Hopefully I've posted this in the right place. Admins, feel free to move it if I haven't. A friend of mine recently told me what he knew of his grandfather's involvement during WWII. Apparently, he was a radio man within his unit and was part of the first group of American soldiers to see the aftermath of the Malmedy Massacre. I can not claim to know too much about this particular event aside from the general information I can find online. I do not have direct access to my friend's grandfather, and from what I have heard, he is not terribly keen on discussing his military service anyway. So I am trying to find out more on his involvement with that event through my own independent research. Thus, I came here. If anyone happens to know specifics on the unit to come upon the aftermath (I realize initial word came from survivors themselves), I'd be much appreciative. My friend seems to think his grandfather was with the 101st but this is not definite, only that he was there very early on. Thanks for any help!
American forces recaptured the site where the killings took place on January 13, 1945. The cold weather conditions and low winter temperatures had preserved the scene well. The bodies were recovered on January 14 and January 15, 1945. 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. Malmedy Massacre Recovery Operations - 1945, Quartermaster History This Week and this link which states that the survivors made it to the lines held by the 291st Engineer Battalion of which ended up helping the Registration Company once they retook the area. http://www.qmfound.com/malmedy.htm
The 1st SS Panzer Division was not taking prisoners during the first 48 hours of its rampage in the American rear area, to the best of my knowledge. My take is that Peiper was pretty professional about this: His orders from the Fuehrer was to shatter the American Army by "a wave of terror". The 30 ID's stand to constest Stoumont took away oppertunity for a rapid breakthrough, so the need to kill POWs was no longer present. If he did not have to, why should he?
I remember reading that Peiper sent 800 US pows across German lines early on in the battle. I may be off on the exact number, but I believe he left 200 US POWs including Major in one of the towns he abandoned. German newsreels from the time period also show his Armored SPW battalion commander inspecting a large column of US POWs.
The American major would be a battalion commander of the 30th Infantry Division who was captured during the fight for Stoumont. Peiper wrote in his diary that the action there made him realize that he might not have enough gasoline to reach the Meuse. As to the real story behind the POW killings one can only speculate, as Peiper brought it to his grave.
Sorry, it took awhile for me to find the time to visit the forum. Which part of the post do you want sources for? The recorded shootings of US POWs IIRC occurred in the area immediate to 1st SS Pz D's breakthrough. Hitler's Orders IIRC was revealed during the Nürnberg or another post war trial which Sepp Dietrich allegedly protested.
That would be 262-263, Maj. Cole, The Ardenness: Battle of the Bulge. It is from google cache because the dot mill site is temporarily unavailable today. Cole quotes Sepp Dietrich, commander of the Sixth Panzer Army, in a sworn statement made at a 1946 trial, that following Hitler's instructions, Dietrich issued an order to the Sixth Panzer Army that it should advance ruthlessly "by a wave of terror and fright and that no human inhibitions should be shown." The witnesses and the accused gave conflicting testimonies as to whether Peiper was given explicit orders enjoining him to kill POWs. I do not think specific instructions to murder prisoners would exist, because such damning evidence of intent to commit atrocities in blatant contradiction to the laws of war could be used against its author and therefore would not be written in the first place. I believe that Hitler meant the Sixth Panzer Army to kill prisoners and that he trusted his subordinates to understand him. The Nazis avoided leaving loose ends in paper and this considered silence characterized the Commissar Order and the Wannsee Conference, both of which were supposed to have no paper record.
"by a wave of terror and fright and that no human inhibitions should be shown." is by no means a direct order to shoot prisoners. It does leave it open to individual interpretations. If the case is to shoot prisoners, then why not more cases such as malmedy? Hundreds of prisoners were taken by the Waffen SS including the Liebstandarte. The phrase above is the usual preattack rhetoric issued by Hitler and his generals. It could go either way but a direct order to shoot prisoners it is not.
The 9th Armored Division was in the heart of the fighting during the Battle of the Bulge and the following is an excerpt from their unofficial history: "Some information of the massacre at Ligneuville circulated early when one of the CCB medics came across the scene and saw the bodies. But there was no great outcry, and after the war the men did not understand what the fuss about Peiper and his men was all about. They could not always take prisoners safely or deliver them to the rear without endangering themselves. It was a question of survival..." There were several massacres in the vicinity of Malmedy and this excerpt may not be refering to the specific incident we're discussing but Ligneuville is near Malmedy. I don't believe the 9th discovered the site but they had been to it at some point. I wanted to post this because I thought it was an interesting view of the massacres. The troops did not see it as the public did because they were in the midst of it all and had an entirely different viewpoint. I think a lot of the shock rose from the fact that this was one of the first instances of such violence on the western front, specifically involving American soldiers.
First of all, let me say that I believe words have meaning. While out of context, a word can be interpreted in almost unlimited number of ways, in a given social group and applied to a defined situation it has a fixed range of meaning which members of that group in that situation would understand. I chose to interpret the "wave of terror" and "ruthless action" order as an instruction to kill POWs because in the Eastern Front orders to deal with undesirables were written in the same way. "Ruthlessness" is a watchword in the Nazi State and Military for murder. In the battle diaries of many German units, villages were burned, suspected partisans were shot and mass reprisal executions were taken against partisan activities. None of those were "official" policies; they in fact would be illegal according to German military code. Those activities were written in the plain. But the orders the army did have told them to take "self-assured and ruthless behavior" as "an effective means" against "anti-German elements". The "Guideline for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia" also prescribed "ruthless action" against "Bolshevik agitators, guerillas, saboteurs and Jews" as a way to ensure control. This is not just hot air or rhetorical devices because those words inspired deeds. Avoiding writing any order contrary to international law on paper was a legal or at least psychological ploy to evade responsibility in case of defeat. The Commissar Order was never written, but everyone knew it existed and that political officers and Bolsheviks were to be shot. Himmler never wrote any order to kill Baltic Jews, he was going to give them "resettlement". But in oral briefings and telegrams to lower HQs he said that they were to be killed. That the order was not followed in every case does not prove that the order does not exist. Atrocities were prevalent in the sectors where the SS was committed, not just Peiper's Kampfgruppe. Belgium civilians were systematically butchered. During the retaking of Manhay, Grendmenil, and other obsucre places like Petit Coo, US soldiers found bodies of women, children and old people executed by firing squad. The descriptions of the scenery suggest a high degree of order to the murders, indicative of policy, not hot blood. Records to those killings can be found in the US Army's The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge by Cole, Spearhead in the West which was a condensed and edited narrative of 3 AD's AARs, and Foot Soldiers by Blunt, a participant of the battle. I do not think the "wave of terror" order obliged the killing of prisoners in every instance. The order justified it on the grounds of military expediency. Skorzeny's Brigade and Hedyt's drop was meant to be demoralizing, and some historians (Hastings maybe) concieve those to be a coherent plan to terrify the allegedly soft Americans. In any case, Col. Peiper took full responsibility for the killings and cited the difficulties during a breakout operation of guarding many prisoners with inadequate numbers. At least in one case Peiper's subordinate testified that he personally gave the order to execute prisoners; the 30 ID officer he captured however reported that Peiper assured him that he had no intention to mistreat him or his soldiers, and that Peiper's conduct had been throughly honorable. There is an article on that story in an issue of Military Herritage but I'd be damned if I can remember which one. The bottom line is that I believe there was the understanding that troopers of the Sixth SS could or should shoot POWs and civies if it aided the conditions of a breakthrough.
