Unfortunately I have run out of time on this project and am now forced to move on to pastures new. The search for cited evidence against the ‘Blowtorch Btln’ has been an interesting ride with twists and turns that have sometimes led in unexpected directions. The following is a very personal interpretation on what I have uncovered during this investigation and my conclusions as to which allegations I feel had foundation and which didn’t. I suspect my findings will not sit comfortably with some and I do confess my conclusions are based only on the evidence so far found, I can of course always be persuaded by new evidence uncovered.
Initially, the biggest surprise for me was that Peiper’s actions on the Eastern Front had not been researched and published to any great extent as opposed to his actions on the Western Front. This Btln’s sinister ‘reputation’ however, has long been set in the public’s perception and with good reason as there had been damning testimonies given against them and Peiper personally during the Malmedy trials. The specific allegation was that they were responsible for a large scale atrocity in a ‘village in the East’. These accusations it’s claimed were never rebutted by Peiper at his trial. But.....could there be evidence that he did deny these claims in later life, and that there is corroborating evidence that substantiates his plea of innocence for ‘the big one’? Before I answer that question, we need to peel back the layers that have settled over these claims since 1945.
The ‘Blowtorch Btln’
The men of the III (armoured)/2. Btln of the LSAH were bonded together while traversing the snowy vastness of the Kharkov Oblast in their SPW’s as they engaged in combat with Soviet forces during the months of February and March of 1943. This was the place where they culled their ‘reputation’, one that became infamous throughout the whole Division of the LSAH. This ‘reputation’ was one that was talked about freely by captured POW’s during their interrogations and also in the privacy (as they thought) of their cells. The allegations concerned the Btln’s propensity for burning villages by means of a blowtorch, this usage garnering them the tag of the ‘Blowtorch Btln’. But what was the significance of this seemingly innocuous item, one that the Btln saw fit to proudly paint on their armour?
According to Jakob Hanreich, Peiper’s Btln ‘
were particularly eager to execute the order to burn villages’ further adding that ‘
they accomplished this by means of a soldering lamp’. Walter Fransee corroborated this by testifying that they had burned down a ‘
village in the east’ and subsequently they were known as the ‘
Lotlampenbattalion’. Otto Sierk claimed that it was at Krasna Poljana when Peiper returned with the rescued remnants of the 320th Div. to cross the river Udy that his Btln
‘distinguished themselves by using their soldering lamps’, this being in reprisal for the slaughter of the men he had left to guard the bridge. Chillingly an LSAH member captured in Italy in November 1943 went further, he stated that
‘they went out with the Blowlamps and machine guns, they shot the civilians and set fire to the houses with their blowlamps. A large Blowlamp is painted on their vehicles. It has become a sort of badge and has become associated with bloody war crimes’. (All Post 43).
What can we take from these testimonies? Tellingly, they were given by different men at different times, not as a group, one is an overheard conversation recorded in February 1944. Hanreich (Post 73) and Sierk’s (Post 28) interrogations were both elicited before Peiper became a ‘person of interest’ to the Allies. This rules out any accusation that these men were put under pressure to implicate Peiper or his Batallion personally. Each one of the testimonies have a corresponding central theme leaving little doubt that the ’III (armoured)/2. Btln’ were certainly burning villages with the aid of their ‘mascot’ and probably killing civilians too.
But one thing all the testimonies lack is an actual village name or date. Without either I found it impossible to pinpoint a location and validate their claims. Far too many villages were burnt at that time, far too many in the ‘normal’ engagements between Soviet and German forces. Couple this with the distance this Btln were covering, sometimes up to 60Kms in a night and the task of finding where they passed through and definitively nailing them becomes impossible. None of these accusers claim to have been witness to these dark deeds, but there was one who also told of the ‘Blowtorch’ method and claimed to have been there too. Paul Zwigart was a co-defendant of Peiper’s at the Malmedy trials, but his evidence is not included here, the reason for that will be discussed in another section. Having checked through the testimonies of countless villages from this time frame and the archives of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, I have been unable to uncover testimonies which match the ‘modus operandi’ so mentioned. I do not conclude that this negates this evidence however, I suspect that their actions were probably covered by the ‘confusion of war’. There are just too many different sources telling the same story, too many to ignore and each one of them mentioning the ‘blowtorch’ as the preferred method of destruction.
This use of a blowtorch as a weapon has been disputed over the years by members of the Btln, some claim its use was innocently to warm their frozen armour in winter, others said that the burning of the houses was caused by sparks hitting the thatch of the roofs from the rounds of their fire, this confusion of explanations have left some doubt that it was used deliberately as a ‘weapon of destruction’. But there was evidence that supports its place of honour from the start in the wording of Peiper’s recommendation for the R.K. for Guhl during the battle for Peckartshina in Dec. ’43 when he claimed that Guhl ‘
set fire to large parts of the village with flamethrowers’. T. Wisch in his recommendation for the ‘Oakleaves’ for Peiper from the same encounter vouched that ‘
Peiper took personal command of the APC Btln....the enemy in the trenches and the village were ….wiped out with gunnery and flamethrower fire from the APC’s’. (Post 72). Oswald Siegmund of the LSAH also confirmed its use by the Btln during the Kharkov offensive in March 43. (Post 4) So why have so many denied its use as a weapon over the years? My assumption is that the allegation about the ‘Blowtorch’ method was too much intertwined with the suspicion that civilians and not Soviet forces were targeted and to acknowledge its use could have led to the uncovering of evidence to substantiate accusations of war crimes.
Suspected Villages
The start of this search was prompted by a document I had uncovered during my quest for evidence against Kurt Meyer for the destruction of the village of Jefremowka in February 1943. As part of this investigation, a Ukrainian document was sent to me which had distressing accounts of what had happened there that day. When the document was translated, I found that it actually Jochen Peiper and not Kurt Meyer who was accused of being in command during the atrocity. This accusation sat uncomfortably with the evidence that was mounting up against Kurt Meyer, in fact it was the only piece of evidence that challenged my findings of his suspected guilt. The two forum members who translated it for me were both of the opinion that the accusations were wild and confused and both had grave doubts about relying on it as historical fact. But I had to be sure as there were some details in the document that had a ring of truth to them. It was imperative that I investigated Peiper’s location at the time of that atrocity to be sure it couldn’t have been him. By crosschecking his known location of the 17th of February, I was satisfied he was not in the village on that day. But to rule out that he wasn’t there at any other time as described in the document, I put the question to the forum (post 1). The answer back further confirmed my findings that Peiper was not the culprit that day or any other day. By then I was curious to find out how Peiper had come to be named for Jefremowka in the first place and if there were other suspected war crimes he had been accused of on the Eastern Front.
(Post 2) lays out the names of three members of the LSAH who had made accusations against Peiper and his Btln, Jakob Hanreich, Erich Rumpf and Paul Zwigart. The villages specifically named against him were Staroverowka, Stanitschnoje and Jefremowka. It was also mentioned that he had been implicated for these at Nuremburg. Straight away these three villages raised a red flag, I had come across these same three names during my Kurt Meyer investigation. They had been given to the Allies by Jakob Hanreich in his testimony describing the war crimes of the LSAH in 1944. But I knew that he had never mentioned Peiper in relation to these villages, what he had mentioned was Peiper’s ‘eagerness’ to enact the burn order and he had also specifically named Kurt Meyer as the men responsible for Jefremowka . (Post 73). So from the off, I could rule out both Jefremowka and Hanreich as a witness to a charge of the murder of civilians against Peiper as this had not been explicitly mentioned in his testimony.
I subsequently found that Peiper was not mentioned nor accused at Nuremberg (Post 58). Nor was there any evidence to support his Btln’s guilt for the murders of civilians in the villages of
Staroverowka and
Stanitschnoje. What was known was that they arrived in Staroverowka the day after it was taken which was the day after civilians had been shot for ‘aiding the Soviets’. The Btln did capture Stanitschnoje after engaging with Soviet forces, but there was no accusation made at local level about civilians being targeted here nor is there a local record that was this village destroyed when they left. It’s also worth noting that Jakob Hanreich did not accuse Peiper for either of these villages either. Any accusations made in relation to these named villages had no basis in any cited accusation. (Posts 30, 31, 73, 87).
More accusations of specific villages emerged which led me to suspect his culpability for atrocities in:
Ziglerowka (Posts 38, 47) – Walter Fransee saw the bodies of civilians lying in the street here but he given no indication how or when they met their death, Peiper did pass through the village but so did Kurt Meyer 24 hours later and two weeks previously Francee was following Meyer’s unit, not Peiper’s. The village was also occupied by other units of the LSAH for some time after it was taken.
Krasna Poljana (Posts 27, 28, 29, 82) - The evidence that something happened here has been alluded to in many books, mostly due to Peiper’s own admission that they had to fight ‘house to house’ when they returned with the rescued 320th, but the local accounts stubbornly refuse to admit that anything more than Soviet V German actions happened here at that particular time. (Post 27, 28, 29, 82).
Peckartshina (Posts 67, 68, 70). there was no evidence that testimony were ever given to support the accusation that Peiper’s Btln had murdered the civilians in this village, nor any local accusations, this village seems to have been only singled out as it was mentioned for Peiper’s Oakleaves and for the fact the ‘flamethrowers’ were used in the taking of the village. The evidence only points to this having been a military engagement.
The ‘Big one in the East’
What was left to investigate was the testimony given against Peiper at the Malmedy trial. Two main pieces of evidence were found which in my opinion have cemented the perception of Peiper’s culpability for a major atrocity on the Eastern Front. Firstly there was the damning evidence of Paul Zwigart whose handwritten testimony specifically accused his Btln of carrying out two major atrocities. The first one was in the Spring of 1943 when he stated ‘
we expressly received the order near Kharkov to set a village afire and to ‘bump off’ all inhabitants including women and children’ he confirmed that that order was carried out as he further testified that the ‘
Infantrymen of our Battalion ran around between the burning houses with machine guns and rifles shooting into houses’. He further alleged that during the summer of ‘43 his Btln had entirely
‘wiped out’ an even bigger village, this time in the Belgorod Sector. Again he gave witness to seeing women and children
‘running out of the burning houses and how they were mown down by our men’ (Post 85). No-one could fail to read this evidence and not be shocked by its revelations. But how true was this testimony and was there any reason that Zwigart would have either entirely lied about it or embellished it? For what has to be kept in mind is that Paul Zwigart had been implicated for war crimes himself on the Western front, this meant that his testimony could have been fabricated to ensure he got a leaner sentence but of course alternatively it could have been the honest confession of a man who just wanted to cleanse his soul. Either way the first part of his allegation is practically inadmissible due to the lack of location and actual date. This meant that I had no way of confirming its veracity. The second allegation about the Belgorod sector was much more specific and there was enough detail there to investigate that particular claim. But having devoted countless hours and exhausting all avenues, I had to concede that there was no record anywhere of such an action taking place either in the testimonies of other LSAH members or at local level. (Post 111). It would seem that his testimony for Belgorod at least was not an honest account.
This left one last serious allegation against Peiper, one made by Erich Rumpf (9th Pionier-Kompanie, 1. SS-Panzer-Regiment LSAH) who was also a co-defendant at the Malmedy trial. Rumpf had been in the Kharkov area in the spring of 1943 and he too gave a very long hand written statement in which he included an allegation of an atrocity in the East. He stated….
‘
Peiper, in his military talks, often used the phrase "Auch ein Schlechter Ruf Verplichtet" (A bad reputation has its commitments). Rumpf then continued straight into the next sentence "In what way the other officers understood 'a bad reputation' isn't known to me but me personally I remember one case in Russia in which we lighted up a complete village of about 2000 inhabitants and had to execute all on orders. This crime surely is one of the reasons/grounds for those who understand the bad reputation of the SS’. (William Perl Papers, Gelman University, Affidavit of Erich Rumpf box 5/folder 24).
On the face of it, this statement can be interpreted as further damning evidence against Peiper and an accusation that his Btln took part in an atrocity in which 2000 inhabitants were murdered ………… except that this statement is actually about two different units of the LSAH. The first is obviously about Peiper, but the following sentence is recounting Rumpf’s experience in the village of Jefremowka. How am I so sure of this? For two reasons, firstly following many hours and hours of research, I have been convinced that there was only one major atrocity in the areas that the LSAH were in at the time and that was in Jefremowka. No other allegation has surfaced in any local accounts of the villages in the Kharkov Oblast or any other Oblast at that time. The ‘chatter’ is all about Jefremowka, nowhere else. Secondly and more crucially, there was a another statement made by Rumpf which was found in NARA by author Danny Parker in which Rumpf reveals that he was in Jefremowka on the day that the atrocity happened and he specifically stated that Kurt Meyer had intoned his men that they were ‘
to act like wild men’ in reprisal for ‘Partisan’ activity in the area. (Testimony of Erich Rumpf - NA RG 338 record 143 box 33). This allegation against Kurt Meyer was backed up by Walter Francee who stated the he arrived in the village of Jefremowka after the atrocity had taken place and had been told that it was carried out ‘
on the orders of Panzermeyer’ (Post 38). So therefore we can conclude that Rumpf’s testimony was never actually an allegation against Peiper at all.
Now for the source of the mystery as to why Peiper was personally mentioned in the Ukrainian document as the man responsible for the massacre at Jefremowka. It transpires that a survivor of the atrocity was determined to find the culprit, he spent many years searching for the man in question. He sought help from a politician in Italy and then finally he was shown the testimony given against Peiper at the Malmedy trial for the ‘Atrocity in the East’ and he was sure he recognised him and he was sure that this indeed was the man who ordered the destruction of his village – except it wasn't. This sequence of error has copper fastened Peiper’s name with this atrocity in the Ukrainian mind on no other basis than the flawed testimonies of Zwigart and Rumpf and because of a case of mistaken identity by one man who cannot be right as the evidence shows that Peiper was never there that day. (Post24)
At the beginning of this piece I stated that it has been reported that Peiper never defended himself against this serious accusation at his trial. But during this research I did see that both Danny Parker and Jens Westemeier had quoted in their footnotes author James Weingartner who had also researched Peiper. It was in Danny Parkers unpublished manuscript that I saw a very interesting statement made by Peiper to Weingartner shortly before his death. The contents of this conversation prompted me to contact James Weingartner directly to ask permission to use it here – which he kindly consented to. They had corresponded in 1976 and Peiper made reference to the testimony of Erich Rumpf at the Malmedy trials as follows:
….. ‘I remember during the trial a ‘testimony’ of the commanding officer of the 9th Panzer Pionier Kompanie was read, according to which we had reduced a village to ashes after we had herded people into a church à la Oradour. That referred to the Panzer regiment to which he belonged at the time. I cannot say anything about that, because at that time I did not belong to the Panzer Regiment but to the 2nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment’……
This account clearly matches the details of what happened in Jefremowka in February 1943, which has been proved to be the work of Kurt Meyers reinforced Aufklärungsabteilung. Meyers group also included elements of the Panzer Regiment that day but not the 2nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... &start=105
The reasons why Peiper never defended himself at the trial will have to remain a mystery. Certainly his protestations would probably not have been believed and also to plead innocence would have meant that he may have had to have given up the names of the real culprits. It’s interesting that he recalls that the testimony was ‘read out’, this points to a likely scenario that there was no opportunity to put Rumpf on the stand and question him or object to its contents by the defence. I presume when Peiper did finally make this statement, very few realised or picked up on its significance, but I’ll wager that any of the men who had taken part in the atrocity that day and who read it sat up and took notice.
Conclusion:
As already mentioned, this analysis is a very personal one, gleaned and honed by countless hours trawling for evidence that might corroborate the known allegations against Peiper or uncover new insights into the actions of the III (armoured)/2 Btln. I am satisfied that there is hard evidence that this Btln were burning villages with the aid of their blowtorches, I heavily suspect that they were also shooting off rounds at civilians indiscriminately. Their victim count may not have been high on each occasion, but it may have amounted to a sizable sum in total. The fact that so many POW’s were making allegations against the Blowtorch Btln cannot be underestimated and has to be significant when you consider all the units that were in that area in 1943, many who also had a dubious reputation in other atrocities. Why does Peiper’s Btln get specifically mentioned by so many even before he was a ‘person of interest’ to the Allies? Therein lies the root of suspicion.
However, I am convinced that there is no evidence that they targeted any village in a ‘Jefremowka/Oradour’ style, that is, that they specifically sealed off a village and killed every man woman and child there. I feel strongly that both Zwigart and Rumpf’s testimonies are flawed as per the evidence posted above. Interestingly there was a pattern uncovered that pre-recruits to the Soviet Army were targeted by units of the LSAH when villages were retaken (Post 48) certainly this happened in two of the villages that Peiper’s men were present in at the time, these executions could also account for their ‘bloody reputation’. I’m sure that authors who have researched Peiper and had access to Vets may have been told specific allegations that they forbidden from reporting due to the bond of loyalty that gelled these men during and after the war, but as it stands, the main allegations published against Peiper have all been scrutinised and we are yet to find a specific incident that can be definitively pinned on his Battalion. I hope that someone else will research this and that they will find information posted on this thread of use. I look forward to the upcoming books by Danny Parker and hope that someday he will publish his manuscript which covers Peiper’s time on the Eastern Front. I would ask that anyone who comes across any information on this topic would continue to post it here.
(
With special thanks to the authors on Peiper who answered the call especially D. Parker for supplying a chapter of his manuscript. To A. Paramonov and Prof. Kruglov in Ukraine especially the former who worked tirelessly on this too. To all the forum members who contributed valuable information on the thread and those in the background who supplied documents, translations and advice. And lastly to all the forum members who offered support both on the thread and in the background. My appreciation to you all)