The Malmedy Massacre, Dec. 17, 1944: Murder of 84 US Soldiers By Waffen SS, Battle of the Bulge WWII
Last edited Thu Dec 17, 2020, 09:44 PM - Edit history (2)
USHMM, The Malmedy Massacre.
Background: On December 16, 1944, the German military launched the “Battle of the Bulge.” It was a last-ditch German military counter-offensive against the Allied armies in the West. Hitler hoped that the German counter-attack would split the British and American armies, allow his forces to capture the port city of Antwerp, and ultimately stall the Allied offensive against Germany. On the day after the German offensive began, Waffen SS units captured and murdered more than 80 US soldiers and Belgian prisoners. This atrocity is known as the “Malmedy Massacre.”
- Murdered American Soldiers At Malmedy (Photo taken Jan. 14, 1945).
The Massacre: On December 17, 1944, the 1st SS Panzer Division of the Sixth Panzer Army, commanded by Colonel Joachim (Jochen) Peiper, was heading west from Büllingen, Belgium. This movement was part of the general German advance during the Battle of the Bulge. At the same time, a US convoy of thirty vehicles and nearly 140 men of Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion was heading south from Hürtgen Forest toward Ligneuville.
The two forces converged just before noon at the crossroads hamlet of Baugnez, two and a half miles south of Malmedy. Combat Group Peiper (Kampfgruppe Peiper) (part of the Waffen SS) immediately began firing upon Battery B. The US troops panicked. Those who did not escape, including medical personnel, quickly surrendered.
- Drawing of POWs based on survivor accounts, by Sgt. Howard Brodie.
After being searched and relieved of their personal possessions, the US troops were lined up in eight rows in a field at the crossroads. Then for reasons that are unclear, Combat Group Peiper fired on the GIs. German troops walked among the bodies and shot any who appeared to be alive. Survivors of the atrocity recalled being fired upon several times, and even hearing laughter as the Waffen SS troops killed the Americans. When the Germans left the site, at least 84 US soldiers were dead. Just over 40 Americans survived the incident, now known as the Malmedy Massacre, either by fleeing into the woods or pretending to be dead. The Malmedy Massacre was one of a series of atrocities committed by Peiper’s division.
US prosecutors claimed officials believed that his unit was responsible for killing some 350 unarmed American soldiers and about 100 Belgian civilians over a one-month period in Belgium as well as other atrocities on the eastern front.
The discovery of the SS crime led to a concerted manhunt by US military authorities to locate and prosecute the killers. After the war, they succeeded in tracking down some 400 members of the Waffen SS unit, who were taken to a prison in Schwäbisch Hall, near the German city of Stuttgart. From December 1945 to April 1946, US Army war crimes investigators interrogated the prisoners to gather evidence and confessions. Subsequently 74 of the SS men were selected to stand trial for the Malmedy massacre and the killings of non-combatant Belgian civilians. The US Army then transported them to the former Dachau concentration camp, where US military tribunals were holding war crimes trials.
Trial...
More, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-malmedy-massacre
More, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre
- Mugshot of Colonel Joachim Peiper, defendant in the Malmedy atrocity trial. He was sentenced to death by hanging. Photograph taken ca. 1946.
- Steve Domitrovich, Last Suvivor Malmedy Massacre, Dec. 17, 1944, Battle of the Bulge WWII.
Steve Domitrovich, age 90, last survivor of the Malmedy Massacre, Dec. 17, 1944, Battle of the Bulge, Belgium. (2014).
In a field in Belgium, 84 American POWs were massacred by German Waffen SS troops.
SD Story & obituary, Jan. 14, 2017. https://www.timesonline.com/c1934608-df53-11e6-b72b-c7e4c1fced32.html
Read More, https://democraticunderground.com/11661739
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