SS Colonel Peiper involved personally in one war Crime?

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PF
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SS Colonel Peiper involved personally in one war Crime?

#1

Post by PF » 02 Mar 2007, 18:00

Is it true that SS COlonel Peiper was involved personally in one war Crime-reportably near the end of the Battle of the Ardennes in 1945-at his HQ a unknown US Soldier was found in bad shape-allegedly the POW was later shot by or at the order of an SS phyiscian and that Peiper was aware of this incident.
Did this come out at Peiper's trial?
Was it an Urban legend?

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Harro
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#2

Post by Harro » 02 Mar 2007, 18:36

What do you mean "one warcrime"? Peiper personally witnessed the gassing of T4 victims and visited the KZ Lager as adjutant of Himmler.


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#3

Post by Moltke d. J. » 05 Mar 2007, 18:00

Hi,
apart from the whole Malmedy-complex (which includes the murder of about 100 belgian civilians at Stavelot, among them women and children) for which he was responsible at least as commanding officer, he was directly involved in an "incident" at Boves, northern Italy, with 23 civilians dead and heavy damage to the town. His battalion (I believe it was III./2. Pzgr.-Reg. LSSAH) had the nickname "Lötlampenbattalion"="blowtorch battallion", alledgedly because of their habit to set russian villages ablaze. As it is typical for such events on the eastern front there is no evidence let alone witnesses. Concerning Boves both a german and an italian court dropped charges against Peiper because of lack of evidence. As one might imagine, the testimonies of the german and the italian witnesses were rather contradicting.
A quite apologetic bio: Jens Westemeier: Joachim Peiper: (1915 - 1976); SS-Standartenführer. Eine Biographie Osnabrück 1996
Moltke d. J.

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#4

Post by tonyh » 05 Mar 2007, 18:43

The "atrocity" at Boves is nothing of the sort. The town was shelled before the unit was to advance. Standard operating procedure for any army. There's another thread elsewhere regarding this.

And the "Blowtorch battalion" nickname is subject to a number of origins. One of which is that the unit "and others" used blowtorches to heat the oil in their armour's engines so they would start on the sub zero temperatures on the Eastern Front.


Tony

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Harro
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#5

Post by Harro » 05 Mar 2007, 21:14

Westemeier an SS appologist. LOL, his SS appologist enemies must love your definition of "appologist".

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Harro
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#6

Post by Harro » 05 Mar 2007, 21:18

tonyh wrote:And the "Blowtorch battalion" nickname is subject to a number of origins.
Off course. Post-war the veterans and their supporters tried very hard to delute the truth.

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#7

Post by Moltke d. J. » 05 Mar 2007, 21:36

I admitt, my statement was based on the '96 edition which I read some years ago. In the last hours I searched the forum and found out that his point of view has changed.I must apologize to him, it deserves respect if someone is able to change his mind for the better. Few people do! Still the '96 edition is apologetic to me.

Hope this clarifies things a little bit...

Moltke d. J.

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#8

Post by Jan-Hendrik » 05 Mar 2007, 21:53

Here you may find a huge comment by Jens in german language regarding the actual version of his Peiper-Bio :

http://forum.panzer-archiv.de/viewtopic ... ght=peiper

Jan-Hendrik

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#9

Post by Harro » 05 Mar 2007, 22:30

Moltke d. J. wrote:Still the '96 edition is apologetic to me.
Das ist im Grunde, wie auch Jens über seine alte Arbeit denkt. Danke für die Klarstellung :)

That's basically how Jens feels about his old work too. Thanks for the clarification.

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#10

Post by Moltke d. J. » 05 Mar 2007, 22:37

Thanks alot, Jan-Hendrik! Seems like I have to convince my library to buy it.

Moltke d. J.

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#11

Post by Dimitrii » 05 Mar 2007, 23:33

Harro wrote:
tonyh wrote:And the "Blowtorch battalion" nickname is subject to a number of origins.
Off course. Post-war the veterans and their supporters tried very hard to delute the truth.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

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#12

Post by Harro » 05 Mar 2007, 23:52

Off course. Several commanders of other LSSAH battalions clearly stated after the war that Peiper used to burn down complete villages:

"Im Osten wussten wir immer, wo Peiper war. Dort brannte es." ("In the East we always knew where Peiper was. There it was on fire").

Just look at his award documents. The descriptions of the heroic actions of his SPW-battalion: 800-900 Russian soldiers killed - no prisoners, 1450 Russian soldiers killed - no prisoners, 930 Russian soldiers killed, no prisoners. A ratio of 3280 killed enemies and three captured in not normal.

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#13

Post by David Thompson » 06 Mar 2007, 00:26

Readers interested in the Boves massacre miy find this thread (and the links in it) helpful:

Boves Massacre
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=93486

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#14

Post by tonyh » 06 Mar 2007, 01:20

"In the East we always knew where Peiper was. There it was on fire"
Very poor.


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#15

Post by Harro » 06 Mar 2007, 01:24

Your trademark is single remarks like "very poor" everytime information turns up that goes against the SS appologist "Peiper the gentleman soldier" crap. But that's all you can do. Now that's very poor.
tonyh wrote:
"In the East we always knew where Peiper was. There it was on fire"
Very poor.
Tony
tonyh wrote:
Harro wrote:
tonyh wrote:
Peiper was in the KZ Lager, he even witnessed the gassings...
This is going to need some serious backing up.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=805752
jeweste wrote:You will find very good sources about Peipers point of view as I would evaluate him as an so called "Alt-Nazi" and Peipers knowledge and duty during his time with his beloved and admired Himmler at Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltung Ludwigsburg. There you will find a lot of statements given by Peiper himself. Very interesting are his statements from 1967 in the context with the Dr. Best trial. He speaks about the Ghetto of Warschau, the gasing of human beings, has always nice excuses, nice storries and not one word of regret. [...] And you will be horrified, if you read his statements about the gasing. He even looked through the window during the gasing, his description is ice cold.
I wouldn't call that serious backing up.

Tony
If you can't do better than such lame remarks when LSSAH officers or even Peiper himself are quotes than why do you reply at all? :roll:
Last edited by Harro on 06 Mar 2007, 01:26, edited 1 time in total.

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