In a battle filled with the cruel fortunes of war, one of the cruelest occurred near Malmedy, Belgium, on the second day of the offensive.
When Adolf Hitler announced his plans, he told his officers, "This battle is to decide whether we shall live or die. I want all my soldiers to fight hard and without pity. The battle must be fought with brutality, and all resistance must be broken in a wave of terror. The enemy must be beaten — now or never! Thus lives our Germany."
Whether those words struck a particular note with Lt. Col. Joachin Peiper, commander of the 1st SS Panzer Division, or whether he was inclined toward brutality (as reports from the Russian front would indicate), he certainly put them into action.
Trucks carrying members of Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion ran into Peiper's tanks at a crossroads just outside Malmedy on Dec. 17, 1944. Hopelessly outnumbered, the Americans were forced to surrender.
The men were rounded up, herded into a field and roughly searched by SS troopers who took anything of value. Then, without warning, the Germans opened fire with machine guns and rifles, mowing the prisoners down, repeatedly shooting anyone who moaned or moved.
A few of the men were able to escape into the woods, but most were killed. The death toll has never been established with certainty; various accounts put it somewhere between 70 and 130.
News of the Malmedy Massacre spread quickly among American troops, and some experts credit it with stiffening the resolve to hold positions and inflict damage on German units.
This may have been the largest example of Peiper's work, but it was not the last. By battle's end, accounts laid a total of 353 POW and 111 civilian deaths directly at his feet.
In July of 1946, 74 former SS men were tried at Nuremberg for their role in the Malmedy Massacre. All were found guilty; 43 were executed, the rest were given long jail sentences.
Sources: William K. Goolrick and Ogden Tanner, "The Battle of the Bulge," Time-Life Books; Stephen Hart and Russell Hart, "The Second World War: North Europe 1944-45," Osprey Books; Mitchell G. Bard, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to World War II," Alpha Books.