On Dec. 17, 1944, German SS units murdered a number of American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge at what came to be known as the Malmedy Massacre. The exact number of Americans murdered has never been determined, and many of the perpetrators ultimately got away with the crime.
On Dec. 16, 1944, Adolf Hitler unleashed his Ardennes Offensive, a massive attack on the American and British lines in Belgium. By that point in the war, Hitler's strategy increasingly became delusional. Hitler believed that if he could deliver a severe setback to the Western Allies in Belgium, they would sue for peace and then Germany would have a free hand to deal with what Hitler considered to be the real enemy: the Soviet Union to the east.
By late 1944, however, Hitler's war machine was a pale shadow of what it had been in the early years of the war. Three and a half years of fighting in Russia had sapped the strength of the once mighty Wehrmacht, and the Allied landings in Italy and France had further depleted Germany's military strength.
Germany's tank force, the prized Panzers, continued to be mass produced in the Reich's factories, but fuel became harder and harder to procure. Therefore, a major objective in planning the Ardennes Offensive became Allied fuel dumps, where the Panzers could use the captured stores to refuel. As the American army was concentrated in southern Belgium and the British army in northern Belgium, the attack would target the weakly held line in the center and split the Allied armies.
The ultimate objective of the attack was the Belgium capital of Brussels (Napoleon's objective during the Waterloo campaign 129 years earlier), and the Belgium port of Antwerp. Both of these cities contained massive stores of fuel, weapons and other supplies that Hitler hoped to turn against the Allies.
One of the key units Hitler pinned his hopes on for this attack was the 6th Panzer Army, a new formation commanded by Waffen-SS Gen. Sepp Dietrich. Leading the army during the assault was the SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (a formation named for Adolf Hitler's SS Bodyguard). Within the division, the striking spearhead would be a special brigade-sized unit known as Kampfgruppe Peiper, (Fighting Group Peiper). The unit was named after its handsome and charismatic 29-year-old commander, Joachim Peiper.
The attack caught the Allies completely by surprise. Many American soldiers who hadn't picked up a gun since basic training were thrust into the front lines against the SS and Wehrmacht units. Most Germans who fought in the battle had been veterans of the fighting in Russia, where neither side recognized the rules of war and consequently atrocities were common.
As Peiper's column moved along its axis of advance toward the Meuse River, American mines played havoc with this force, neutralizing at least five tanks on the battle's first day. On Dec. 17, Peiper's arrival in various towns along his route took American servicemen by surprise, and Peiper's men ruthlessly machine-gunned down the soldiers as they tried to surrender.
Moving into the town of Bullingen, Peiper's force captured 50,000 tons of fuel. The Americans there were taken prisoner and forced to refuel Peiper's tanks, and some of them were killed as well before the fighting group then turned to the south and soon ran into Battery B of the American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion southeast of Malmedy. At a village road intersection called Baugnez, an intense firefight followed for several minutes before the overwhelmed Americans agreed to Peiper's call for a parley. Some of the Americans ran into the woods to avoid capture, but more than 100 American soldiers surrendered to the Germans.
The captured Americans were soon corralled and set upon by the captors, who proceeded to loot them of their valuables. Peiper himself set off with the bulk of his force toward the Belgian town of Ligneuville to the south. In the book, “The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945,” historian Rick Atkinson wrote:
“No one could ever be certain which German soldier fired the first shot, but at 2:15 p.m. an abrupt fusillade from two Panzer machine guns chewed into the ranks of prisoners still standing with their hands raised.”
Atkinson goes on to quote Pvt. 1st Class Homer D. Ford, who was among the prisoners:
“I was wounded in the left arm while the group was being sprayed on the ground. … I was laying in the snow … and I was afraid they would see me shivering but they didn't … I could hear them pull the trigger back and then click.”
Indeed, the Germans continued to move among the bodies for several minutes, attempting to kill any survivors. Atkinson noted that when a U.S. Army medic was allowed to tend one of the wounded, he was shot with the man he was trying to treat. Some of the Americans who had fled into the forest were hunted down as well. In a particularly gruesome epilogue, SS units advancing down the road in trucks or riding tanks would fire into the mound of American bodies that had been piled by the executioners.
After the SS had moved on, perhaps a dozen or more Americans who had pretended to be among the dead crawled out from beneath the bodies of their comrades. Reaching their own lines, they told of the massacre that had taken place near Malmedy. News of the massacre spread among the U.S. Army, and some commanders ordered their units not to take SS prisoners but to shoot them on sight. The Western theater of the war now began to more closely resemble the brutal conflict in Russia.
The exact number of Americans killed in the massacre was never firmly established. The Germans claimed that less than 20 Americans were killed, while Belgians who saw the bodies immediately after the massacre claim the number was closer to 35. The official American estimate was over 120. It is difficult to know exactly who was killed illegally in the massacre and who had been killed in battle.
After the war ended, American prosecutors sought to bring the perpetrators of the Malmedy massacre to trial. The Malmedy massacre trial took place between May and July 1946. The trial took place in Dachau concentration camp near Munich and was one of many post-war trials for German war criminals. The prosecutors maintained that the massacre, and indeed the many other instances of Americans murdered by the SS, was part of an official policy of the Germans to take no prisoners, rather than a spontaneous action. The prosecutors claimed that Dietrich had given the order. Peiper, too, was among the many officers on trial.
While the prosecutors were unable to discover a written order, several witnesses were found among the German soldiers who stated that they had received orders to shoot prisoners. The court found a number of senior SS officers guilty and sentenced 42 to death, while 28 more received life sentences. The verdict and sentences, however, ultimately did not stand.
In the book, “The SS: Hitler's Instrument of Terror, The Full Story From Street Fighters to the Waffen-SS,” historian Gordon Williamson wrote: “It was later discovered, however, that the testimony obtained from those soldiers who incriminated their officers was obtained by illegal means. U.S. Army investigators had used both physical and psychological torture to extort false confessions. ... As a result Sepp Dietrich was released in 1955 and Joachim Peiper in 1956.”
Dietrich was soon rearrested by a German court for his role in Hitler's consolidation of power, the 1934 Night of the Long Knives, though he served less than two years. He died of a heart attack in 1966. Peiper went on to work for Porsche before a quiet retirement in France. After his identity as a former Waffen-SS officer became known, he was bombarded with death threats and was murdered in his home in 1976.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com