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:
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.