The Malmedy Massacre | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans
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| Image by Sgt. Howard Brodie of the last moments before the Malmedy Massacre, based on survivors' accounts. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. |
. . . "What happened next is reasonably well documented. After speaking briefly to his subordinate, SS Sturmbahnführer (Major) Werner Pötschke, Peiper moved on ahead. About an hour later, some time after 2:15PM, the Americans were assembled in a field. German machine gunners then opened fire and massacred them. SS men walked among the wounded, shooting some of them in the head; and they also murdered a Belgian widow who owned a local café. Consideration was given to massacring other Belgian civilians who witnessed the atrocity, but the Germans were not particularly interested in concealment, and they were eager to move on. It was thanks to this that some Americans were able to feign death and escape afterwards. By Waffen SS standards, it was a sloppy massacre; but eighty-four defenseless American prisoners of war lay dead." . . .
. . . "News of the atrocity appeared almost immediately, thanks to those Americans who were able to escape and make it back to their lines. The bodies of those murdered were not recovered, however, until the following month. In the short term, the Malmedy massacre incensed the Americans fighting in this sector, as few other atrocities had managed to do. And the US Army didn’t forget. Unfortunately, the war crimes trial that took place from May-July 1946 on the site of the Dachau Concentration Camp was botched by American prosecutors. Perhaps more important, the SS men who had been so casual about committing murder on December 17, 1944, now closed ranks to defend each other and foment grossly exaggerated claims of torture at the hands of their captors. In the end, the perpetrators, including Peiper, escaped with no more than several years’ imprisonment. Yet justice has a long arm. Peiper, an unrepentant Nazi to the end and living brazenly in France, was himself murdered when unknown assassins set his house on fire on July 14 (Bastille Day), 1976." . . .Full article here
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