BAUGNEZ (Malmedy) once more (Peiper)...

[Timo]

Referring to David Clarke's opinion on Peiper, as posted on the Soldatenheim Forum today, once more the discussion about Peiper at Malmedy.

On 14 January 1945, a month after the tragic events at the Baugnez crossroads, the Americans found 86 bodies of American soldiers covered under the snow in a field near the Bodarwe cafe.

When the trial against the supposed killers started in the summer of 1946 at Dachau, the American prosecutors tried to prove that the High Command of the 6. Panzer Armee had ordered the SS Kampfgruppen prior to their attack that no prisoners should be taken.

Now David, please prove to me what Peiper did that makes him guilty for ordering the murders for sure. Can you give me facts that prove beyond doubt that you are right when you assume that Peiper was a swine? That Peiper had the intention to have these POW's killed and that he knew about the killings and approved with the murders? That it was murder and that it was planned murder?

Regards,
Timo

[Richard Murphy]

Herr Oberst,

Why do you highlight a persons racial origins before even attempting a response? Do you have any idea what colour I am?

In my opinion Pepeir was probably innocent, as the spearhead of his KG had passed the area before the massacre, and it can be, reasonably assumed that he was amongst the lead elements. BUT THIS IS IN NO WAY CERTAIN!!
It is ASSUMED he was amongst the lead elements at the time, but, to the best of my knowledge, this has never been independently confirmed (A Junior SS officer was hardly likely to say "No, didn't see him!", are they?)

[Martin Månsson]

StandartenführerSS:

No such postings please !! You know the guidelines, please follow them. Your post is deleted.

Martin
Moderator

[StandartenfuehrerSS]

This is what you, Murphy, wrote:

In my opinion
probably
it can be
reasonably assumed
IN NO WAY CERTAIN
It is ASSUMED
to the best of my knowledge
hardly likely

In all honesty, why are you even bothering? I can picture Timo smiling with glee now, because what you wrote does not show much perspective or insight in the matter. I am waiting for the one to defend himself. Then we'll settle the matter once and for all.

[Martin Månsson]

StandartenführerSS !!!!

Behave yourself. Your post have been edited by me. No such comments please, ok ??

You do not need to agree or like everyone here but please, treat them with respect. (And that goes for all !!)

Martin
Moderator

[David C. Clarke]

Hi Timo, we will have this discussion in due course, but not now for the reasons I mentioned in my e-mail. However, please do not believe that the Malmedy massacre is my only reason for despising Peiper.
Note to Standard F.: We will never have anything to discuss. I have decided that you do not exist.
Cheers, Timo and Best Regards, David

[harry palmer]

Would it be too much to suggest that whatever Peiper may or may not have done, that he was never found guilty of anything in any courtroom worthy of the name?

[pdhinkle36ID]

Prior to June 6th 1944, all the fighting by western Allies was in Italy. Both sides knew a soldier should not surrender to a tank crew. What would you do with the POW put him in a tank?
Now after a group surrenders in Dec 1944 on the western front, what should have been done. Tanks would continue to advance leaving the POWs to the foot soldiers following.
Just like Dachau later one crazy machine gunner let loose of a few rounds and every one got into the act. Planned? Spontaneous! YES Now what?

[Birgitte Heuschkel]

Prior to June 6th 1944, all the fighting by western Allies was in Italy. Both sides knew a soldier should not surrender to a tank crew. What would you do with the POW put him in a tank?
Now after a group surrenders in Dec 1944 on the western front, what should have been done. Tanks would continue to advance leaving the POWs to the foot soldiers following.
Just like Dachau later one crazy machine gunner let loose of a few rounds and every one got into the act. Planned? Spontaneous! YES Now what?

So basically, when the sh*t hits the fan, all you can do is curse and try to cover it up?

[Roberto]

Would it be too much to suggest that whatever Peiper may or may not have done, that he was never found guilty of anything in any courtroom worthy of the name?

What is supposed to have been wrong with the courtroom?

[harry palmer]

1- Ill treatment of the SS suspects before the trial was alleged from several sources, including one dentist who testified to treating them for several dislocated teeth. Such allegations were angrily denied by the interrogators although they did admit to carrying out mock trials to obtain confessions. US Theatre commander, General Lucius Clay, claimed that he had ordered that the Malmedy suspects be guarded by men who had seen the corpses of the massacre victims; “these soldiers applied rather rough methods.”
2- A week before the opening of the trial , the Judge Advocate’s office of the US
Military Government revoked the prisoners’ POW status despite the strong
protests of the US Army and US Navy Judge Advocates General. The
prisoners and their defence team were not informed of this at the time.
3- As the trial got underway, several grave inconsistencies in the prisoners’
confessions became apparent. On the evidence of SS-Sturmann Springer,
Peiper was originally accused of ordering the massacre of 175 US POWs at
the church in La Gleize.. No other evidence of this ‘massacre’ could be found ,
and several witnesses gave evidence to the contrary, including Major Hal
McCown ,the senior ranking US prisoner in La Gleize. The latter was accused
by the Prosecution of collaboration with the enemy. As McCown was by the
time of the trial a Colonel in the Pentagon, such accusations raised grave
disquiet within the US Army.
4- Inconsistencies in sentencing- despite no conclusive evidence that Peiper had
ordered the Malmedy massacre, he was sentenced to death, while SS
Sturmbannfuhrer Gustav Knittel ,who had freely admitted the killing of other
US prisoners, received a life sentence.
5- After the submission of the trial results to General Clay’s headquarters, his
subsequently appointed War Crimes Board of Review “accused the Army
investigators of conduct at best inept, at worst unprincipled, and the army
judges of consistent bias to the advantage of the prosecution.” Of the 43
death sentences, 27 were commuted to prison sentences and four were quashed
6- A subsequent commission ordered by the Secretary of the Army, comprising
two judges and a JAG colonel , supported the Malmedy trials’ verdict, although recommending that the remaining death sentences be commuted. However, Judge van Roden subsequently accused the prosecution and the trial of grave misconduct, principally relating to the methods used by the interrogators.


There is little doubt that members of Kampfgruppe Peiper massacred over eighty members of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battery near Malmedy on 17th December 1944. There is little evidence that Peiper was at the scene at the time. If Peiper did give any order to kill POWs he did not comply with it when 175 of them were under his supervision at La Gleize. The evidence is that the Malmedy killings (and several others involving SS Leibstandarte in the Ardennes) were the work of very young and inexperienced Warren-SS in action for the first time. Following the surrender of the 285th FAOB , the exultant SS began shooting up the captured trucks, an act of idiocy and ill-discipline which was only halted by the intervention of Peiper, who left shortly afterwards. Peiper has been acused of culpability in neglecting to control these youngsters, but it is difficult to see how he could have controlled all 5800 men of his command in the circumstances in which Kampfgruppe Peiper was fighting.

All the same, it is worth noting General Michael Reynold’s observation that Peiper’s capture by any Army other than the US may not have resulted in a trial at all.

[Roberto]

Thanks for the information.

As to the accusations of mistreatment of the defendants, they may well have been fabricated by their defense attorney Rudolf Aschenauer.

The Malmedy Trial and the Myth of Confessions extracted under Torture

Comradely help and clerical assistance

Holocaust deniers keep maintaining that the confessions of the accused before Allied military tribunals have no validity because they came into being under torture. This is one of the many lies of the extreme right that strive to acquit the perpetrators and to rehabilitate National Socialism.
Soon after the collapse of the National Socialist regime a rather efficient cooperation was formed for this purpose between incorrigible National Socialists, Nazi criminals, representatives of the conservative camp and ecclesiastical circles.

The focus of the allegations were the Dachau trials, 489 procedures held against more than a thousand defendants. The one that especially caught the attention of the public was the so-called Malmedy trial, the subject of which was the shooting of 71 American soldiers by Kampfgruppe Peiper (1st. SS Panzer Division "Adolf Hitler") in December 1944 during the Ardennes Offensive. The wounded soldiers had surrendered near the city of Malmedy, yet been murdered by Peiper’s men. In total, according to American investigations, soldiers of the Kampfgruppe Peiper murdered about 350 American prisoners of war and about 100 Belgian civilians in the time from December 1944 to January 1945.

After the SS men who had been under the orders of SS-Standartenführer Joachim Peiper had been tracked down, they were first interned in Zuffenhausen and Schwäbisch-Hall in Bavaria and sent from there to Dachau in April 1946. One of the accused was Peiper’s superior Sepp Dietrich, supreme commander of the 6th. SS Panzer Army and a leading participant in the murder of Ernst Röhm.

The verdict of the American military tribunal on 16 July 1946: Of 73 members of the 1st. SS-Panzer Division "Adolf Hitler", 43 were sentenced to death, 22 to lifetime imprisonment and the others to temporary imprisonment.

Even before the beginning of the trial the defense attorney Rudolf Aschenauer raised the claim that the prisoners had been forced to make incriminating statements. He maintained that there had been “bogus trials”, that the prisoners had been beaten and pushed on the way from one cell to another, that they had received nothing other than water for weeks or in other cases only dry bread and nothing to drink. There was still no talk of torture at this time. The allegations were investigated by a commission of the US Army in November 1947.

The investigation report, prepared jointly by the Inspector General and the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) , showed statements so contradictory that the accusations were rejected as not sustainable. The investigation mainly focused on the question whether the actions of the defense and their background constituted an organized activity directed against the criminal prosecution of National Socialist crimes by the Allies.
This the investigation commission considered not to be so. The consequence was that the campaigns to discredit the military tribunals could continue unhindered. At a later stage the claim of tortures was added, which extended to all Dachau trials. There was talk about “broken teeth” and “squeezed testicles”. At this time, however, it became apparent that all the accused had made identical statements. The texts of the affidavits were identical in every word.

The many activities of Princess Isenburg, which were not limited to humanitarian aid to the prisoners but also aimed at the juridical and moral acquittal of the accused, were showing their effect. From the beginning she pursued the aim of defaming the war crimes trials as “victors’ justice” and thus to protect the accused and convicted from the execution of the death penalty. The influence that the princess could apply for this purpose was considerable. The campaign included not only conservative circles but also Protestant and Catholic bishops, namely the bishop of Württemberg Theophil Wurm and bishop Johannes Neuhäusler from Munich. Both had a key role in the campaign in their capacity as representatives of the church, a moral instance. Neuhäuslers voice especially had weight with the public because he had been not only in Gestapo detention but also in Dachau concentration camp. The motivations of the church representatives were not so much sympathy for the Nazi henchmen as reconciliation with the past and a new beginning for German postwar society. The other connections made by Princess Isenburg and Attorney at Law Aschenauer, howeve, went as far as the SS underground organization "Bruderschaft", which had formed unopposed in British prisoner of war camps. The coordination of the actions becomes apparent from timely parallels of the events. Princess Isenburg used a number of institutions for her campaign, for example the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft zur Rettung der Landsberger Häftlinge" (“Committee for the Salvation of the Landsberg Prisoners) , which also acted under the name "Arbeitsausschuß für Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit" (“Commission for Truth and Justice”) and was largely financed by the churches.
Together with bishop Wurm she founded in 1951 the society "Stille Hilfe für Kriegsgefangene und Internierte" (“”Quiet Help for Prisoners of War and Internees”) , which the public recently took notice of again in 1998 in connection with the Anton Malloth case (Malloth is suspected of having been responsible for the death of many inmates of Theresienstadt Gestapo prison). In extensive press campaigns containing personal letters and petitions the Nazi criminals were presented as innocent victims. Aschenauer’s connections to the "Bruderschaft" became known when the British uncovered the neo-Nazi conspiracy around Goebbels’ former personal referent Werner Naumann in January 1953.

The Investigation Commissions

In the summer of 1948 the so-called "Simpson-Commission" was established, named after its president, Gordon Simpson, Judge at the Texas Supreme Court. The Simpson Commission was very open to accusations and petitions from clerical circles. Again the defense (Aschenauer) skillfully spread rumors. In the final report to war minister Royall of 15.9.1948 it was stated that the Dachau trials had on the whole been fair and legitimate, even if certain interrogation practices had met with criticism. The interrogators had on occasion left the accused under the impression that fellow prisoners had made wholesale confessions and compromised others. However, no indications of any physical damages caused though mistreatment by the members of the War Crimes Group could be found. The commission recommended, however, to transform 29 of the 139 death sentences issued into prison sentences.

As the allegations continued even after this report, an investigation commission of the US Senate for the armed forces was formed in 1949. The president of this commission was Raymond E. Baldwin, Connecticut. The statements of the Malmedy war criminals before this commission again revealed considerable contradictions. In the commission’s final report to the US Senate the accusations of torture and the use of illegal methods in the interrogation of the accused were rejected. The accusations against William R. Perl, Chief Interrogator of the War Crimes Group and a key figure in the investigations against the SS men, could not be upheld either.

Perl and the other "Thirty-Niners", as Senator Joseph McCarthy used to call the Jews who had immigrated to America in 1939, were fully rehabilitated by this investigation commission. This was vehemently opposed by McCarthy, who at first had seen in his activity as member of the commission a chance for working his political image but then turned most members of the commission against himself by his attitude towards Perl. This native of Vienna had been made the central figure of the attacks by the circles around McCarthy, who had gone as far as requesting the interrogation of Perl by the commission with the help of a lie detector. McCarthy’s request was rejected by the majority of the commission. Nevertheless the report contained the recommendation not to use Jews as interrogators in the future to eliminate pretexts for criticism against the procedures.

In the final report the following was stated:

"Already at the beginning of the investigations the investigation commission noted an extraordinary activity of certain organizations [...] Credible witness testimonials increase the suspicion that interest groups inside Germany want to use the understandable efforts of the church and the defense to discredit the American occupation troops in general. A concentrated attempt in this direction was made through attacks on the war crimes trials in general and the Malmedy trial in particular. The investigation commission is convinced that this is an organized attempt to revive the National Socialist spirit in Germany which uses all means at its disposal."

All allegations of torture eventually turned out to be untrue. The medical assessments in this respect are clear. There were neither "broken teeth" nor "squeezed testicles". The accounts of tortures were far-fetched products of fantasy, aimed at protecting the accused from due punishment, rehabilitating them and discrediting their prosecutors and judges.

Clemency Decrees

The death sentences issued at the Malmedy Trial were eventually all converted into prison sentences. Most of the accused were free by 1953, the last were released in 1958. The decisions of the clemency commission were severely criticized by American public opinion, which led to the firing of the president. Senator Joseph McCarthy went down in history as a fanatical communist hunter. William R. Perl died in December 1998 at the age of 92 in Beltsville, Maryland.

Source and further reading:

http://www.idgr.de/texte-1/legenden/folter/folter.html

Translation is mine.

[harry palmer]

Thank you for your info Roberto.