldiers. Oberst Peiper survived the war but fell into Allied hands in August of 1945. infantrymen slaughtered 60 surrendering Wehrmacht soldiers at Chenogne in southern Belgium. ![]() Over the next two weeks, GIs retaliated against German troops as the Americans fought to retake the lost territory. News of the atrocities infuriated the Allies. In one incident, 11 African American soldiers captured at Wereth were mutilated before being gunned down. Over the next three days, Peiper’s men murdered 250 additional POWs as well as 100 civilians. At least 43 of the prisoners played dead or fled into the nearby woods. A total of 84 GIs from the 285 th Field Artillery Observation Battalion were mowed down in a hail of machinegun fire. Shortly after 1 p.m., the German troops opened fire. Unwilling slow his column’s advance, a 29-year-old German colonel named Joachim Peiper ordered his men assemble the captives at a crossroads just outside the Belgian village of Malmedy. 17, 1944, elements of the 1 st SS Panzer Division’s Kampfgruppe Peiper netted more than 120 American prisoners after punching through the Allied lines in the opening 24 hours of Hitler’s famous Ardennes Offensive. NEXT WEDNESDAY MARKS THE 70 TH ANNIVERSARY OF one of the worst atrocities committed against American troops in the Second World War – the Malmedy Massacre. “While the Malmedy Massacre may be one of the better-known atrocities committed against POWs in World War Two, the history of the six-year conflict is rife with similar crimes.” ![]() (Image courtesy of the German Federal Archive). ![]() Despite being expressly prohibited by the Geneva Convention, such atrocities were all too common in World War Two. German troops massacred more than 300 GIs during the Battle of the Bulge. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |