Victims of the Malmedy Massacre

Was segragation really that serious back then? They simply ignored the fact that they gave their lives like all other Americans who were KIA?

 

carl, you sure about this. Peiper was put on trial at Dachu and if memory serves was sentenced to ten years in prison. Though i am not sure what for.

I tend to agree with the theroy that it was not a delibratly ordered killing. One account i've read claims that one of the POWs begain moving towards a gate in the back of the field. And, as Timo puts it, one of the youngsters paniced and opened fire, and the rest followed. It also suggested that the commander on the spot tried to gain control of the situation. But the author, i think it was Charles Whiting, will check next week, was not able to find out if they only managed to gain control after all the POWs were shot, or if they gained control, then, realiseing they would be in the shit, so to speake, decided it would be best if there were no witnesses.

As well as many of these guyts being green, at the time the ranks of the SS were filled with men drawn from other arms, such as Air force ground crews and the Navy, who no longer had a job. The experianced combat vets would have been up at the front, while these less well experiance guys were left to protect the rear.

While this does in no way excuse what was deffinatly murder, it goes soem way to explaining it, and is different from how it is usually protrayed.

But the idea of a delibarate killing is, i believe, help along by the way its portrayed in the movie 'Battle of the Bulge'.

 

Was segragation really that serious back then? They simply ignored the fact that they gave their lives like all other Americans who were KIA? </font>[/QUOTE]I recently read an article in FSM about a fighter Sq made up entirely of African Americans. I think it was the 355th (they flew P-51s with red tails).

Anyway, the article said that those pilots who were taken prisoner by the Germans claimed that they were treated better by the Germans than their own countrymen.

 

This was discussed previously in this forum but cannot find the articles at the moment, sorry..

Peiper was sentenced to death but later thanx (?!) to an American lawyer the sentence was turned into "life imprisonment". The charges were found inadequate after the second hearing.

 

I agree with the statement that the movie Battle of the Bulge has made pretty much set peoples minds as the event having happened as shown in the movie no matter what the real truth is.

Also in anouther post it was asked if segregation was really that bad back then ? The answer is yes ! From my research of the training base Camp Swift in Bastrop Texas the base commander made no effort to show his dislike for blacks in the US Army and on his Army Base.

I can not agree with Peiper getting sentenced at the war crimes hearings. If he was given 10 years, then he got off with alot less than a 10 year sentence served.

 

I agree with the statement that the movie Battle of the Bulge has made pretty much set peoples minds as the event having happened as shown in the movie no matter what the real truth is.

Also in anouther post it was asked if segregation was really that bad back then ? The answer is yes ! From my research of the training base Camp Swift in Bastrop Texas the base commander made no effort to show his dislike for blacks in the US Army and on his Army Base.

I can not agree with Peiper getting sentenced at the war crimes hearings. If he was given 10 years, then he got off with alot less than a 10 year sentence served.

 

A PS to the last post. I was reading a history of Peiper at the site http://www.geocities.com/wolfram55/jjp.html and it said he was murdered by French communists and tortured by US Army MP's after the war. He was on Himmlers's staff, so I am sure he was a hard core Nazi, however he seemed to be a good person to have on your side if you are going to have a war and win!!

 

Ah yes, that's Thomas Vanhasselt's website. He's a hardcore SS apologist and Peiper-worshipper. Every civilian killed in the Ardennes by the SS deserved their faith as they were all partisans, that kind of nonsense.

Do you have to be a hardcore Nazi to be on Himmlers staff, or would being a bright intelligent young officer also get you in that position?

 

Peiper was sentenced to death by hanging at the 1946 Malmédy trial. Two years later this sentence was reduced to life imprisonment because a US senate committee found that the methods used by the American interrogators to get confessions were questionable. In the end he was released after ten years, at Christmas Day 1956 as last of the Malmédy convicts.

 

Indeed,

Peiper probably wasn´t a "hardcore" nazi.Rommel was leading Hitler´s bodyguard early in the war and was not a nazi, I think, though was very much charmed by Hitler, like many at the time.
Then again being a nazi would not have been bad for the career, I think, but so far I know Peiper was not a hardcore nazi.

When asked by Himmler why he did not wear his Nazi pin he replied that he didn’t have one and wasn’t going to get one either- he would be an officer like his father

Peiper was not a member of the Nazi party ( quite unusual ), although he joined the Hitler Youth as a young boy and then, at the age of 19, applied for admission to the elite Waffen-SS in 1934.

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauTrials/MalmedyMassacre04.html


On the subject of malmedy trial this is kinda funny way of condemning people...if it´s the truth?

One defendant, Marcel Boltz, was released because he was a French citizen by virtue of having been born in Alsace when it belonged to the French. When Alsace became part of the Greater German Reich after the defeat of France, Boltz was recruited into the Waffen-SS. Because he was a citizen of an Allied country, Boltz was automatically innocent and charges against him were dropped

mock trials had actually taken place, since the prosecution admitted it during the investigation after the Dachau proceeding ended

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 Conventi

Patton's Army was accused of several incidents in which German prisoners of war were shot, which he admitted in his autobiography. Patton wrote the following entry in his diary on 4 January 1945: "The Eleventh Armored is very green and took unnecessary losses to no effect. There were also some unfortunate incidents in the shooting of prisoners. I hope we can conceal this."
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I read the book Alamein as previously mentioned. In one part of the fighting the allied were ordered not to take prisoners. Mostly Italian, but poor bastards were kille din their trenches with hand granades...No chance to surrender.

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an American captain was acquitted on the grounds that he had been following the orders of General Patton, who had discouraged American troops from taking prisoners during the landing of the US Seventh Army in Sicily.
I wonder who was that?

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Ironically, an incident in which Americans executed German prisoners happened within half a mile of the Dachau courtroom. On April 29, 1945, the day that the SS surrendered the camp at Dachau, American soldiers of the 45th Thunderbird Division of the US Seventh Army lined up surrendered Waffen-SS soldiers against a wall and machine-gunned them down in the SS Training Camp, next to the concentration camp. This was followed by a second incident, on the same day, which happened at a spot that was within sight of the courtroom: the killing of SS guards at the Dachau concentration camp after they came down from their guard tower and surrendered with their hands in the air.

A third execution of German soldiers who had surrendered on April 29th, known as the Webling Incident happened in the village of Webling on the outskirts of of the town of Dachau. American soldiers of the 222nd Regiment of the 42nd Rainbow Division executed soldiers of the German Home Guard after they had surrendered. The Home Guard consisted of young boys and old men who were forced into service in the last desperate days of the war to defend their cities and towns. After an investigation by the US Army resulted in the court martial of the soldiers involved in these killings, General George S. Patton tore up the papers and tossed them in the wastebasket. Col. Howard A. Buechner, the American medical officer who was there when Waffen-SS soldiers were executed during the liberation of Dachau, wrote in his book The Hour of the Avenger, regarding the court martial of soldiers in the 45th Thunderbird Division:

"Public outrage would certainly have opposed the prosecution of American heroes for eliminating a group of sadists who so richly deserved to die."

According to World War II historian, Stephan E. Ambrose, the author of the best-selling book, "Citizen Soldiers," General Maxwell Taylor instructed the men of the 101st Airborne Division to take no prisoners during the Normandy invasion, which they participated in after parachuting into France.


After the war, the Germans attempted to bring a list of 369 murder cases, involving US Army soldiers killing German POWs and wounded men, before a German court, but the cases were thrown out.
The name list:

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauTrials/MurderedPOWs.html

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauTrials/MalmedyMassacre03.html

So who is innocent on those POW killings in the end? I think neither.

 

Didnt want to get involved in this one...Seems we should be careful here not to get into the revisionist, Irving type league.

I accept my view of the Malmedy killings was one I have accepted for years on the back of published articles etc in the mainstream, have had my eyes opened and thanks to the guys here for some alternative views....But sorry, we cannot compare killing soldiers in cold blood if that was indeed the case at Malmedy and the killing of guard tower troops at Dachau by the relieving Americans...Sorry I think quite clearly I would probably have done the same thing on tntering the camps if they were crazy enough to be still in the camps.

 

The Malmedy incident is talked over quite thoroughly elsewhere. I don´t think we need to visit this subject any deeper.

Agreed on the killing of the SS guards thing. But hopefully you noticed, Urgh, that there was more than that.Home guard is no SS, to start with.



[ 04. January 2003, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

Yep, agree, I think the victorious allies cannot play the holier than thou card, certainly they too will have committed atrocities. There are many occasions whereby allied troops went into battle with the idea of forget taking prisoners etc...And as stated in other threads and one I agree with....Winners dont get put on trial for war crimes..

Certainly on Malmedey I for one am persuaded it was not as simple as I led myself to believe before...

One massacre that always has stuck with me was with the British Warwicks that were killed on the retreat to Dunkirk...But even at that ealry part of the war I remember reading Brit troops personal accounts and they gave the impression too that taking prisoners was not the biggest thing on their mind once blood lust had risen...

 

I never heard about the British Warwicks or have anything about it in my books. Could you start a thread and educate us ?

 

Sorry Urgh, but shooting prisoners is a crime. Wether they be suspected SS concentration camp guards or US troops.

This is one of my pet hates. Its bad enough that Russia was allowed to take part in any trials, but that no Allied soldier was ever punhised is sickerning. And there are many accounts as well as the ones mention. Capt Walker, hailed as a hero and killer of U-Boats, was also a war criminal, and i find it offensive that his name should be mentioned alongside those of brave soldiers awarded the VC.

If you want to start useing excuses for Allied war crimes, these can all be equally applied to German war crimes.

 

Hi Timo--Bish.

Timo--I agree with you and it looks to me that Fleps story was "embellished" if not totally made up. The book im currently reading puts Fleps only 60 yards away from the POWS. AT that range--one would have to be an expert pistol shot to get any "good hits."

Also--yep--unfortunatelky back in ww2--black American Soldiers did not get the praise they deserved. Take Steward 3C Dorie "Doris" Miller for example. Doris Miller was the black sailor who during the Pearl Harbor attack--manned a Machinegun on his ship after the MG crew had been killed or wounded. Miller shotdown at least one if not more japanese planes attacking his ship.

For his bravery there--he was awarded the Navy Cross--when I think he should have been awarded the Medal of Honor. He was later killed in action I think near the Solomon Islands in 1943. Because of racial prejudice at that time--there was no chance at all--that he BECAUSE of not being white or hispanic--he would not be recieving our highest award--unfortunately.

Bish made a posting above this one talking about an all African-American fighter squadron who flew P-51 Mustang fighters with red tails painted on their planes. He is correct--and these are the famed: Tuskeegee Airmen. A very interesting fact is that when these men flew as protection to our bombers--they NEVER lost a bomber to enemy fighter craft action. I think thta is absolutely amazing and fantastic. No other squadron had susc a record--or that I know of.

Hi Bish--your correct, Peiper was tried at Dachau along with some 74 others. Trial started on May 16 1946 before a US Military Court at Dachau. (The court is now looked at at a joke)

43 Waffen SS men were sentences to death.
22 were sentenced to life.
2 were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
5 were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
1 was sent to France to stand trial there for crimes committed there.

Of the total tried--only 30 of this group were tried for the killings at Baugnez Crossroads. Peiper was sentenced to death and incarcerated at Landsberg Prison, Landsberg am Lech, Bavaria.

None of the death sentences were ever carried out and all convicted men were paroled in the earlu 1950's. Peiper was released from prison just before Christmas in December 1956---the last of his Kampfgruppe to be released.

On July 14, 1976, Peipers remains were found in the burned out rubble of his house near Traves, France. The victim of some French group. I fully agree with you and Timo.

 

Bish it certainly is a crime and I never said it was not. What I said is that the yanks that shot the concentration camp guards did no more than I would probably have done on entering that camp, that would have made me a war crinimal, I never said it wouldnt.

I also stick by my assertion that the allies were as guilty of such crimes as the enemy.

That does not make it right, prisoners should not be shot, simple as that, but if I had entered Dachau and seen it first hand and camp guards were around, Im afraid I would probably do the same...If I could walk a mile in those yanks shoes...

Life is not black and white as Im sure you'll agree, and on reading some of the threads here, I came across one on partisans and was shocked to see the responses regarding an incident where we were asked to put ourselves in the shoes of a German unit and 3 individuals in particular who were told to shoot the inhabitants of a village in Russia ostensioubly becuause of partisan activity??? Id have to go searching again to find it, but a lot of respondants defended the guy who did the deed men women and children... Didnt push that thread back up again, just dont agree with killing prisoners at all...Out of order, and it may seem contradctory, I know it does, but Im afraid if I had come across german guards in Dachau after walking through the gates and being confronted with whatever they were confronted with, I cannot truthfully, hand on heart say as a human being forget soldier, forget queens regulations, that I would have reacted differently.
Thats not an excuse thats human nature, no amount of training or discipline could have prepared those first yanks for what they saw.

 

Thanks Carl. I could not remember all the details of Peiper without my books. But i do recall that on the road leading to his home where he was killed, the letters SS were painted in white.

I recall what you said about the black fighter pilots from the article i read, truly amazing

 

Quite welcome my friend--and I cant remember many details without my books either because so much is swimming through my brain--ugg--sometime I feel like its going to explode. or

 

Sorry if i misunderstood you urgh.

It should be remembered that many of these 'guards' captured at the death camps, were not guards at all. Often, the guards would flee, leaving home guards to take the flak when the camp was liberated.

The problem is that while one may uinderstand why these things happened, they were not punhised. And what sort of exampkle does this give to others. It says that your troops, the good guys, can do what they want.

And unfortunatly, its as true today as it was then.

The victors can do no wrong.