This week, 80 years ago, Joachim — a/k/a Jochen — Peiper was being held by the United States Army in the 1500-year-old town of Schwäbisch Hall, in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southern part of Germany.
Peiper was the commander of the Lead Battle Group of the 1st SS-Panzerdivision Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler (LAH) and, as such, was accused of murdering, or giving the order to murder, American POWS at Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge.
He was the youngest standartenführer (colonel) in the Waffen-SS. Peiper had been apprehended on May 22, 1945, by soldiers of the “Rainbow” Division, commanded by Harry Collins, as he was making his way home on foot. Not until August, did the Army realize that he was in its custody. Then, it was a major news story!
Peiper had once served as adjutant to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, and had served with the LAH on the Eastern Front against the Red Army, and in France against the Western Allies. During his service on the Eastern Front, his unit earned the sobriquet “Blowtorch Battalion,” because of the approach it took when encountering Soviet villages.
On April 16, 1946, he, and others, were moved from Schwäbisch Hall to Dachau, where the trial was held from May 16-July 16, 1946, before an American Military Tribunal.
Seventy-three SS Officers were tried, including Peiper and Joseph “Sepp” Dietrich, former longtime commander of LAH, and from the Battle of the Bulge on, commander of the Sixth SS Panzerarmee, of which the LAH was a part. The Chief Judge of the Court of seven was Gen. Josiah Dalby. The “Law Member” was Col. Abraham H. Rosenfeld, who ruled on motions and objections.
In the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans planned to send their armor through the Ardennes Forest as they had in May 1940 because, in both instances, it was lightly defended. The forest was thought to be impassable for armor.
Once through, the plan was to cross the Meuse River, split the Commonwealth and American forces, turn right and capture the port of Antwerp to slow the river of supplies pouring into the Allied armies.
Speed was essential to the German success. Their fuel stocks were so low that they had to plan on restocking from captured Allied supplies. Also, they needed to take advantage of the element of surprise, as the Allies thought that the Wehrmacht was spent, and did not have the capacity for such an offensive operation.
Finally, the Germans wanted to take advantage of the bad weather, to nullify the Allied aerial advantage. The Allied aerial advantage was one major difference from four years prior. There was one other difference from the offensive four years earlier. The tanks were much larger, making it more difficult to traverse the narrow roads and small bridges.
The LAH was the elite of the elite, but it was no longer the same unit that it had once been. Years fighting the Red Army, and fighting the Allies, with their overwhelming materiel, had robbed it of many of its veterans and leadership.
In addition, when the 12th SS Panzerdivision Hitlerjugend was formed in late 1943 from the Hitler Youth, most of its officers came from the LAH, such as Knight’s Cross holders, Kurt “Panzer” Meyer, Wilhelm Mohnke, Max Wünsche, Rudolf von Ribbentrop (the Foreign Minister’s son) and its first commander, Fritz Witt. The LAH officers who remained with the Panzerdivision were leading younger men than those that began the war.
The offensive was launched early on Dec. 16, 1944. By 12:30 p.m. the next day, Peiper’s force, already behind schedule, had reached the Belgian town of Malmédy, where it encountered members of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.
After a brief firefight, the outnumbered and out-gunned Americans surrendered. They, and some other prisoners, all totaling about 150, were ordered into a nearby field. After about 15 minutes, the Germans began machine-gunning the defenseless prisoners. Eighty-four American soldiers were murdered. The others escaped.
At the trial, Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett Jr., from Atlanta, who had only arrived in Europe a few weeks before the trial began, headed the defense team. His chief assistant was Herbert J. Strong. Lt. Col. Burton L. Ellis was the chief prosecutor. His chief assistant was Raphael Schumaker.
Although there were three civilian eyewitnesses to the event — Madame Bodarme who owned a café beside the field, a 15-year-old boy, and a farmer, Henri Le Joly — they were not called to testify. The prosecution relied instead on the testimony of the survivors, as well as statements of the accused, even though they may have been the product of torture.
The defense called Lt. Col. Harold D. McCown, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 119th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division, who was captured on Dec. 21, 1944, by Peiper’s force. The major testified that Peiper behaved properly and that no preference was given to the wounded German soldiers, over wounded American soldiers, when it came to medical care.
The prosecution produced evidence that Peiper had ordered the murder of POWs. His co-defendants, not being aware of the old criminal defense adage, “Nobody talks, everybody walks,” insisted on testifying.
After the prosecution finished its cross-examination, the court was so convinced of their guilt that several, including Peiper, were sentenced to die.
On the afternoon of July 11, the court announced that it found all defendants “guilty.” Eight defendants addressed the court that afternoon, before it recessed for the day, with the rest addressing the court the next day. The court recessed until Tuesday, July 16, 1946, when it reconvened at 1:30 p.m. to announce its sentences.
First, Gen. Dalby announced that executions would be by hanging. Then each man was called to stand before the court. The court sentenced Peiper and 42 others to hang. Peiper’s commander, Sepp Dietrich, and 21 others were sentenced to life in prison. The rest were given lesser prison sentences.
The Secretary of the Army, Kenneth Royal, empaneled a commission, chaired by Hon. Col. Gordon A. Simpson, a justice of the Texas Supreme Court, to review the convictions and sentences.
Thirty-one of the death sentences had already been commuted to life imprisonment. The “Gordon” Commission recommended that the remaining death sentences be similarly commuted. Gen. Lucius D. Clay commuted six more — but not Peiper’s. Finally, even his was commuted on Jan. 30, 1951.
Peiper’s life sentence was reduced to 35 years on May 21, 1954. The parole commission, composed of three West Germans and an American, Frenchman and Britain, voted to grant him parole, effective Dec, 22, 1956. His release was not without criticism.
Although Peiper may not have realized it, these proceedings may have saved his life, because in the U.S.S.R., he was a wanted man. These proceedings gave the Americans an excuse not to extradite him to the Soviet Union. By 1956, there was no cooperation between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.
Peiper secured employment with Porsche, K.G., which employed many former SS. In fact, its founder, Ferdinand Porsche had also been a member of the SS, having joined it, and the Nazi party, in 1937.
But, by the time Peiper began working there, Ferdinand was dead, and his son Ferdinand Anton Ernst (“Ferry”) Porsche was running the business. In the spring of 1961, Peiper left Porsche, K.G., on unfriendly terms.
He secured employment with Moritz Autohaus, owned by former party member Max Moritz. Herr Moritz soon made him the head of sales. Peiper also contributed to “Auto, Motor und Sport” magazine, and being fluent in English, performed translations for a military history book publisher. He was soon doing quite well, financially, as many Americans wanted to deal with the handsome, famous, SS colonel.
It was during this period of affluence that Peiper bought property near the small hamlet of Traves, located in eastern France, in the Haute-Sâone Department, on the Sâone River. There, he built a home, and eventually retired there, where he lived quietly and unpretentiously with his wife.
But, on July 11, 1974, he went to the Mégnin-Bernard hardware store in Vesoul, to buy some fence wire. The 1100-year-old town of Vesoul is the largest in the Haute-Sâone Department and today boasts a population of 15,000. The clerk who attended to him was 52-year-old Paul Cacheux, who had been employed there for two years.
During the war, the Germans had imprisoned him for two years. Upon his release, he joined the French resistance, and was now a committed Communist. Upon learning of his customer’s identity, he spread the word amongst his fellow party-members. Two years later, Cacheux sent an exposé to Pierre Durand, editor of the Communist newspaper, L’Humanité.
On June 22, Peiper’s presence was a front page story in L’Humanité. Soon, Peiper began receiving threats. He sent his wife and family to Germany for safety. He was told that his house would be torched and he would be killed, on Bastille Day, July 14. Early on July 14, 1976, Peiper’s home was firebombed with Molotov-cocktails. It burned and he was killed.
His death was a case of life imitating art, in that, in the movie “Battle of the Bulge,” the Peiper character, portrayed by Robert Shaw, dies as fire consumes his tank at the end of the battle and movie. The movie was released in 1965, 11 years prior to Peiper’s death.