Joachim Peiper | |
|---|---|
 Peiper in 1943 | |
| Born | (1915-01-30)30 January 1915 Wilmersdorf, German Empire |
| Died | 14 July 1976(1976-07-14) (aged 61) Traves, Haute-Saône, France |
| Cause of death | Murder |
| Resting place | Schondorf, Germany |
| Known for | Malmedy massacre Boves massacre |
| Political party | Nazi Party |
| Conviction | War crimes |
| Trial | Malmedy massacre trial |
| Criminal penalty | Death; commuted tolife imprisonment; further commuted to 35 years imprisonment |
| SS career | |
| Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
| Branch | Schutzstaffel (SS-Verfügungstruppe) |
| Service years | 1934–1945 |
| Rank | SS-Standartenführer |
| Unit | Personal StaffReichsführer-SS (as adjutant to Heinrich Himmler) SS Division Leibstandarte |
| Conflicts | |
| Awards | Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords |
| Other work | Employee atPorsche; sales trainer atVolkswagen |
Joachim Peiper (30 January 1915–14 July 1976) was a GermanSchutzstaffel (SS) colonel. During theSecond World War in Europe, Peiper served as personaladjutant toHeinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, and as a tank commander in theWaffen-SS. German historianJens Westemeier writes that Peiper personifiedNazi ideology, as a purportedly ruthless glory-hound commander who was indifferent to the combat casualties of Battle Group Peiper, and who tolerated, expected, and indeed encouraged war crimes by hisWaffen-SS soldiers.[1]
As adjutant to Himmler, Peiper witnessed the SS implement theHolocaust withethnic cleansing andgenocide ofJews in Eastern Europe; facts that he obfuscated and denied in the post-war period. As a tank commander, Peiper served in the1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) on theEastern Front and on theWestern Front, first as a battalion commander and then as a regimental commander. Peiper fought in theThird Battle of Kharkov and in theBattle of the Bulge, from which battles his eponymous battle group—Kampfgruppe Peiper—became notorious for committing war crimes against civilians and PoWs.
Upon release from prison, Peiper worked for thePorsche andVolkswagen automobile companies and later moved to France, where he worked as a freelance translator. Throughout his post-war life, Peiper was very active in the social network of ex-SS men centred upon the right-wing organisation HIAG (Mutual Aid Association of Former Members of the Waffen-SS). In 1976, Peiper died from asphyxiation after communist arsonists discovered his identity and set his house on fire.[2]
Joachim Peiper was born on 30 January 1915 inWilmersdorf, a district ofBerlin, part of theGerman Empire. He was the third son of a middle-class family fromGerman Silesia.
His father, Woldemar Peiper, had served as an officer in theImperial German Army and fought in the1904 campaign inGerman South West Africa.[3] He later contractedmalaria and received a severe wound[4] which demobilised him from active duty in German Africa. In 1907, Woldemar resumed active duty in the Prussian army.[5] He served again in the First World War[6] and was for a time deployed toOttoman Turkey,[7] where he suffered chronic cardiac problems consequent to the previous malarial infection.[citation needed] Poor health then demobilised Woldemar from active duty inAsia Minor.[citation needed]
During theEuropean interwar period, Woldemar joined the paramilitaryFreikorps and actively participated in suppressing the PolishSilesian Uprisings (August 1919 – July 1921) which aimed to annex German Silesia to theSecond Polish Republic.[8] In theWeimar Germany of the 1920s, theantisemitic canards ofNazi ideology—theStab-in-the-back myth, theProtocols of the Elders of Zion,The International Jew,et cetera—had much appeal to thepolitical conservatives and to thepolitical reactionaries such asFreikorps soldier Woldemar Peiper who were angry that Imperial Germany had lost theGreat War.
Two of Woldemar's sons, Horst and Joachim, followed the same life path of nationalist ideology and military service to Germany.[9] In 1926, the 11-year-old Joachim followed his middle brother, 14-year-old Horst Peiper, to become aboy scout; eventually, Joachim became interested in becoming amilitary officer.[10]
Horst joined theSchutzstaffel (SS) and served in theSS-Totenkopfverbände as a guard in aNazi concentration camp. Transferred to active duty as aWaffen-SS soldier, Horst fought in theBattle of France (1940) as part of the3rd SS Panzer Division, and died inPoland in June 1941 in a never-fully-explained accident; rumour said that his fellow SS-men drove Horst to commit suicide because of hishomosexuality.[11]
Peiper's eldest brother, Hans-Hasso (b. 1910) had a mental illness, and his suicide attempt resulted in cerebral damage that reduced him to apersistent vegetative state. Interned to a hospital in 1931, Hans died oftuberculosis in 1942.[12]
Joachim Peiper was 18 years old when he joined theHitler Youth in the company of Horst, his middle brother.[13] In October 1933, Peiper volunteered for theSchutzstaffel (SS) and joined theCavalry SS, where his first superior officer wasGustav Lombard, a zealous Nazi, and later a regimental commander in theSS Cavalry Brigade, who were notoriously efficient at the mass murder of Jews in the occupiedSoviet Union,[14] notably in punitive operations such as thePripyat Marshes massacres (July–August 1941) in Byelorussia.[15]
On 23 January 1934, he was promoted toSS-Mann (SS Identity Card Nr. 132.496), which made Peiper an "SS Man" before theSchutzstaffel was independent of theSturmabteilung (SA) within the Nazi Party. Later that year, Peiper was promoted to SS-Sturmmann at the 1934Nuremberg Rally, where his reputation attracted the notice ofReichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler,[16] for whom Peiper personifiedAryanism, the master-race concept promoted by the Nazism taught at the SS officer school. Despite not being as tall, blond, and muscular as the Nordic recruits to the SS, Peiper compensated by being a handsome, personable, and self-confident SS officer.[17]
The SS formally employed Peiper in January 1935, and later sent him to a military leadership course.[18] As an SS leadership student, Peiper received favourable and approving reviews from the SS instructors, yet received only conditional approval from the military psychologists, who noted Peiper'segocentricity, negative attitude, and continual attempts to impress them with his personal connection toReichsführer-SS Himmler. The military psychologists concluded that Peiper might become either a "difficult subordinate" or an "arrogant superior" in the course of his career in the SS.[19]
In the April 1935 – March 1936 period, Peiper trained as a military officer in theSS-Junker School, from which institution the director,Paul Hausser, graduated ideologically complicit Nazi leaders for theWaffen-SS.[20] Besides military fieldcraft, the SS-Junker School taught the Nazi worldview that centred uponanti-Semitism.[21]
The Nazi Party issued Peiper his NSDAP Identity Card Nr. 5.508.134 on 1 March 1938, two years after he became an SS man. In the post-war period, Peiper continually denied having been a member of the Nazi Party, because that fact contradicted his self-promoted image of a common man who was "merely a soldier" in the Second World War.[22]
In June 1938, Peiper became anadjutant toReichsführer-SS Himmler, which tour of duty Himmler considered necessary administrative training for a promotable SS leader. In that time, the officers working within thePersonal Staff Reichsführer-SS were under the command of SS functionaryKarl Wolff.[23] As a staff officer, Peiper worked in the anteroom of theSS Main Office in Berlin and became a favourite adjutant of Himmler. Peiper returned the admiration and by 1939, Peiper always was the adjutant of theReichsführer-SS at every official function.[24]
On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany'sinvasion of Poland started theSecond World War in Europe. Adjutant Peiper travelled in the personal train ofReichsführer-SS Himmler. Peiper occasionally was the liaison officer toHitler, when theFührer travelled by train withErwin Rommel, and when theFührer met withWehrmacht andWaffen-SS generals near the front lines of theEastern Front.[25]
On 20 September, in the northern Polish city ofBydgoszcz, Himmler and Peiper witnessed the public executions of twenty Polish social leaders who might lead partisan resistance to Nazi occupation. That demonstration of the mechanics of theHolocaust—ofethnic cleansing—was realised by the paramilitaryVolksdeutscher Selbstschutz, an ethnic-German, self-defence militia commanded byLudolf von Alvensleben, the local SS and Police leader.[26][27] In later conversation with the explorerErnst Schäfer, Peiper rationalised the actions of the SS to hunt and kill the Polishintelligentsia by ascribing solecommand responsibility to Hitler and hissuperior orders to Himmler.[28]
As a participant in the Nazi conquest of Poland for GermanLebensraum, Peiper witnessed the administrative refinement of SS policies for more effective methods of killing during ethnic cleansing, designed to depopulate Polish lands for German colonists.[29] On 13 December 1939, in west-central Poland, at the village ofOwińska, near Poznań, Himmler and Peiper witnessed theAktion T4 poison-gas mass killing ofmentally ill patients in a psychiatric hospital. In post-war interrogations by US Army JAG and military intelligence interrogators, Peiper was factual and emotionally detached in describing his eye-witness experience of mass murder:
The [gassing] action was done before a circle of invited guests ... The insane were led 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.[30]
Throughout 1940, Himmler and Peiper made an inspection tour of theconcentration camps of Nazi Germany, including theNeuengamme concentration camp in the north, and theSachsenhausen concentration camp in the north-east of the country. InOccupied Poland, Himmler met withFriedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, theHigher SS and Police Leader, and his subordinate,Odilo Globocnik, the SS bureaucrat responsible for deporting the Jews from the cities of Warsaw and Lublin and from the Polish territories already annexed asLebensraum for Germany.[30]
In April 1940, Himmler and Peiper continued their camp inspection tour at theBuchenwald concentration camp and theFlossenbürg concentration camp. The SS and Police LeaderWilhelm Rediess and the SS officialOtto Rasch strove to develop quicker methods for killing civilians in order to depopulate Poland for German colonisation. In May 1940, Globocnik demonstrated for Himmler and Peiper the efficacy of theAktion T4 programme for the involuntaryeuthanasia of disabled and crippled people and also discussed Globocnik's work in theLublin Reservation programme for the control and confinement of the Jewish populations of theGreater Germanic Reich.[31]
In May 1940, Himmler and Peiper followed theWaffen-SS throughout theBattle of France. On 18 May, Peiper became a platoon leader in a unit of the LSSAH motorised regiment. For audacious soldiering in his platoon's capture of a French artillery battery atop the hills of Wattenberg, south ofValenciennes, Peiper was awarded theIron Cross 2nd class, and promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain).[32] On 19 June 1940, Peiper was awarded the Iron Cross 1st class for audacious soldiering.[33] As a further reward and remuneration, Peiper took back to Germany a French sports car for his personal use; Himmler ordered the car be included in the motor-pool inventory of his personal staff.[34] On 21 June 1940, Peiper returned to his role of personal adjutant to Himmler.[35]
On 7 September 1940, Himmler thanked the commanders of the LSSAH motorised regiment: "We had to have the toughness—this should be said and soon forgotten—to shoot thousands of leading Poles", and stressed the psychological problems suffered byWaffen-SS soldiers when they are "carrying out executions", "hauling away people", and "evicting crying and hysterical women" in order to clear the lands of Poland for German colonisation.[36] After anofficial visit toFrancoist Spain to meet GeneralíssimoFrancisco Franco in October 1940, Peiper was promoted to First Adjutant on 1 November 1940.[37]
In February 1941,Reichsführer-SS Himmler informed adjutant Peiper about the upcomingOperation Barbarossa (22 June – 5 December 1941), for the invasion, conquest, and German colonisation of theSoviet Union. Moreover, Himmler and his staff travelled to occupied Poland,occupied Norway,Nazi Austria, andoccupied Greece to see the progress of theWehrmacht andWaffen-SS operations there, including the depopulation of Poland for German colonisation.
About his visit to theŁódź ghetto, Peiper wrote that "it was a macabre image: we saw how theJewish Ghetto Police, who wore hats without rims, and were armed with wooden clubs, inconsiderately made room for us." The episode in the Łódź ghetto indicates Peiper's awareness of the criminality of the Nazi occupations, yet the anecdotes he wrote—about the Jewish Ghetto Police abusing the Jews—were meant to lessen the degree of his complicity in thewar crimes of theWaffen-SS and of theWehrmacht.[38]
In the 11–15 June 1941 period, adjutant Peiper participated in the SS conference wherein Himmler presented plans for killing of 30 million Slavs in Eastern Europe, especially Russia and Ukraine; present were Kurt Wolff;Kurt Daluege (head of theOrder Police),Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (SS and Police Leader inByelorussia); andReinhard Heydrich (head of theReich Security Main Office).[39] When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Himmler used a headquarters-train to tour the conquered Soviet lands; Himmler and Peiper inspected the work of theEinsatzkommando units who were depopulating the conquered lands. InAugustów, Poland, theEinsatzkommando Tilsit killed approximately 200 people; and inGrodno, Byelorussia, before Himmler and Peiper, Heydrich berated the leader of the local death squad for having shot only 96 Jews in a day.[40]
In July 1941, Himmler and Peiper were inBiałystok to witness the progress of the depopulation of that city and of Poland by theOrder Police battalions, and met with Bach-Zalewski to discuss the deployment of units of theKommandostab Reichsführer-SS ("Command Staff Reichsführer-SS"),[41] which comprised 25,000Waffen-SS soldiers tasked to execute racial and ideological war against the peoples of Russia.[42] TheKommandostab units were under the authority of the local Higher SS and Police Leaders, who identified the local populations of Jews and "undesirables" to be killed.[43]
As the first and second adjutants, Peiper andWerner Grothmann were aware of and handled all of Himmler's orders and communications.[44] Peiper delivered theKommandostab's daily body-count reports to Himmler.[42] The 30 July 1941 report from Gustav Lombard's SS cavalry indicated that they had shot 800 Jews; the 11 August 1941 report from Lombard indicated that they had shot 6,526looters (Jews). Peiper likewise delivered to Himmler the dailyEinsatzgruppen murder statistics that compared the numbers of people killed against the pre-war projections of the timetable for depopulating the Soviet Union.[45]
Peiper's adjutancy to Himmler ended in the summer of 1941, and Peiper was reassigned to the LSSAH motorised regiment in October 1941.[46] Peiper rejoined the1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) whilst they fought in theEastern Front, in the vicinity of theBlack Sea. As the replacement for an injured company commander, Peiper assumed command of the 11th Company[47] and fought the Red Army atMariupol in Ukraine andRostov-on-Don in southern Russia. Noted for his fighting spirit and aggressive leadership in battle, tank commander Peiper's victories came at the cost of many German tanks and casualties amongWaffen-SS infantry.[48]
The division was followed byEinsatzgruppe D, who were responsible for killing the local Jews, other civilians,Commissars, Red Army soldiers, and partisans. To facilitate the depopulation of the western Soviet Union, SS-GeneralSepp Dietrich, commander of the LSSAH, volunteered hisWaffen-SS infantry to assist theEinsatzgruppe in the massacre of 1,800 people at theGully of Petrushino.[49] In May 1942, the LSSAH was sent toVichy France for rest, recuperation, and refitting,[50] and were subsequently reorganized into aPanzergrenadier division. Peiper was promoted to commander of the 3rd Battalion.[51]
Peiper's battalion left France in January 1943 for theEastern Front, where the Wehrmacht had begun to lose the initiative, especially in theBattle of Stalingrad.[52] During theThird Battle of Kharkov, the battalion became known for an audacious rescue of the encircled 320th Infantry Division.[53] 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.[54]
The rescue culminated in a fierce battle with the Soviet forces at the village ofKrasnaya 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 revenge, Peiper ordered the burning down of the whole village and the shooting of its inhabitants."[53] (The testimony was obtained in November 1944 by theWestern Allies.)[55]
On 6 May 1943, Peiper was awarded theGerman Cross in Gold for his achievements in February 1943 aroundKharkov, 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.[56]
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. Five days later, LSSAH troops killed 872 men, women, and children in retaliation. Some 240 of these were burned alive in the church of Yefremovka.[57]
In August 1944, when an SS commander, formerly of LSSAH, was captured south ofFalaise in France and interrogated by the Allies, he stated that Peiper was "particularly eager to execute the order to burn villages".[58] Peiper wrote to Potthast in March 1943: "Our reputation precedes us as a wave of terror and is one of our best weapons. Even oldGenghis Khan would gladly have hired us as assistants."[59]
On 9 March 1943, Peiper was awarded theKnight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the most prestigious military decoration of theThird Reich, for whichReichsführer-SS Himmler congratulated him in a live radio broadcast: "Heartfelt congratulations for the Knight's Cross, my dear Jochen! I am proud of you!"[60] In that stage of the Second World War,Nazi propaganda portrayed tank commander Peiper as an exemplary military leader. The official SS newspaper,Das Schwarze Korps (The Black Corps) reported that Peiper's actions in Kharkov demonstrated that he is aWaffen-SS tank commander who always is "the master of the situation, in all its phases", that Peiper's "quick decision-making" assured victory in the field through his "bold and unorthodox orders" and that he is "a born leader, one filled with the highest sense of responsibility for the life of every one of his men, but who [was] also able to be hard, if necessary" to complete the mission.[61]
In the post-war period, such hyperbolic descriptions of the tactical prowess of the tank commander Peiper glamourised theWaffen-SS man into a war hero of Germany.[62] In the SS hierarchy, Peiper was an SS man and military officer who received, obeyed, and executed orders with minimal discussion, and expected that his soldiers receive, obey, and execute his orders without question.[63]
In July 1943, the Panzergrenadier Division LSSAH participated inOperation Citadel in the area ofKursk, in whichKampfgruppe Peiper fought well against the Red Army.[64] After Operation Citadel failed, the Panzergrenadier Division LSSAH was redeployed from the Eastern Front in Russia to the north ofFascist Italy.[65]
In August 1943,Kampfgruppe Peiper was stationed in the Italian city ofCuneo, six kilometres north of the village ofBoves in the commune of Boves.Fascist Italy ceased being a belligerent power of theRome-Berlin Axis on 3 September 1943 with the signing of theArmistice of Cassibile between theKingdom of Italy and the Allied Powers. Consequently, Nazi Germany responded on 8 September withOperation Achse, whereinWehrmacht forces, including the LSSAH, invaded and occupied the north of Italy, in order to forcibly disarm the Italian armyin situ.[66]
On 19 September 1943, in a firefight with theWaffen-SS occupiers, partisan guerrillas of theItalian Resistance Movement killed one soldier and captured two others in the vicinity ofBoves, in thePiedmont region of north-west Italy.[67] In a later firefight with the partisans, aWaffen-SS infantry company failed to rescue their comrades from the partisans. After this, the armoured units ofKampfgruppe Peiper assumed strategic control of the streets and the roads into and out of the village of Boves, and Peiper then threatened to destroy the village if the partisans did not release theirWaffen-SS prisoners.[68]
In an effort to avoid the Nazis' destruction of the Boves village, the local spokesmen of the Boves commune, the parish priest Giuseppe Bernardi and the businessman Alessandro Vasallo, successfully negotiated the partisans' release of theirWaffen-SS prisoners and of the body of the SS soldier killed earlier.[69] Despite the successfully negotiated release of the body and prisoners, Peiper ordered the soldiers ofKampfgruppe Peiper to summarily kill 24 men of the Boves village in retaliation for the resistance of the villagers. They also killed a woman when they looted and burned her house.
In theafter action report to the LSSAH headquarters,Kampfgruppe Peiper described the Boves massacre as Peiper's heroic defence against anti-German attacks by Communist partisans in whichWaffen-SS soldiers battled, defeated, and killed 17 bandits and partisans, and that "during the fights [with partisans] the villages of Boves and Costellar were burned down. [That] in nearly all [the] burning houses [stores of] ammunition exploded. Some bandits were shot."[70]
In November 1943, the LSSAH fought in battles atZhytomyr, in Ukraine. In the course of battle, although lacking experience in leading tanks, Peiper replaced the regiment's dead commander, and so assumed command of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment.[71] In early December, Peiper was nominated for a medal for the successes of the 1st Regiment: the destruction of some Red Army artillery batteries and a division headquarters, having killed 2,280 Red Army soldiers in just two days of action (5-6 December), and delivering only three Red Army Prisoners of War (PoWs) to military intelligence. The recommendation for awarding the medal to Peiper described the scorched-earth attacks of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment, wherein tank commander Peiper "attacked with all weapons and flame-throwers from his SPW" armoured fighting vehicle to defeat the Red Army defenders, and then "completely destroyed" the village of Pekartchina.[72]
Peiper's over-aggressive style of leadership caused him to disregard tactical common sense in deploying the tanks and infantry forces of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment in battle against the Red Army. Peiper's battlefield victories cost moreWaffen-SS casualties (soldiers killed and soldiers wounded) than would have been lost with textbook tactics to achieve the same victory. Attacking without the benefit of prior reconnaissance by scout units, Peiper's tank-and-infantry frontal assaults against entrenched Red Army units killed too many infantry and cost too much lostmatériel for an essentiallyPyrrhic victory;[73] thus, after a month of Peiper's command, the 1st SS Panzer Regiment had only twelve workingtanks.[74]
In December 1943, because of his destructive leadership of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment in the Soviet Union, the division command of the LSSAH relieved Peiper of combat duty and transferred him to staff-officer duty at the division headquarters. Despite his uneven battlefield performance on the Eastern Front, his political value forNazi propaganda was greater than his shortcomings as a military officer; thus, on 27 January 1944, Hitler presented the Oak Leaves to Peiper.[75]
In March 1944, the LSSAH was withdrawn from the Eastern Front and sent to be reformed inNazi-occupied Belgium. New and replacement soldiers were integrated into their ranks; most were adolescent boys, unlike the Nazi ideologue, fanatical soldiers from the 1930s. The difficult training and the brutal hazing-and-initiation rituals to which the new soldiers were subjected resulted in five soldiers being executed for not meeting the standards ofKampfgruppe Peiper;SS-Obersturmbannführer Peiper then allegedly ordered the new soldiers to look at the corpses of the failed soldiers. In 1956, the judicial authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany opened a war crime case to investigate the accusation that Peiper deliberately killed some of his ownWaffen-SS soldiers as a point of unit discipline. In 1966, Peiper claimed he knew nothing of it, and the lack of contradictory evidence and witnesses closed the case.[76]
As the Allied invasion (Operation Overlord, 6 June 1944) began, the LSSAH were deployed to the coast of theEnglish Channel to confront the expected Allied invasion atPas de Calais in northern France; transport to the frontlines was limited, and the Allied air forces controlled the skies.[77] From 18 July 1944, theKampfgruppe Peiper regiment saw action, but Peiper rarely was at the frontlines, because of the uneven terrain and the requisite radio silence.[78] As with the otherWaffen-SS andWehrmacht units in the area,Kampfgruppe Peiper fought defensively untilOperation Cobra (25–31 July 1944) collapsed the German front when the US Army destroyed every tank of the LSSAH and killed 25 per cent of their force of 19,618 soldiers.[79]
After suffering anervous breakdown during the fighting around Caen, Peiper was relieved of command on 2 August 1944. In September–October 1944 he was hospitalized; initially in Paris, and then to Tegernsee Reserve Hospital in Bavaria near his wife Sigi and children.[80]
So Peiper was not in command of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment duringOperation Luttich (7–13 August 1944), the series of failed counter-attacks atAvranches.[81]
He rejoined his regiment in October 1944. In November, the 1st SS Panzer Corps was moved to the Cologne area to assist cleanup after Allied bombing. The new recruits were appalled by having to retrieve mashed and mangled bodies. Peiper remarked, "Their hatred for the enemy was such ... I swear it. I could not always keep it under control." After going to Duren after a raid he confessed that he "wanted to castrate the swine who did this with a broken glass bottle" Peiper and his men wanted revenge.[80]
In the autumn of 1944, theWehrmacht continually repelled Allied assaults to breach, penetrate, and cross theSiegfried Line, whilst Hitler sought the opportunity to seize the initiative on theWestern Front.[82] The result was Nazi Germany'sArdennes Offensive, a desperate, strategic gambit whereby the German armies were intended to break through the US lines in theArdennes forest, cross the RiverMeuse, and then seize the city ofAntwerp in order to break and divide the Allied front.[83]
The6th Panzer Army was to penetrate the American lines betweenAachen and theSchnee Eifel, in order to seize the bridges over the Meuse, on both sides of the city ofLiège. The 6th Panzer Army designated the LSSAH as the mobile-strike force, under the command of SS-OberführerWilhelm Mohnke. Four combined-arms battle groups composed the 6th Panzer Division; Peiper commandedKampfgruppe Peiper, the best-equipped battle group, which included the501st Heavy Panzer Battalion equipped with seventy-tonTiger II tanks.Kampfgruppe Peiper was to seize the bridges on the Meuse river between the cities of Liège andHuy. To address the shortage of fuel, headquarters provided Peiper with a map indicating the locations of US Army fuel depots, where he intended to seize the fuel stores from the few US Army soldiers manning those fuel dumps.[84]
The 6th Panzer Army assignedKampfgruppe Peiper to routes that included narrow and single-lane roads, which compelled the infantry, armoured vehicles, and tanks to travel as a convoy approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) long. Peiper complained that the roads assigned were suitable for bicycles, but not for tanks;[85] yet the chief of staffFritz Krämer told Peiper: "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."[86][page needed]
Peiper's vehicles reached the point of departure at midnight, which delayed the attack byKampfgruppe Peiper by almost twenty-four hours.[87] The plan was to advance through Losheimergraben, but the two infantry divisions tasked to open the route forKampfgruppe Peiper had failed to do so on the first day of battle. In the morning of 17 December,Kampfgruppe Peiper captured Honsfeld and the US Army's stores of fuel. Peiper continued west until the road became impassable, a short distance from the town of Ligneuville; that detour compelled Peiper's units towards the Baugnez crossroads, near the city ofMalmedy, Belgium.[88]
During Peiper's advance on 17 December 1944, his armoured units andhalf-tracks confronted a lightly armed convoy of about thirty American vehicles at the Baugnez crossroads near Malmedy. The troops, mainly elements of the American285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, were quickly overcome and captured.[89] 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 their 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.[citation needed]
In Honsfeld, Peiper's men murdered several other American prisoners.[90] Other murders of POWs and civilians were reported inBüllingen,[90] Ligneuville andStavelot,[91] Cheneux,La Gleize, andStoumont on 17, 18, 19 and 20, 21 December.[citation needed] On 19 December, in the area between Stavelot andTrois-Ponts, while the Germans were trying to regain control of the bridge over theAmblève River (crucial for allowing reinforcements and supplies to reach them), men fromKampfgruppe Peiper raped and killed a number of Belgian civilians.[92] The battle group was eventually declared responsible for the deaths of 362 prisoners of war and 111 civilians.[90]
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 the 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 US 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.[93]
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.[94] 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.[95] According to Peiper, 717 men returned to the German lines out of 3,000 at the beginning of the operation.[96]
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: "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 the annihilation of the units blocking their advance, succeeded in causing the staff of the 49th Anti-Aircraft Brigade to flee."[97] Rather than a stain on Peiper's honour, the killing of POWs was celebrated in official records.[98] In January 1945, the Swords were added to his Knight's Cross.[99]
In early 1945, in Hungary,Kampfgruppe Peiper fought inOperation Southwind (17–24 February 1945) and inOperation Spring Awakening (6–15 March 1945) in the battles of which, despite killing many enemy soldiers, Peiper's aggressive style of command cost many more wounded and deadWaffen-SS soldiers than were necessary to win the battle.[100] On 1 May 1945, as the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler was forced into Austria, Peiper's men learned of the death of theFührer the previous day. On 8 May, the German high command ordered the units of the Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler to surrender to the US Army that was across theRiver Enns.[101]
Flouting the high command's order to surrender, Peiper trekked home to Germany where American forces captured him on 22 May 1945.[102] In late June 1945, US Army war crime investigators began theforensic investigation of theMalmedy massacre that theWaffen-SS committed on 17 December 1944.[103] The war crimes committed during the Battle of the Bulge were attributed to Battle Group Peiper, so the US Army searched PoW camps for theWaffen-SS soldiers assigned to Peiper's command.[90] Moreover, as the battle-group commander, Peiper headed the list of war criminals sought by the US Army from among four million prisoners of war.[104] On 21 August 1945, Peiper was found and identified as the suspected author of the war crime massacre of 84 US soldiers in a farmer's field near the town of Malmédy, Belgium.[105]
In July 1945, during his interrogations by JAG and military intelligence officers, Peiper revealed his commitment toNazism; when the Army interrogators asked his opinion about the plight of the Poles and the Jews, Peiper agitatedly replied that: "All Jews are bad and all Poles are bad. We have just cleansed our society and movedthese people intocamps, and you let them loose!" Moreover, as aWaffen-SS officer, Peiper also lamented to the Army interrogators that the US government was wrong in having refused to incorporate theWaffen-SS into the US Army to "prepare to fight the Russians" in defence of Western civilisation.[106]
InUpper Bavaria, at the US military jail inFreising, the judicial and military intelligence interrogators soon learned that, although Peiper and hisWaffen-SS troops were hardened soldiers, they had not been trained to withstand interrogation as prisoners of war.[107] Being psychologically unsophisticated men, some SS PoWs readily answered the questions asked of them by the interrogators; other SS PoWs claimed they only spoke to interrogators after having endured threats, beatings, andmock trials.[107]
In the course of his interrogations, Peiper assumedcommand responsibility for the actions of his soldiers. In December 1945, the Army transferred him to the prison atSchwäbisch Hall, and there integrated Peiper to a group of approximately 1,000Waffen-SS soldiers and officers of the LSSAH who also awaited judicial processing for their war crimes.[107] On 16 April 1946, the prison transferred 300Wehrmacht andWaffen-SS POWs to the Dachau Concentration Camp, where a military tribunal would hear their war crime cases.[107]
In the 16 May – 16 July 1946 period, at the Dachau Concentration Camp, amilitary tribunal heard theMalmedy Massacre Trial of 74 defendants, which included Peiper,Sepp Dietrich (commander of 6th SS Panzer Army),Fritz Krämer (Dietrich's chief of staff), andHermann Prieß (commander of I SS Panzer Corps).[108] The US Army's bill of war crime charges was based upon the facts reported in the sworn statements given by the Party,Wehrmacht, andWaffen-SS PoWs in the Schwäbisch Hall prison.
To counter the evidence in the sworn statements of the Nazi defendants and the prosecution witnesses, thelead defence attorney, Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett, tried to show that the sworn statements had been obtained by inappropriate interrogation.[109] Defence counsel Everett then called Lt. Col.Hal D. McCown, commander 2nd Battalion,119th Infantry Regiment, to give testimony about his captivity—as a prisoner of war—of theWaffen-SS who captured him and his unit on 21 December 1944, in the vicinity of La Gleize, Belgium. In his trial testimony, Lt. Col. McCown said that he had not witnessed Col. Peiper'sWaffen-SS soldiers mistreating their American prisoners of war.[110]
The prosecutor countered that, by the time Lt. Col. McCown and his soldiers had been captured on 21 December, battle group commander Peiper already was aware that the tactical situation of being out-numbered, out-gunned, and out-manoeuvred placedKampfgruppe Peiper in danger of imminent capture by the US Army. While on 17 December 1944, the units of the Battle Group Peiper at Malmédy, Belgium were advancing to their objectives, by 21 December 1944, continual firefights with the US Army had divided and dispersed scattered Battle Group Peiper, and thus almost trapped Peiper's unit, and Peiper, at La Gleize. By that point, Peiper's vehicles had little fuel and his soldiers had suffered 80 per cent casualty rates.
Defence counsel Everett called only Peiper to testify. In his testimony, Peiper communicated only calculation about the usefulness of his American prisoners of war, testifying that when the Peiper Battle Group fled afoot from the town of La Gleize, Col. Peiper madehostages of Lt. Col. McCown and some of his soldiers in order to protect hisWaffen-SS soldiers from capture by the US Army.[111]
Despite the damning and incriminating facts that Peiper testified to the military tribunal, the other defendant SS-men, supported by their German lawyers, unwisely asked for the opportunity to testify. The prosecutor'scross-examinations compelled the SS men to behave like "a bunch of drowning rats ... turning on each other" to survive; thus did the Nazi PoW testimonies—of soldiers and officers—about the Malmedy war crimes provide the military tribunal with reasons to condemn to death several of theWaffen-SS defendants.[109]
The military tribunal were unconvinced by Peiper's testimony that, as the commanding officer of the Battle Group Peiper, he, Col. Peiper, had nocommand responsibility for the summary execution of American PoWs by hisWaffen-SS soldiers.[109] When asked about having ordered his soldiers to summarily murder Belgian civilians, Peiper said that the dead people werepartisan guerrillas—not civilians.[112]
Two witnesses testified to having heard Peiper on two occasions order the summary execution of US PoWs;[113] yet, when the prosecutor asked whether or not he gave the orders for the summary executions, Peiper denied the veracity of the eyewitness testimony, claiming that the testimony had been coerced from men under mental duress and physical torture.[114]
On 16 July 1946, the military tribunal for the Malmedy Massacre Trial convicted Joachim Peiper of the war crimes of which he was accused and sentenced him to be hanged. In the judicial system of the US Army, a sentence of death is automatically reviewed by the US Army Review Board, and, in October 1947, death-sentence reviewers commuted some verdicts into long imprisonment for Nazi war criminals.[115] In March 1948, Gen.Lucius D. Clay, the US military governor ofOccupied Germany, reviewed 43 death sentences, and confirmed the legality of only 12 death sentences, including the death sentence ofWaffen-SS Col. Peiper.[116]
In 1951, about politicking for the political rehabilitation ofWaffen-SS Colonel Joachim Peiper, ex-generalHeinz Guderian said to a correspondent:
At the moment, I'm negotiating with GeneralHandy [in Heidelberg], because [he] wants to hang the unfortunate Peiper.McCloy is powerless, because theMalmedy trial is being handled by Eucom, and is not subordinate to McCloy. As a result, I have decided to cable PresidentTruman and ask him if he is familiar with this idiocy.[117]
In 1948, the judicial reviewers of the trial verdicts of the military tribunal commuted the war crime death sentences of someWaffen-SS defendants in theMalmedy massacre trial to life imprisonment. In 1951, Peiper's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1954, it was further commuted to 35 years imprisonment. He was released on parole on 22 December 1956.[118] When Peiper was told he was being released by two US soldiers, he was so shocked that he stared at them silently.[119] The political lobbying of the network of SS men arranged and realised Peiper's early release from prison and his finding employment; the Mutual Aid Community of Former Members of the Waffen SS (HIAG) already had found employment for Frau Peiper near theLandsberg Prison wherein her husband resided. Thanks to the political influence of Albert Prinzing, an ex-functionary in theSicherheitsdienst (SD) security service, Peiper was employed at thePorsche automobile company.[120]
On release fromLandsberg Prison, Joachim Peiper acted discreetly and did not associate with known Nazis in public, especially with ex-Waffen-SS soldiers and theMutual Aid Association of Former Waffen-SS Members (HIAG); privately, Peiper remained a true-believer Nazi and member of the secret community ofWaffen-SS in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In 1959, Peiper attended the national meeting of theAssociation of Knight's Cross Recipients. He travelled withWalter Harzer, the HIAG historian, and reunited withSepp Dietrich andHeinz Lammerding, who had also been formally identified as Nazi war criminals.[121] His active social life in theWaffen-SS community included Peiper's public participation in the funerals of dead Nazis such as those ofKurt Meyer,Paul Hausser, and Dietrich.[122] Collaborating with the HIAG, Peiper secretly worked for the political rehabilitation ofWaffen-SS soldiers and officers, by suppressing their war crime records and misrepresenting them as war veterans of theWehrmacht. Nevertheless, self-awareness of his legalistic chicanery allowed Peiper to tell a friend: "I, personally, think that every attempt at rehabilitation during our lifetime is unrealistic, but one can still collect material."[122]
On 17 January 1957, the Porsche automobile company employed Peiper in Stuttgart.[123] In the course of his employment, Italiantrade union workers formally complained that Peiper was unacceptable as a co-worker because he remained a Nazi and because of the wartime Boves massacre committed by his command, theKampfgruppe Peiper, in Italy. An owner of the car company,Ferry Porsche, personally intervened to promote Peiper into a management job, but the trade unions legally refused to work with Peiper; despite the friendship with Porsche, and because of lost sales of cars in the US—for employing a Nazi war criminal—the Porsche automobile company dismissed Peiper from his employment.[124]
On 30 December 1960, Peiper filed a lawsuit against the Porsche car company,[124] wherein the attorney claimed that Joachim Peiper was not a Nazi war criminal because the Allies had used theMalmedy massacre trial (1946) as propaganda to defame the German people; likewise theNuremberg trials (20 November 1945–1 October 1946) and the Malmedy massacre trial were anti-German propaganda. Peiper's attorney cited documents byFreda Utley which said that the US Army had tortured theWaffen-SS defendants in the Malmedy massacre trial.
The court ordered that Porsche void the employment contract and indemnify Peiper for the dismissal. Moreover, that lost job allowedDer Freiwillige, the official newspaper of the HIAG, to misrepresent Peiper as having been "unfairly sentenced" for war crimes committed by other Nazis.[125] The HIAG then found Peiper employment as a trainer of car salesmen at theVolkswagen automobile company.[126]
In the early 1960s, Cold War geopolitics in western Europe required transforming Germany from enemy (Nazi Germany) to ally (Federal Republic of Germany) for consequent integration intoNATO. Consequent to the relativede-Nazification of German society, the economy of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) disallowed ex-Nazis to hide among the educated staff of a business company in post-war Germany; a Nazi diploma was unacceptable for employment.[127]
Unlike in the aftermath of the Second World War (1939–1945) in Europe, when the Allies prosecuted war crimes under a limited remit (1945–1947), the Federal Republic of Germany continually extended thestatute of limitations for the prosecution of war crimes in order to successfully hunt, capture, and prosecute the war criminals of the Nazi party, theWehrmacht, theWaffen-SS, and theGestapo.[127] In their testimonies at thewar crime trials in the FRG, the Nazi war criminals repeatedly namedSS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper as an active participant in the massacres of civilians and PoWs at the Eastern front and at the Western front of the War; among the fellow Nazis who betrayed Peiper in court wereKarl Wolff (senior adjutant to Himmler) andWerner Grothmann (Peiper's successor as adjutant to Himmler). At trial, the court heard Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (Bandenbekämpfung chief for occupied Europe) speak of Himmler's plans to "rid Russia of thirty million Slavic people" and Himmler's pronouncements, at Minsk, that he was "determined to eliminate the Jews".[128]
In 1964, the village of Boves, Italy erected a monument commemorating the victims of theBoves Massacre committed by theKampfgruppe Peiper on 13 September 1943. Offended by that explicit, public identification as a war criminal, Peiper asked theMutual Aid Association of Former Members of the Waffen-SS (HIAG) to legally defend him against that war-criminal label. Peiper's defence attorney said that Italian Communists had fabricated evidence to substantiate false Nazi war crime accusations; Peiper again repeated that Battle Group Peiper had to destroy the village of Boves in the course of theWaffen-SS defence against Communist partisans.[129]
On 23 June 1964, theCentral Office of the State Justice Administration for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes formally accused Peiper of perpetrating the Boves Massacre in 1943.[127] The formal accusation was based upon statements of two ex-partisans who recognized SS Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper from two published photographs in a picture book about theBattle of the Bulge and from a photograph ofSS-Obersturmbannführer Peiper observing the incineration of the village of Boves.[130] In 1968, the German District Court in Stuttgart determined that Battle Group Peiper had set houses afire and that "a portion of the victims killed was from rioting that was committed by [theWaffen-SS soldiers]".[131] Nevertheless, despite the battle group's collective culpability for the war crime at Boves, there was no evidence of the individualcommand responsibility thatSS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper, himself, had directly ordered the massacre of villagers at Boves, Italy.[127]
In 1938, Peiper met and courted Sigurd Hinrichsen, a secretary who was a friend ofLina Heydrich (wife ofReinhard Heydrich) and a friend ofHedwig Potthast, secretary and mistress to Himmler.[132] On 26 June 1939, Peiper married Sigurd in an SS ceremony; Himmler was the guest of honour.[133] The Peipers lived in Berlin untilits bombing in 1940; Sigurd Peiper then went to live inRottach-Egern,Upper Bavaria, near Himmler's second residence.[134] They had three children.[135]
In 1972, Joachim and Sigurd Peiper moved toTraves, Haute-Saône, in eastern France, where he owned a house. Under the pseudonym "Rainer Buschmann", Peiper worked as a self-employed English-to-German translator for the German publisher Stuttgarter MotorBuch Verlag, translating books ofmilitary history.[135] Despite his biography and working pseudonymously, they lived under his true, German name, "Joachim Peiper", and soon attracted the notice ofanti-fascists.[135]
In 1974, a former member of theFrench Resistance recognised Peiper and reported his presence in metropolitan France to theFrench Communist Party. In 1976, the historian of the French Communist Party searched theGestapo files for the personnel file ofSS-Oberststurmbannführer Joachim Peiper to determine his whereabouts.[136] On 21 June 1976, anti-Nazi political activists distributed informational flyers to the Traves community informing them that Peiper was a Nazi war criminal residing among them. On 22 June 1976, an article in theL'Humanité newspaper confirmed that Peiper was living in the village.[136]
The confirmation of Peiper's Nazi identity and presence in France attracted journalists to whom Peiper readily gave interviews, wherein he claimed that he was a victim of Communist harassment due to his role in the war. In an interview (J'ai payé "I Already Have Paid"), Peiper said he was an innocent man who had paid for his war crimes (referring to theMalmedy massacre) with twelve years of prison. He said he was innocent of the earlierBoves massacre war crime in Italy. He also said, "In 1940, French people weren't brave, that's why I'm here". These insulting remarks angered the press and residents. It was reported that he and his wife left France and moved to West Germany due to death threats.[137]
OnBastille Day, 14 July 1976, French communists attacked and set fire to Peiper's house in Traves. When the fire was extinguished, firefighters found the charred remains of a man holding a pistol and a .22 calibre rifle, as if defending himself.[126] The arson investigators determined that person had died fromsmoke inhalation. The anti-Nazi political group The Avengers claimed responsibility for the arson that killed Peiper; nonetheless, because of the destruction caused by the arson, some French police authorities remained unconvinced that Joachim Peiper was the person found.[138]
In the United States, Joachim Peiper is an idol of neo-Nazi Americans whoromanticise theWaffen-SS as German war heroes, rather than recognize them asNazi war criminals.[139] In the post-war period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the cultural context—xenophobic Russo-AmericanCold War and reactionaryMcCarthyism—allowed historical, factual, and personal misrepresentations of Peiper to coalesce into thecult of personality practised by certain right-wing organisations, such as the HIAG (Mutual Aid Association of Former Members of the Waffen-SS) who sought his early release from war crime imprisonment in West Germany. In American popular culture, Lt. Col. Peiper's military bearing, good looks, commanding presence, and a chestful of Nazi medals earned him many right-wing admirers in civilian society and in military society.[140]
In the US military, the idolatry of Peiper penetrated the official publications of theU.S. Department of Defense (DoD). In 2019, the DoDFacebook account included a colourised military photograph of Peiper inWaffen-SS uniform in an audiovisual commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the US Army fightingWehrmacht andWaffen-SS soldiers at theBattle of the Bulge which included theMalmedy Massacre (1944) committed byKampfgruppe Peiper. Peiper'sWaffen-SS photograph provoked "widespread backlash on social media" because the DoD publication appeared to celebrate a Nazi war criminal as a German war hero; the DoD apologised and deleted the photograph. Despite that political misstep, the Pentagon used Peiper'sWaffen-SS photograph to represent the German enemy fighting the US Army airborne corps in the Battle of the Bulge.[141] Moreover, the Facebook page of the Army's10th Mountain Division also featured Peiper's colourisedWaffen-SS military photograph to represent the German enemy they fought in the Second World War.[141][142][143]
The Washington Post andThe New York Times newspapers quoted Facebook commentators who said that the DoD's positive military biography of the war criminal Joachim Peiper was a "vile and disturbing" exercise inhistorical negationism, which had the tone of "a 'fanboy-flavoured' piece" of right-wing propaganda.[142][141] Moreover, the researchers ofThe Washington Post traced the source of Peiper's colourised photograph to theTwitter account of a pro-Nazi artist who publishes photographs of Nazis, with captions of supportive praise for Nazism and Hitler, and concluded that:
It remains unclear how Pentagon and Army officials cleared an image, apparently created by an artist who celebrates Nazi propaganda online, to be published alongside a tribute to the American soldiers who fought and died to defeat afascist regime 75 years ago. But the misstep is just the latest in a month of embarrassing incidents for the US Army, which has been recently slammed with multiple allegations ofwhite supremacist activity.[142]
1904 erhoben sich in der deutschen Kolonie Suedwestafrika, heute Namibia, die eingeborenen Hereros gegen die Kolonialherren. [...] Peiper schied aus der preussischen Armee aus und trat zuer Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe fuer Suedwestafrika ueber. [...] Der 26-jaehrige Leutnant diente zunaechst in einer Infanteriekompagnie, die Hauptmanns Victor Franke fuehrte. [...] Im August 1904 gehoehrte Woldemar Peiper zu den 1600 deutschen Soldaten, die 3000 bis 4000 Hereros gegenueber standen und mit diesen in vielen kleinen Scharmuetzeln kaempften.
Peiper gehoerte von 1905 bis 1906 der III. (Proviant) Kolonnenabteilung der Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe Suedwestafrika an. Er erkrankte an Malaria und erlitt eine schwere Verwundung, so dass er zunaechst als zu vierzig Prozent kriegsbeschaedigt eingegstuft wurde.
1907 schied er aus der Schutztruppe fuer Suedwestafrika unter Uebertritt zur preussischen Armee aus [...]
Als im August 1914 der Erste Weltkrieg begann, wurde Woldemar Peiper im Rang Hauptmanns wieder Soldat.
Der Krieg fuehrte ihn zeitweise bis ins Osmanische Reich, wo er in der Militaermission eingesetzt wurde.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Colonel Rainsford said the post was not intended to glorify German forces or Peiper. The unit said the post was part of a series that would last for six weeks, with each post highlighting what happened during the battle on that day 75 years ago.
The Army unit posted a glamorous, colorized photo of Peiper alongside an intimate narrative depicting the Nazi writing in his diary. The photo was also shared on the Facebook pages for the Defense Department and the Army's 10th Mountain Division.
Don't worry: you haven't yet entered the alternative universe depicted inThe Man in the High Castle, where the Nazis won World War II.
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