Joachim Peiper's tactics

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Rob - wssob2
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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#61

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 26 Nov 2009, 06:09

Hi Phillip, you wrote:
in reply to earlier question about point of thread, it seems we have two points of view, on the one side we have the people who believe that no atrocities were comitted by the waffen ss and that they were that centurys ultimate soldiers and the other view which accepts that atrocites were comitted and have a more critical view of there abilities and tactics. i personely believe that one view comes from info gatherd during the cold war by vets and historians of that time and the more critical view has only emerged during the last ten years with a more unbiased eye
You sum it up quite well.

The important thing to keep in mind about Peiper is that as a historical figure, you can't separate his performance as a military commander from his symbolic role. Peiper, throughout his life, for better or worse, was a symbol to various constituents - the "new soldier" dashing SS commander and protoge of Himmler during the IIIR, the "last of the Red Jackets" martyr in West Germany for his (commuted) death sentence, the barbarous murderer to the Italian guest workers at Porsche, and the "last gefallen" martyr for neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, revisionists, and assorted Waffen-wannabees.

Peiper reminds me of another controversial military figure from another era - Civil War Confederate Lt. General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was too a renowned military commander, famous (like Peiper) for his mobile warfare exploits. He was also a slave owner, and implicated in the massacre of black Union Army POWs after the Battle of Ft. Pillow. He was also a founding member of the KKK. Just as you can't have a discussion about Forrest without getting into the criminality of the Confederate cause, you can't successfully extricate Peiper from the criminality of the III Reich.

These see-saw arguments that we see on this thread reflect the "romantic" vs. "realist" schools of thought about the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS that have been going on since the late 1990's. The "realist" school does not accept the "romantic" hagiography around WWII German figures like Peiper or Manstein at face value - a hagiography, mind you, that is very much a product of western (and particularly American) Cold War attitudes. It seeks to reexamine the evidence and eliminate the deliberately-set firewall between the romantic "blond men riding panzers" postwar myth with the irrefutable evidence of the war crimes committed by said panzer-riding men.

In refusing to accept the myths, we get a far more nuanced picture of Peiper, particularly as a military commander. As member Harro pointed out (Harro is, BTW an expert on the LSSAH recon battalion who has personally corresponded with many SS veterans), Peiper did well as an SPW leader but poorly commanding an armored regiment. He awarded many of his former panzergrenadier subordinates with medals, and they in turn wrote glowing review of him in Atge's postwar biography. As in many military formations, leaders form cliques (entire books could be and have been written,for example, about Douglas MacArthur's stable of groupies) and their glowing opinions get solidified into the historical narrative. But again, as Harro pointed out, not all Peiper's subordinates shared such views over his competence as a military commander.

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#62

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 26 Nov 2009, 08:08

j keenan, you wrote
to both the allies and axies as both commited atrocities and crimminal acts.
I'm afraid the "tu quoque" argument doesn't work if you compare the Third Reich to the western Allies. By war's end Peiper had , both directly and indirectly participated in the execution of POWs and civilians on not one but multiple occasions, visited a concentration camp, watched prisoners being gassed to death in the T-4 program, participated in the forced expulsion of Polish civilians in the volksdeutsche resettlement program in Poland, and served Himmler faithfully as his boss concocted up the plans for the Final Solution. Not to mention married his boss's secretary.

Hi WEISWEILER - I wanted to comment on a couple of the points you made:

Analising Peiper's tactics is indeed also analising the use of terror as a part of tactics, but it wouldn't be right to claim that only terror explains his victories.
And I would argue that his use of terror - a tactic sanctioned by Hitler at his Dec 12th Bad Nauheim conference - backfired on Kampfgruppe Peiper. Instead of weakening US Army resolve, news of the Malmedy Massacre stiffened it.

Analyzing the war crimes committed during the Battle of the Bulge like a police investigator, one can't help but notice that the overwhelming number of incidents cluster in a "crime spree" pattern along the advance of the Sixth SS Panzer Army - and specifically KG Peiper - between Dec 16 and 24, 1944. This is extraordinary. Other SS units - like the 2nd and 12th SS Divisions, for example - did not have an equivalent pattern. And there is basically little to no evidence that the Heer Fifth Panzer Army engaged in any war crimes at all during the campaign.

As for Peiper's performance, it stretches all credulity to think of it as a "victory." He was forced to withdraw after a week, failing to achieve his objective, suffering the total loss of all his vehicles and equipment and roughly 50% of his men - and though it's not mentioned in polite circles- probably hospitalized for exhaustion and combat fatigue. If that's victory, I'd hate to imagine defeat!
For the Battle of the Bulge I believe Peiper was the only one who, despite delays, really succeeded in gaining terrain.
This is incorrect. The aforementioned Heer Fifth Panzer Army on the southern front of the Ardennes offensive made the most gains. Here's a map:

Image

Note also that the map indicates that the Germans did not control territory in Peiper's area of operations.

His spearpoint exceeded the others by far, by using an unscrupulous and very aggresive manner which could be summerized as 'destroy and/or drive over'.
Interestingly enough, Peiper apparently chewed out his spitze commander (Werner Pötschke?) for engaging in a firefight with Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion rather than just ignoring the column. Peiper was angered at the waste of time, the waste of shot-up US Army trucks he could have commandeered and the waste of the gasoline he could have siphoned. Perhaps Peiper's ire is an echo of the Heer complaint that SS recon units were too eager to engage with the enemy.

The warcrimes committed againts American POW's in Malmédy, however, couldn't be seen as a part of tactics or a reason why he succeeded (up to that time) in his operation. The brutal killing of dozens of soldiers standing in a row more looked like a deed of hate, according to some originating in the bombing of Dresden where many German soldiers lost relatives.
Not to get into the whole imbroglio of the genesis of the reputed "take no prisoners" order, but there's a pretty clear evidence that Hitler's "the troops must act with brutality and show no human inhibitions" order on December 12th got passed down the chain of command to the LSSAH kampfgruppe level by December 15th. How Hitler's orders were meant to be implemented have always been a controversial matter and their ambiguity is best represented by Sepp Dietrich's staff conference quip, "Prisoners? You know what to do with them."

SS use of the bombing campaign as a motivator for the troops has also been mentioned by several historians during the period Nov-early Dec 1944. Monke specifically mentioned it ("one should remember the victims of the bombing terror") when he passed the I SS Panzer Corps orders to Peiper on December 14th.
If you analise the tactics used in the Ardennes, it looks like Pieper was able to 'energise' not only his own men, but also other units, and before all, he was a leader by exemple. He dared to take risks nobody else would.
This sounds like hagiography. Being energetic and a "leader by example" (do you mean his personal order to shoot an American POW at Petit Their?) aren't tactics.

Here is also an instance where "leading from the front" isn't necessarily the best place for a commander. While Peiper's leading by example with his spitze at La Gleize, his supply column was getting shot up by Task Force Lovejoy.

In addition, Peiper failed to ensure adequate radio communications with his superiors. Divisional CO Monkhe was forced to evesdrop on US radio transmissions to determine Pieper's whereabouts!
Crushed by American troops? You forget about the sudden impact of Allied airforce. As we all know the operation was called Herbstnebel because of the fact that the Germans wanted to break into the Ardennes as far as possible covered by foggy conditions. These conditions turned eventually (all German armies suffered delays on schedule). When weather got clear enough, Typhoons showed up and (of course together with ground pressure) just finished off the German raid.
While it is correct that Hitler launched the Ardennes offensive knowing that the bad winter weather would negate Allied tactical air superiority, it is incorrect to attribute KG Peiper's failure to airstrikes. Peiper's column was briefly spotted on December 18th near Cheneux and attacked by US aircraft. Peiper lost roughly 10 vehicles and two hours hunkering down during the attack. Other than this incident (and a previous attack on his King Tigers on the 17th), air power played little role in the US thwarting of KG Peiper.

Peiper's assault from the get-go suffered a long list of setbacks. The ones he couldn't control include the following:
- The aforementioned bad weather
- The poor road conditions and terrain unsuited for armored warfare
- Poor logistics and staff work by the Sixth Panzer army (it was a German traffic jam, not the Americans) that set the LSSAH assault timetable back 12 hours

Other setbacks - some of which Peiper could have controlled - were:
- His argument over tactical objectives with the CO of a Luftwaffe paratrooper regiment near the Bülligen Forest on Dec 17th
- The wrong turns his KG took on the Malmédy-Vielsam road on Dec 17
- The Malmedy Massacre and other war crimes committed by men under his command
- His failure to ensure adequate radio communications with his superiors
- His disastrous decision to halt his KG at the Stavelot bridge on Dec 17, weakly defended by a SQUAD of engineers from the the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion. Thirteen GI's were all that basically stood between Peiper and the Meuse, and Peiper, failing to gain adequate intelligence on the unit blocking his 100 tank armored spearhead, suffers a failure of nerve and decides to button up for the night
- The "wall of flame" erected by the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion on Dec 18th, forcing Peiper to yet again seek an alternate route
- The delay and destruction of the Trois Points bridge by US combat engineers
- The delay and destruction of the bridge Lienne Creek at Habiémont by US combat engineers on Dec 18.

By 21st December, Peiper's task force has been whittled down to 1,500. The vehicles are out of gas, and his unit is bottled up La Gleize. American 155mm artillery are directly firing on his position. It's all over for the Sixth Panzer Army dashing to the Meuse. The tactical advantage has passed over to the US 30th ID, the 3rd Armored and the 82nd Airborne.
(To Harro) you're doubting the tactical skills of Peiper.
We do have to give Peiper the benefit of the doubt in that his orders to reach the Meuse - given the weather, the terrain, the poor staff planning, the lack of logistics (especially gasoline) were pretty close to impossible to achieve. Having said that, however, his performance as a commander of an armored task force seems to have been tentative - at the the Bülligen Forest breakthrough and especially his failure to press on through Stavelot on the night of the 17th. Instead of a single-column "spitze" spearhead, he could have - had he not insisted on "leading from the front" in the Romantic Rommel/SS Führerprinzip style - tried an alternate formation of multiple armored groups with him leading from the middle - ordering them to avoid combat where possible and exploit any westward route available. Granted, he was saddled with the "slow-poke" King Tigers of the 501st SS Heavy Tank Battalion - great for Eastern front defensive battles, but slow, mechanically-unreliable gas-guzzling behemoths that could never keep up - for this campaign. But now I'm wandering off into unproductive "what-if" scenarios. He did successfully exfiltrate circa 700 troops from the American ring around La Glieze, no small feat and undoubtedly courageous. Peiper won the Swords to his Knight's Cross, but the overall performance of his unit under his command is defeat and failure.


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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#63

Post by Harro » 26 Nov 2009, 10:31

WEISWEILER wrote:Yes, you made your point. Only... I still don't think Peiper was a 'tactical failure', certainly not in the Ardennes. He got carried away too much, furious and at the same time frustrated by the lack of guts of other commanders. At the other hand, if he would have moved slower, he wouldn't have been able to reach his goal (the bridges) anyway.
Peiper was a very skillful, very impressive SPW commander but as a Panzer leader he failed miserably. His command of the LSSAH Panzer-Regiment in the 1943/44 Ukrainian battles was a disaster. The other officers in the regiment feared that his gung-ho "SPW-style" methods would destroy the regiment and they were right. Peiper simply did not understand tank warfare. He burned down his panzers in a series of catastrophic attacks against dug-in Soviet AT guns, moved deep into enemy territory without any protection on the flanks, to such an extent that LSSAH commanders like Albert Frey refused to attach their men to Peiper's outfit in fear of losing them. Each and every attack, even when succesful, cost too many tanks and too many men. The fighting near Radomyschl on December 10, 1943, was especially disastrous. Peiper did not care about recconaissance or tactical manouvres, he send his troops forward and smashed his regiment head first into strong Russian defensive positions. The German tanks were helpless. Divisional commander Teddy Wisch witnessed the slaughter of his tanks and he ordered to abandon the attack to prevent further "turkey shooting" by Soviet AT guns. A few hours later Peiper insisted to try again and in similar fasion, and the result was the same. Again, a furious Wisch had to stop the attack and ordered Peiper back. It was only three weeks after he had taken command after Schönberger was killed and after those three weeks Peiper had only 12 tanks left. He was ordered back to the divisional staff to be replaced by Kuhlmann. Peiper was with the divisional staff and in Germany for rest and holiday while Kuhlmann led the remnants of the Panzer-Regiment through the Hube Pocket. In April the survivors of his unit were send to Belgium were Peiper joined them again. In Normandy, the Ardennes (were he was mostly found with Diefenthal and the SPW's) and Hungary - Peiper was often only commander op de Panzer-Regiment in name, occupied with Kampfgruppe command while Poetschke was the actual leader of the Panzer-Regiment. His Oak Leaves and promotion were a propaganda present for his godfather Himmler. He got carried away? Probably, yet he made two tactical errors which led to his defeat, regardless of the impossible goals that were set for his Kampfgruppe. As mentioned by Rob: if he was so determined to push on, why halting in front of Stavelot without doing anything until the next morning. And secondly, once he crossed Stavelot, why push on with such haste that he left that vital town undefended. Off course there's also Knittel to blame but it did enable the Americans to recapture this town with its vital bridge, cutting Peiper's supply route
WEISWEILER wrote:Do you really believe Peiper would have kept his status in the German military up to the last moment, if he was indeed a tactical idiot?
Certainly, the Leibstandarte was a soap opera.

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#64

Post by WEISWEILER » 26 Nov 2009, 14:50

Rob - wssob2 wrote:Hi WEISWEILER - I wanted to comment on a couple of the points you made:


[...]
And I would argue that his use of terror - a tactic sanctioned by Hitler at his Dec 12th Bad Nauheim conference - backfired on Kampfgruppe Peiper. Instead of weakening US Army resolve, news of the Malmedy Massacre stiffened it.
Of course it did backfire.
Analyzing the war crimes committed during the Battle of the Bulge like a police investigator, one can't help but notice that the overwhelming number of incidents cluster in a "crime spree" pattern along the advance of the Sixth SS Panzer Army - and specifically KG Peiper - between Dec 16 and 24, 1944. This is extraordinary. Other SS units - like the 2nd and 12th SS Divisions, for example - did not have an equivalent pattern. And there is basically little to no evidence that the Heer Fifth Panzer Army engaged in any war crimes at all during the campaign.

As for Peiper's performance, it stretches all credulity to think of it as a "victory." He was forced to withdraw after a week, failing to achieve his objective, suffering the total loss of all his vehicles and equipment and roughly 50% of his men - and though it's not mentioned in polite circles- probably hospitalized for exhaustion and combat fatigue. If that's victory, I'd hate to imagine defeat!.
Where did I use the word 'victory'? 8O Come on, man.

The aforementioned Heer Fifth Panzer Army on the southern front of the Ardennes offensive made the most gains. Here's a map:

Image

Note also that the map indicates that the Germans did not control territory in Peiper's area of operations.

Correction here: I ment in the northern sector.
As you can see on the map.


[...]


Not to get into the whole imbroglio of the genesis of the reputed "take no prisoners" order, but there's a pretty clear evidence that Hitler's "the troops must act with brutality and show no human inhibitions" order on December 12th got passed down the chain of command to the LSSAH kampfgruppe level by December 15th. How Hitler's orders were meant to be implemented have always been a controversial matter and their ambiguity is best represented by Sepp Dietrich's staff conference quip, "Prisoners? You know what to do with them."

SS use of the bombing campaign as a motivator for the troops has also been mentioned by several historians during the period Nov-early Dec 1944. Monke specifically mentioned it ("one should remember the victims of the bombing terror") when he passed the I SS Panzer Corps orders to Peiper on December 14th..
Indeed.

Being energetic and a "leader by example" (do you mean his personal order to shoot an American POW at Petit Their?) aren't tactics.

Here is also an instance where "leading from the front" isn't necessarily the best place for a commander. While Peiper's leading by example with his spitze at La Gleize, his supply column was getting shot up by Task Force Lovejoy..
Leading by example as taking the front. Yes, for instance. This is a standard method in German WWII tactics, read Die Truppenführung. Indeed implemented by Peiper in the most cynical way.


[...]

While it is correct that Hitler launched the Ardennes offensive knowing that the bad winter weather would negate Allied tactical air superiority, it is incorrect to attribute KG Peiper's failure to airstrikes. Peiper's column was briefly spotted on December 18th near Cheneux and attacked by US aircraft. Peiper lost roughly 10 vehicles and two hours hunkering down during the attack. Other than this incident (and a previous attack on his King Tigers on the 17th), air power played little role in the US thwarting of KG Peiper.


Psychologically it did very much.
Peiper's assault from the get-go suffered a long list of setbacks. The ones he couldn't control include the following:
- The aforementioned bad weather
- The poor road conditions and terrain unsuited for armored warfare
- Poor logistics and staff work by the Sixth Panzer army (it was a German traffic jam, not the Americans) that set the LSSAH assault timetable back 12 hours

Other setbacks - some of which Peiper could have controlled - were:
- His argument over tactical objectives with the CO of a Luftwaffe paratrooper regiment near the Bülligen Forest on Dec 17th
- The wrong turns his KG took on the Malmédy-Vielsam road on Dec 17
- The Malmedy Massacre and other war crimes committed by men under his command
- His failure to ensure adequate radio communications with his superiors
- His disastrous decision to halt his KG at the Stavelot bridge on Dec 17, weakly defended by a SQUAD of engineers from the the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion. Thirteen GI's were all that basically stood between Peiper and the Meuse, and Peiper, failing to gain adequate intelligence on the unit blocking his 100 tank armored spearhead, suffers a failure of nerve and decides to button up for the night
- The "wall of flame" erected by the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion on Dec 18th, forcing Peiper to yet again seek an alternate route
- The delay and destruction of the Trois Points bridge by US combat engineers
- The delay and destruction of the bridge Lienne Creek at Habiémont by US combat engineers on Dec 18.


Yes , you're adding it up very well. Mission impossible.

/Kurt

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#65

Post by WEISWEILER » 26 Nov 2009, 15:20

For the record:

Battle of the Bulge OoB Air Force


Luftwaffe
II. Jagdkorps*


Allied Air Forces
U.S. Army Air Forces
U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe Gen Carl Spaatz
U.S. Eighth Air Force (Strategic)
LTG James H. Doolittle
U.S. Ninth Air Force
LTG Hoyt S. Vandenberg
IX Bombardment Division
MG Samuel E. Anderson
IX Troop Carrier Command
MG Paul L. Williams
IX Tactical Air Command (supporting First Army)
MG Elwood R. Quesada
XIX Tactical Air Command (supporting Third Army)
XXIX Tactical Air Command (supporting Ninth Army)
[edit] Royal Air Force
Bomber Command
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur T. Harris
Fighter Command
Air Marshal Sir Roderic M. Hill
Second Tactical Air Force
Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham


*(2nd Fighter Corps) was formed September 15, 1943 in Chantilly from Höherer Jagdfliegerführer West. II. Jagdkorps was subordinated to Luftflotte 3, and from September 26, 1944 on to Luftwaffenkommando West. On January 26, 1945 the Corps was disbanded, and used to form the 14. Flieger-Divisionen and 15. Flieger-Divisionen. The headquarter was located at Chantilly and from August 1944 in Rochefort, from September 10, 1944 at Flammersfeld near Koblenz.

If you'd see the actual figures of airplanes, you would be even more amazed.

/Kurt

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#66

Post by Harro » 26 Nov 2009, 15:34

WEISWEILER wrote:Psychologically it did very much.
Sources?

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#67

Post by WEISWEILER » 26 Nov 2009, 15:49

Harro wrote:
WEISWEILER wrote:Psychologically it did very much.
Sources?
Intuition.

If you'd have been a commander in a similar position, wouldn't you have considered the fact that air force could eventually destroy your outfit?

/Kurt

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#68

Post by Harro » 26 Nov 2009, 16:20

Intuition. Great. Have you ever talked with veterans from Kampfgruppe Peiper?

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#69

Post by WEISWEILER » 26 Nov 2009, 16:33

Harro wrote:Intuition. Great. Have you ever talked with veterans from Kampfgruppe Peiper?
Well, my family was in the W-SS. However, not in Peiper's KG. Luckely.

Ask your contacts in de Leibstandarte about the impact of the air force. If they agree that it didn't really matter, than you have a point.

/Kurt

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Tactical skills of Peiper

#70

Post by Jochen S. » 26 Nov 2009, 16:44

I believe that appointing Peiper as Commander of the Panzerregiment makes it very clear that the LAH was a ‘soap opera’. It proves that divisional CO. Wisch wasn’t a military genius either and promoted Peiper not only because he was more aggressive than Schönberger but also because of his good personal relationship with the man. It cost the Panzerregiment dearly. Experienced tankers were very surprised and not at all that excited when hearing that Peiper became their new CO. There were better options like Gross. His soon the be adjutant could only give the explanation that – after Schönberger was killed – such a decision(who should lead the Panzerregiment?) had to be made very quickly during battle. I am sure however that Peiper wasn’t a ‘tactical idiot’. He did make the mistake of treating his Panzers like his beloved SPWs - on the other hand trying to live up to his superiors expections. Had he succeeded he was even more of a 'hero' then he is now.

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#71

Post by Harro » 26 Nov 2009, 17:05

WEISWEILER wrote:Ask your contacts in de Leibstandarte about the impact of the air force. If they agree that it didn't really matter, than you have a point.
The took the usual precautions (marching at night when possible, vehicles camouflaged, aircraft spotters on most vehicles, AA guns ready during breaks) but as long as the weather was bad they did not feel overly concerned. The lack of allied air activity was a welcome change to the terror from the sky they had experienced in Normandy. Besides, they had other things to worry about.

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#72

Post by j keenan » 26 Nov 2009, 18:12

Hi Rob,
wasn't using it as an excuse i've read the book's on Peiper, of which Westemeier
is the best in my opinion.
But having read all the post's here there's nothing new, Peiper was a good spw batl commander
promoted to far when he took the pzr rgt over.
Was he the man to lead a battle group for a last gamble in the west and grab the bridges on the Muse ? As you've already pointed out you can wander off all over on what ifs.
The facts show he lost simple.
Best Jamie

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#73

Post by Dutto1 » 26 Nov 2009, 19:44

Hi Rob-wsso2,

Regarding Peiper s war criminal status its hard to know what really happend at Malmedy on the 17th December 1944.The hard fact is that American Prisoners were killed some shot in the head after only being wounded in the massacre.The Westrn Allies also shot Prisoners as well and one general admitted as much after the war.Major-General Christopher Vokes while considering Kurt Meyers appeal against his death penalty after his conviction for the shooting of Canadian Prisoners in 1944 said"There isn t a General or Colonel i know on the Allied side that i know of hasn t said"Well this time we don t want prisoners".This does not excuse the Malmedy Massacre it just illustrates that on both sides if need be prisoners would be shot.I think Peiper was more guilty of what happend at Boves than Malmedy.As a footnote after WW2 ended in the Sudetenland the thousands of German Soldiers and civillians were killed before and after the Benes decree there is a website called Sudeten German inferno on the net its written from eyewitness accounts from survivors who were there,the Western Allies turned a blind eye to what was going on.

I think amongst my extensive book collection i think ive got a photo of one Peipers SPW with a blowtorch logo on ill look for it. Regards Ron

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#74

Post by WEISWEILER » 26 Nov 2009, 19:54

Harro wrote:
WEISWEILER wrote:Ask your contacts in de Leibstandarte about the impact of the air force. If they agree that it didn't really matter, than you have a point.
The took the usual precautions (marching at night when possible, vehicles camouflaged, aircraft spotters on most vehicles, AA guns ready during breaks) but as long as the weather was bad they did not feel overly concerned. The lack of allied air activity was a welcome change to the terror from the sky they had experienced in Normandy. Besides, they had other things to worry about.
Sources?

/Kurt

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Re: Peiper's SPW tactics on the Eastern Front

#75

Post by Dutto1 » 27 Nov 2009, 00:01

Hi Rob

I ve located two photos of vehicles with the "Blowtorch"insignia 1.page 200 of Jochen Peiper by Patrick Agte shows a supply vehilce with it on circa July 1943 2.From the same book p 241 a SPW from Peipers unit during their time in Italy in 1943.

Regards Ron

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