Joachim Peiper

On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Peiper joined Himmler on board his special train and, on occasion, acted as his liaison to Adolf Hitler, travelling with Erwin Rommel to accompany Hitler as he met with Wehrmacht generals near the front.[28] Peiper was with Himmler on 20 September in Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) when they witnessed the execution of 20 Poles organized by the leader of the local Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz and SS functionary, Ludolf von Alvensleben.[29][30] As Peiper later told Ernst Schäfer, Hitler had ordered Himmler to eliminate "Polish intellectuals".[31]

After Poland was defeated, Peiper witnessed the developing SS policies of deportations and ethnic cleansing of the Polish population.[32] On 13 December 1939, he and Himmler witnessed the gassing of residents of a psychiatric facility in Owińska near Poznań. In post-war interrogations, Peiper described the experience in a detached, factual manner:

The action [gassing] was done before a circle of invited guests. ... The insane were lead into a prepared casemate the door of which had a Plexiglas window. After the door was closed, one could see how, in the beginning, the insane still laughed and talked to each other. But, soon they sat down on the straw, obviously under the influence of the gas. ... Very soon, they no longer moved.[33]

In the winter of 1940, Peiper accompanied Himmler on a tour of Nazi concentration camps, including Neuengamme and Sachsenhausen, with a trip to Poland to meet with Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, Higher SS and Police Leader in occupied Poland, and his subordinate Odilo Globocnik. The latter was tasked with deporting Jews from Polish territories annexed to Germany to Warsaw and Lublin.[33] The tour continued in April 1940, with visits to Buchenwald and Flossenbürg concentration camps, followed by a visit to Poland to meet with SS and Police Leader Wilhelm Rediess and the SS official Otto Rasch to discuss how further "evacuations" (i.e. shootings of civilian population) could be efficiently accomplished. In early May, Himmler, accompanied by Peiper, discussed with Globocnik, the SS and Police Leader in Lublin, the mass murder of the disabled. Peiper also learned about Globocnik's work on the Lublin Reservation.[34]

In May 1940, Peiper accompanied Himmler as he followed Waffen-SS troops during the Battle of France. On 18 May, Peiper obtained permission to join a combat unit and became a platoon leader within the LSSAH. After seizing an artillery battery on the hills of Wattenberg, south of Valenciennes, Peiper was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class and promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer.[35] For an audacious attack on 19 June, Peiper, now a company commander, received the Iron Cross 1st class.[36] As further remuneration, Peiper brought back a sports car from France for personal use; the car was added to the inventory of Himmler's staff on the latter's decree.[37]

Karl Wolff, Peiper and Himmler are received by Francisco Franco, Spain, October 1940.

Peiper returned to his duties as Himmler's adjutant on 21 June 1940.[38] On 7 September, Himmler addressed the LSSAH leaders to thank them for the help in expelling Jews from Alsace in eastern France. He referred to expulsions and massacres perpetrated in Poland, stating: "We had to have the toughness—this should be said and soon forgotten—to shoot thousands of leading Poles". He stressed the so-called difficulty of "carrying out executions", "hauling away people", or "evicting crying and hysterical women".[39] Following a visit to Francoist Spain to meet its dictator Francisco Franco, Peiper was officially promoted to the position of First Adjutant on 1 November.[40]

In February 1941, Himmler told Peiper about the German plan to invade the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. The following months were devoted to the preparation of the SS for this invasion. Thus, Himmler and his staff travelled to Poland, Norway, Austria, and Greece. The trip included a visit to the Łódź ghetto, about which Peiper wrote: "It was a macabre image: we saw how the Jewish Ghetto police, who wore hats without rims and were armed with wooden clubs, inconsiderately made room for us". This episode shows that Peiper was perfectly able to remember the details of the criminal process without forgetting anecdotes intended to prove that Jews were hitting other Jews which, by comparison, was supposed to reduce his own complicity.[41] 

From 11 to 15 June, Peiper was present for the SS conference where Himmler spoke of the plans to eliminate 30 million Slavic people. The event had brought together senior SS and police commanders who were to become SS and Police Leaders in the occupied Soviet Union. Also present were Wolff; Kurt Daluege, head of the Order Police; Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, future Higher SS and Police Leader in occupied Byelorussia; and Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office.[42] When the invasion began on 22 June 1941, Himmler transferred his headquarters to a special train and embarked on a tour of newly conquered territories with Peiper and other staff. Peiper accompanied Himmler on field inspections of various murder units. In Augustów, they were informed by the commander of the Einsatzkommando Tilsit about the shooting of 200 people, while in Grodno Heydrich, in their presence, berated the local death squad leader for having shot only 96 Jews on that day.[43] 

In July, Peiper and Himmler were in Białystok where they reviewed the progress achieved by the Order Police battalions and met again with Bach-Zalewski. Himmler informed him about the arrival of the units of the Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS (Himmler's Command Staff), half of whom would assist Bach-Zalewski in his area of command.[44] The recently created body supervised Waffen-SS formations set up for Himmler's racial and ideological war.[45] These formations included two motorized SS Infantry Brigades (1st and 2nd) and two SS Cavalry Regiments combined into the SS Cavalry Brigade, totalling about 25,000 Waffen-SS troops.[46] The individual units were subordinated to local Higher SS and Police Leaders and used in the murder of Jews and other "undesirables", in addition to providing rear area security. In the former function, the units' activities were indistinguishable from the Einsatzgruppen and the Order Police battalions.[47] 

The reports of the Kommandostab units were received daily, and it was Peiper's role to present them to Himmler every morning.[45] For example, the 30 July report from Gustav Lombard's SS cavalry regiment announced that 800 Jews including women and children had been shot. On 11 August, Lombard reported the total number of shot "looters" (a code word for the Jews) was 6,526. As the first adjutant, Peiper's job included providing Himmler with the murder statistics from the Einsatzgruppen units each morning.[48] The daily briefing included a review of operations; one surviving map shows a "cleansing action" (shooting) by the SS Cavalry Brigade. Peiper and Werner Grothmann, Second Adjutant, were aware of all incoming communications; all of Himmler's orders passed through their hands.[49]

Peiper's role beside Himmler gradually came to an end beginning in the late summer of 1941.[50] Himmler transferred Peiper's duties as the first adjutant to his successor, Grothmann. Although no longer Himmler's official First Adjutant, Peiper continued to update his appointment diary until mid-September 1941. During the transition time, Peiper likely served as Himmler's observer to LSSAH. Available records show that Peiper formally transferred to the LSSAH in early October 1941.[50] He remained in close contact with Himmler as shown by their ongoing correspondence through to the end of the war; Himmler addressed Peiper as "my dear Jochen".[45]

Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the German situation had seriously worsened, especially in the Battle of Stalingrad. Peiper's battalion left France in January 1943 for the Eastern Front.[57] During the Third Battle of Kharkov, the battalion became known for an audacious rescue of the encircled 320th Infantry Division.[58] In a letter home, Peiper described hand-to-hand fighting with a Soviet ski battalion in an effort to lead the division, including its sick and wounded, to safety.[59] The rescue culminated with a fierce battle with the Soviet forces at the village of Krasnaya Polyana. Upon entering the village, Peiper's troops made a terrible discovery. All the men in his small rearguard medical detachment who had been left there had been killed and then mutilated. An SS sergeant in Peiper's ration supply company later stated that Peiper responded in kind: "In the village, the two petrol trucks were burnt and 25 Germans killed by partisans and Soviet soldiers. As a revenge, Peiper ordered the burning down of the whole village and the shooting of its inhabitants".[58] (The testimony was obtained in November 1944 by the Western Allies.)[60]

On 6 May 1943, Peiper was awarded the German Cross in Gold for his achievements in February 1943 around Kharkov, where his unit gained the nickname the "Blowtorch Battalion". Reportedly, the nickname derived from the torching and slaughter of two Soviet villages where their inhabitants were either shot or burned.[61] Ukrainian sources, including surviving witness Ivan Kiselev, who was 14 at the time of the massacre, described the killings at the villages of Yefremovka and Semyonovka on 17 February 1943. On 12 February troops of the LSSAH occupied the two villages, where retreating Soviet forces had wounded two SS officers. In retaliation, five days later, LSSAH troops killed 872 men, women and children. Some 240 of these were burned alive in the church of Yefremovka.[62] In August 1944, when an SS commander, formerly of LSSAH, was captured south of Falaise in France and interrogated by the Allies, he stated that Peiper was "particularly eager to execute the order to burn villages".[63] Peiper wrote to Potthast in March 1943: "Our reputation precedes us as a wave of terror and is one of our best weapons. Even old Genghis Khan would gladly have hired us as assistants."[64]

On 9 March 1943, Peiper was awarded Germany's highest decoration, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Himmler sent personal congratulations over the radio: "Heartfelt congratulations for the Knight's Cross my dear Jochen! I am proud of you!"[65] During this period, Nazi propaganda praised Peiper as an outstanding leader. The official SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps ("The Black Corps") described Peiper's actions in Kharkov in glowing terms such as "the master of the situation in all its phases" and extolled Peiper's "quick decision making", "caring" attitude and "bold and unorthodox orders". The paper emphasized that he was "a born leader, one filled with the highest sense of responsibility for the life of every single one of his men, but who [was] also able to be hard if necessary".[66]

The descriptions of his tactical skills propelled Peiper to become an icon of the Waffen-SS after the war, with former battalion members describing him in glowing terms.[67] Peiper was seen as an officer who obeyed orders without much discussion and expected the same from his men.[68] In July 1943, the LSSAH took part in Operation Citadel in the area of Kursk, with Peiper's unit distinguishing itself in the fighting.[69] After the failure of the operation, the LSSAH was withdrawn from the Eastern Front and transferred to Northern Italy.[70]

The route followed by Peiper's battle group. The crossroads of Baugnez where the Malmedy massacre occurred is marked by a black circle.

Peiper's assigned route included narrow, and in many places, single-track roads which forced units of the Kampfgruppe to tail each other, creating a column of infantry and armor up to 25 kilometres (16 mi) long. Peiper complained that the road assigned to his Kampfgruppe was suitable for bicycles, but not for tanks.[89] Fritz Krämer, chief of staff for the 6th Panzer Army responded, "I don't care how and what you do. Just make it to the Meuse. Even if you've only one tank left when you get there."[90]

Peiper's mechanized column did not reach the jumping-off point until midnight, delaying his attack by almost 24 hours.[91] Peiper had planned to advance through Losheimergraben, but the two infantry divisions assigned the task of opening the route for Peiper's unit failed to do so on the first day as planned. In the early morning of 17 December, they captured Honsfeld and much-needed fuel. Peiper continued west on his assigned route until he had to deflect shortly before Ligneuville because the assigned road was impassable. This bypass forced him towards the Baugnez crossroads near Malmedy.[92]

Aftermath of the Malmedy massacre. American troops are recovering victims' bodies.

War correspondent Jean Marin looks at bodies of civilians massacred at the Legaye house in Stavelot.

During Peiper's advance on 17 December 1944, his armoured units and half-tracks confronted a lightly armed convoy of about thirty American vehicles at the Baugnez crossroads near Malmedy. The troops, mainly elements of the American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, were quickly overcome and captured.[93] Along with other American prisoners of war captured earlier, they were ordered to stand in a meadow before the Germans opened fire on them with machine guns, killing 84 soldiers, and leaving the bodies in the snow. The survivors were able to reach American lines later that day, and their story spread rapidly throughout the American front lines.

The atrocities continued. In Honsfeld, Peiper's men murdered several American prisoners.[94][95] Other murders of POWs and civilians were reported in Büllingen,[94] Ligneuville and Stavelot,[96] Cheneux, La Gleize, and Stoumont on 17, 18, 19 and 20 December. On 19 December 1944, in the area between Stavelot and Trois-Ponts, while the Germans were trying to regain control of the bridge over the Amblève River (crucial for allowing reinforcements and supplies to reach them), men from Kampfgruppe Peiper killed a number of Belgian civilians. The battle group was eventually declared responsible for the deaths of 362 prisoners of war and 111 civilians.[94]

Moving ahead, Peiper crossed Ligneuville and reached the heights of Stavelot on the left bank of the Amblève River at nightfall of the second day of the operation. The battle group paused for the night, allowing Americans to reorganize. After heavy fighting, Peiper's armour crossed the bridge on the Amblève. The spearhead continued on, without having fully secured Stavelot. By then, the surprise factor had been lost. The U.S. forces regrouped and blew up several bridges ahead of Peiper's advance, trapping the battle group in the deep valley of the Amblève, downstream from Trois-Ponts. The weather also improved, permitting the Allied air forces to operate. Airstrikes destroyed or heavily damaged numerous German vehicles. Peiper's command was in disarray: some units had lost their way among difficult terrain or in the dark, while company commanders preferred to stay with Peiper at the head of the column and thus were unable to provide guidance to their own units.[97]

Peiper attacked Stoumont on 19 December and took the town amid heavy fighting. He was unable to protect his rear, which enabled American troops to cut him off from the only possible supply road for ammunition and fuel at Stavelot.[98] Without supplies, and with no contact with other German units behind him, Peiper could advance no further. American attacks on Stoumont forced the remnants of the battle group to retreat to La Gleize. On 24 December, Peiper abandoned his vehicles and retreated with the remaining men. German wounded and American prisoners were also left behind.[99] According to Peiper, 717 men returned to the German lines out of 3,000 at the beginning of the operation.[100]

Despite the failure of Peiper's battle group and the loss of all tanks, Mohnke recommended Peiper for a further award. The events at the Baugnez crossroads were described in glowing terms:[101]

Without regard for threats from the flanks and only inspired by the thought of a deep breakthrough, the Kampfgruppe proceeded ... to Ligneuville and destroyed at Baugnez an enemy supply column and after annihilation of the units blocking their advance, succeeded in causing the staff of the 49th Anti-Aircraft Brigade to flee.

Rather than a stain on Peiper's honour, the killing of POWs was celebrated in official records.[102] In January 1945, the Swords were added to his Knight's Cross. The great fame of Peiper as a Waffen-SS commander during the Battle of the Bulge was born.[103]

Jailed in Freising, Upper Bavaria, Peiper underwent his first interrogations.[113] Investigators quickly found that the SS men, including Peiper, although hardened soldiers, were not trained to withstand interrogation.[113] Some men freely gave the requested information, while others only did so after having been allegedly subject to various forms of torture such as beatings, threats and mock executions.[113] Peiper took command responsibility for the actions of the men under his command. In December 1945, he was transferred to the prison at Schwäbisch Hall, where 1,000 former members of the LSSAH were assembled.[113] On 16 April 1946, approximately 300 prisoners were moved from Schwäbisch Hall to Dachau, where they were put on trial.[113]

Peiper at Malmedy massacre trial

The trial took place at Dachau from 16 May to 16 July 1946 before a military tribunal. The 74 defendants included Sepp Dietrich, commander of the 6th SS Panzer Army; his chief of staff Fritz Krämer; Hermann Prieß, I SS Panzer Corps commander; and Peiper, commander of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment (the unit to which the crimes were attributed).[114] The accusations were mainly based on the sworn and written statements provided by the defendants in Schwäbisch Hall. To counter the evidence given in the men's sworn statements and by prosecution witnesses, the lead defence attorney, Lt. Colonel Willis M. Everett, tried to show that the statements had been obtained by inappropriate methods.[115]

Everett called Lt. Colonel Hal D. McCown, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 119th Infantry Regiment, to testify about Peiper's troops' treatment of American prisoners at La Gleize. McCown, who, along with his command, had been captured by Peiper on 21 December, testified that he had not seen any American prisoners mistreated by the SS.[116] It was noted by the prosecution that by the time McCown was captured on 21 December, Peiper was aware that his tactical situation had deteriorated substantially and that he and his men were in danger of becoming POWs themselves. On 17 December at Malmedy, Peiper's unit was advancing aggressively and still hoped to reach its objective, whereas by 21 December the unit found itself nearly cut off at La Gleize and out of fuel, having suffered over 80% casualties. Peiper's shifting attitude towards POWs was calculated, as he held Col. McCown and others as his unit fled La Gleize on foot, intending to use them as bargaining chips in the event of capture.[117]

Everett had decided to call only Peiper to testify. However, other defendants, supported by their German lawyers, wanted to testify as well. This would soon prove to be a huge mistake, for when the prosecution cross-examined the defendants, they behaved like "a bunch of drowning rats (...) turning on each other."[115] According to Everett, these testimonies gave the court enough reason to sentence several of the defendants to death.[115]

The military court was not convinced by Peiper's testimony about the murder of the POWs under his battle group's control.[115] During the trial, several witnesses testified of at least two instances when Peiper had ordered the murder of POWs.[118] When questioned by the prosecution, Peiper denied these allegations, stating that they were obtained from witnesses under torture.[119] When questioned about the murder of Belgian civilians, Peiper said they were partisans.[120]

Together with 42 other defendants, Joachim Peiper was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging on 16 July 1946. The sentences were automatically subject to review by the U.S. Army Review Board. In October 1947, the results were submitted, and many verdicts were subsequently changed. Starting in March 1948, sentences were further reviewed by General Lucius D. Clay, commander-in-chief in Germany. Clay confirmed twelve death sentences, including Peiper's.[121]

The turmoil raised by this case caused the Secretary of the Army, Kenneth Royall, to create a commission chaired by Judge Gordon A. Simpson of Texas to investigate. The commission was interested in the Malmedy massacre trial and in other cases judged at Dachau. The commission arrived in Europe on 30 July 1948 and issued its report on 14 September. In this report, it recommended that the twelve remaining death sentences be commuted to life imprisonment. The commission confirmed the accuracy of Everett's accusations regarding mock trials but neither disputed nor denied his charges of torture of the defendants. The commission expressed the opinion that the pre-trial investigation had not been properly conducted. Its members felt that no death sentence should be carried out where such a doubt existed.

The United States Senate launched its own investigations, which were opened in early 1950 by several Senate committees. One of them included Senator Joseph McCarthy, who prepared to launch his sensationalist career. Receiving encouragement and information from right-wing and antisemitic circles, McCarthy dominated the proceedings and grabbed headlines. He was probably encouraged by the right-wing judge, LeRoy van Roden, who saw the trials as a Jewish effort to take revenge on the Germans, and who had also served on the investigating commissions.[122] The Senate Committee on Armed Services came to the conclusion of improper pre-trial procedures, including a mock trial, had indeed affected the trial process but not torture as sometimes stated. There was little or no doubt that some of the accused were indeed guilty of the massacre.[123]

The popular Wehrmacht ex-general Heinz Guderian actively campaigned for Peiper. He wrote to one of his subordinates in 1951:[124]

At the moment I'm negotiating with General Handy [Heidelberg] because [he] wants to hang the unfortunate Peiper. McCloy is powerless, because the Malmedy trial is being handled by Eucom, and is not subordinate to McCloy. As a result, I have decided to cable President Truman and ask him if he is familiar with this idiocy.

Ultimately, the sentences of the Malmedy defendants were commuted to life imprisonment and then to time served. Peiper's sentence was commuted to 35 years in 1954, and he was released in December 1956, the last of the Malmedy condemned to be freed.[122]

The "old boys' network" of SS peers helped Peiper to obtain his release from prison and secure employment. HIAG, an organization of former Waffen-SS men, had already helped Peiper's wife find a job near the Landsberg Prison. They then worked to achieve the conditional release of Peiper himself. Peiper had to prove he could obtain a job. Through an intermediary, Albert Prinzing, a former SS functionary in the Sicherheitsdienst (SS security service), he got a job at the car manufacturer Porsche.[125]

At the beginning of the 1960s, the perception and opinion the public had of the Nazi crimes began to change. The German economic recovery did not allow SS men to hide, and holding a high position in society could raise questions that people like Peiper preferred to avoid.[132] The Adolf Eichmann trial and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials in the first half of the 1960s (which had a large audience in West Germany) shone a new light on this period.[132] Prosecution was now initiated by the West German authorities themselves, not the Allies. The statute of limitations for the prosecution of Nazi crimes had been extended several times, which made those who had been involved in these crimes uncomfortable.[132]

In the early 1960s, Peiper's name came up several times in war crimes trials in Germany. He was mentioned in the proceedings against Karl Wolff, Himmler's senior adjutant, which began in early 1962 and concluded in 1964 with a fifteen-year sentence. Werner Grothmann, Peiper's successor as Himmler's adjutant, was also under investigation. In both of these proceedings, the court heard testimony from Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, former Bandenbekämpfung chief for occupied Europe, covering Himmler's pre-invasion designs to "rid Russia of 30 million Slavic people" or his pronouncements, following the Minsk killings, that he was "determined to eliminate the Jews" (Peiper was with Himmler at that time but had gone to a field assignment following his brother's death).[133]

In 1964, Peiper learned that the village of Boves had installed a memorial naming his command as perpetrators of the Boves massacre. He immediately got in touch with others from his unit to coordinate a defence strategy. Mostly it consisted of blaming Italian communists for manufacturing false accusations and insisting that the destruction of the village was due to a fierce battle with partisans.[134] On 23 June 1964, criminal charges were filed against Peiper by the Central Office of the State Justice Administration for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg having to do with the massacre.[132] The charges included statements from two former Italian partisans who recognized Peiper from a book on the Battle of the Bulge and a photograph of Peiper taken as the village burned below his position.[135] In 1968, the German District Court in Stuttgart concluded that Peiper's unit had set houses on fire and that "a portion of the victims killed was from rioting that was committed by [the SS men]".[136] Nevertheless, the investigation was closed for lack of evidence that Peiper had issued a direct order to kill civilians and burn houses.[132] The court also concluded that since the testimonies of the former SS men were so consistent, no collusion between them was possible.[136]

In December 1964, Simon Wiesenthal made a highly damaging accusation that Peiper's unit arrested Jews in Borgo San Dalmazzo. The Borgo San Dalmazzo investigation was closed in 1969. Peiper was later called as a witness during the Werner Best trial, where he was confronted about his role as Himmler's adjutant. He did not deny having had close contact with Himmler, but he managed to avoid being directly implicated in Nazi crimes by claiming memory failure.[137]

In 1972, Peiper moved to a small village of Traves, Haute-Saône, France, where he owned property. At that time he was a self-employed translator for the publisher Stuttgarter Motor-Buch Verlag. Under the pen name of "Rainer Buschmann", he translated books devoted to military history from English to German.[27]

Peiper led a quiet and discreet life; however, he continued to use his name.[27] In 1974, he was identified by a former French Resistance member of the region who issued a report for the French Communist Party. In 1976, the party's history specialist, investigating the Gestapo archives, found Peiper's personnel file.[138] On 21 June, flyers denouncing Peiper's presence were distributed in Traves. A day later, an article in L'Humanité revealed his presence in the village.[138] Soon media descended on Traves, with Peiper freely granting interviews and presenting himself as the victim. In one, titled "J'ai payé", Peiper stated that he had paid for the Malmedy crime with twelve years in prison and that he was innocent of any crimes committed in Italy. Amid threats, Peiper accelerated his plans to move back to Germany, which had already been underway.[139] Sigurd, Peiper's wife, left for Germany on 12 July.[140]

During the early morning hours of 14 July 1976 (Bastille Day), Peiper's home was attacked and set on fire. In the ruins, Peiper's charred corpse was found together with a .22 calibre rifle and a pistol.[131] Investigators determined that he died of smoke inhalation apparently while trying to salvage documents, papers, and his wife's clothing. The body was charred beyond recognition.[141] A group calling itself "The Avengers" claimed responsibility while suppositions continued as to who the culprits may have been. The circumstances of Peiper's death led to speculation that it had been faked.[81]

Peiper's wife Sigurd (1912–1979) is buried alongside Peiper in Schondorf, Bavaria, Germany. The gravestone also bears the name of his brothers Horst (1912–1941) and Hasso (1910–1942), but it is unclear whether they are buried there. In 2013, after receiving a letter from Boves, the local church community at Schondorf became aware that a Nazi war criminal was buried at their cemetery. They were initially concerned that it would become a place of pilgrimage for Nazi sympathizers. A small group, the Boves circle, was formed in the village, to hold prayers on every 19th of the month, the day of the Boves massacre. In 2013 a group of citizens from Boves visited Schondorf and prayed at Peiper's grave.[142]