Joachim Peiper
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| Joachim Peiper | |
|---|---|
| 30 January 1915 — 13 July 1976 (aged 61) | |
| Nickname | Jochen |
| Place of birth | Berlin |
| Place of death | Traves |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany |
| Service/branch | Waffen-SS |
| Years of service | 1933-1945 |
| Rank | Standartenführer |
| Unit | 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords |
Joachim Peiper (IPA: [joˈaχɪm ˈpaɪpər]) (January 30, 1915 - July 13, 1976) more often known as Jochen Peiper from the common German nickname for Joachim, was a senior Waffen-SS officer in World War II and a convicted war criminal. By the end of his military career in 1945, Peiper was the youngest regimental colonel in the Waffen-SS, holding the rank of SS-Standartenführer. He also served as personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, in the period April 1938 to August 1941.
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[edit] Early life
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Peiper was born in Berlin. His father was a career Army officer who fought in East Africa during World War I. Peiper had two brothers, Hans-Hasso and Horst.
[edit] World War II
Peiper was recruited into the SS-Verfügungstruppe in 1933. Sepp Dietrich reviewed his application and admitted him into the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) honour guard regiment. In 1935 Peiper attended the SS officer's training school (Junkerschule) at Braunschweig and was commissioned the following year. Peiper was appointed adjutant to Heinrich Himmler in April 1938 and held this position until August 1941, save for a period during the Battle of France in which he was detached for combat service. After returning to frontline duty in late 1941 he moved on to command various infantry and panzer units within the Leibstandarte, by now expanded to a full division.
While on Himmler's staff, Peiper met and married his wife, Sigurd, with whom he had three children: Hinrich, Elke, and Silke. Himmler was particularly fond of Peiper and took a keen interest in his ascension towards command. By age 29, Peiper was a full colonel of the Waffen-SS, well respected and a holder of one of wartime Germany's highest decorations, the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords personally awarded to him by Adolf Hitler.
Peiper was a skilled combat leader and took part in several major battles of the war. On the Eastern Front, he fought in the battles for Kharkov and the Kursk offensive of 1943, earning particular distinction in the former. In 1944, he commanded Kampfgruppe Peiper of the Leibstandarte division (assigned to the Sixth SS Panzer Army under Sepp Dietrich) during the Battle of the Bulge. Peiper advanced to the town of La Gleize, Belgium, before running out of fuel and coming under heavy fire from American artillery and tanks. He was forced to abandon over a hundred vehicles in the town, including six Tiger II tanks, and made his way back to German lines with 800 men on foot.
During its move from Lanzerath, Belgium to La Gleize, the kampfgruppe had murdered about 300 American POWs, most notably in the neighbourhood of Malmedy. Moreover, in the area of Stavelot, over 100 Belgian civilians (including women and children) were killed by units under Peiper’s command.
[edit] After the war
After the end of World War II, Peiper and other members of the Waffen-SS were tried for war crimes in the Malmedy massacre trial. Peiper volunteered to take all the blame if the court would set his men free; the court refused. Peiper as commanding officer was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, as were many of his men. He then requested that his men be executed by firing squad; this request was also denied.
The sentences generated significant controversy in some German circles, including the church, leading the commander of the US Army in Germany to commute some of the death sentences to life imprisonment. In addition, the Germans' defense attorney, U.S. military attorney Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming that the defendants had been found guilty by means of "illegal and fraudulently procured confessions" and were subjects of a mock trial. His claims touched off a major scandal, eventually leading the Senate to become involved.
In its investigation of the trial, the Senate Committee on Armed Services came to the conclusion that improper pre-trial procedures (including a mock trial, but not torture as sometime stated) had harmed the process and, although in some cases there was little or no doubt that the accused were indeed guilty of the massacre, the death sentences could not be applied.[1]
Ultimately the sentences of the Malmedy defendants were commuted to life imprisonment and then to time served. Peiper himself was released from prison on parole at the end of December 1956, after serving 11 and a half years.
Peiper has also been accused of, but never prosecuted for, the Boves massacre in Italy on September 8, 1943. In 1968 the German Minister of Justice declared that there was no reason to prosecute Peiper, and the case was dismissed on December 23, 1968.
In 1972 Peiper went to live in Traves, Haute-Saône, France, and supported himself as a translator of English-language military books into German. He sent his wife to safety in Germany following explicit death threats, but himself remained in France, arming himself with a shotgun and accompanied by his dog. He died on July 14, 1976 in a fire bomb attack on his house by an armed gang calling itself the "Avengers." The "Avengers" were never identified, but were suspected to be former Résistants.
[edit] Assessment
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Peiper remains a controversial figure. On the one hand, he was a highly competent soldier, and he was highly respected among his peers. His men were fiercely loyal to him, and he was considered by many to be a "charismatic leader."[citation needed] After the end of the war he continued to be held in high regard by his surviving comrades, many of whom talked of Der Peiper with admiration and respect.[2]
Indeed, from a purely military point of view Peiper was an excellent example of a dedicated and honorable officer, who never wavered in the line of fire.[citation needed]While he may have been guilty of excesses, historians have noted the fact that the Eastern Front was a uniquely savage environment, where both sides routinely committed atrocities on each other. For example, in one incident outside Kharkov, 23 captured troops from Peiper's command were savagely tortured by a Soviet Siberian division, some soldiers being castrated and all having their eyes cut out with knives.[citation needed]
Nevertheless, Peiper garnered for himself and his men a unique reputation for callousness, even among the ranks of the Waffen-SS, an organization itself noted for its brutality. In the east his unit had gained the nickname "the Blowtorch Battalion", after burning several Russian villages and killing their inhabitants[3] (although Peiper claimed it was unrelated to these events, and that the blowtorch epithet came from its use as a tool to unfreeze vehicles in the Russian winter).[citation needed] Furthermore, his troops continued to commit such acts even after being transferred to the west, where such incidents were far less common. It was not the only Waffen-SS unit to do so; Peiper may also have been aware that captured Waffen-SS troops had previously been shot out of hand by British, Canadian and American soldiers[citation needed]. In any case, this would eventually culminate in incidents such as the Malmedy massacre and related crimes against Belgian civilians.
As Himmler's adjutant until late 1941, Peiper would also have been well-acquainted with the planning and staffwork behind Operation Barbarossa; in particular, he could not have been unaware of the anticipated operations the SS would undertake, for example the einsatzgruppen.[citation needed] Indeed, in a conversation with comrade, Otto Dinse, in 1943, Peiper acknowledged awareness of the elimination camps. "Wenn wir den Krieg verlieren, wird es uns wegen dieser Dinge ganz schön dreckig gehen ("We had better win this war or else we are going to be in deep shit because of these things").[4] Peiper himself remained unrepentant about his Nazi past to the end of his life, saying,
"I was a Nazi and I remain one...The Germany of today is no longer a great nation, it has become a province of Europe."[5]
[edit] Quotations
- "I recognize that after the battles of Normandy my unit was composed mainly of young, fanatical soldiers. A good deal of them had lost their parents, their sisters and brothers during the bombing. They had seen for themselves in Köln thousands of mangled corpses after a terror raid had passed. Their hatred for the enemy was such; I swear it and I could not always keep it under control."
- "Imagine yourself acclaimed, a decorated national hero, an idol to millions of desperate people, then within six months, condemned to death by hanging."
- "It's so long ago now. Even I don't know the truth. If I had ever known it, I have long forgotten it. All I know is that I took the blame as a good CO should have been and was punished accordingly." - Jochen Peiper on the Malmedy massacre, excerpted from A Traveler's Guide to the Battle for the German Frontier by Charles Whiting
- "My men are the products of total war, grown up in the streets of scattered towns without any education. The only thing they knew was to handle weapons for the Reich. They were young people with a hot heart and the desire to win or die: right or wrong – my country. When seeing today the defendants in the dock, don't believe them to be the old Kampfgruppe Peiper. All of my old friends and comrades have gone before. The real outfit is waiting for me in Valhalla."
- "History is always written by the victor, and the histories of the losing parties belong to the shrinking circle of those who were there."
[edit] Summary of SS career
[edit] Dates of rank
- SS-Anwärter: October 16, 1933
- SS-Mann: January 23, 1934
- SS-Sturmmann: September 7, 1934
- SS-Rottenführer: October 10, 1934
- SS-Unterscharführer: March 1, 1935
- SS-Standartenjunker: September 11, 1935
- SS-Standartenoberjunker: March 5, 1936
- SS-Untersturmführer: April 20, 1936
- SS-Obersturmführer: January 30, 1939
- SS-Hauptsturmführer: June 6, 1940
- SS-Sturmbannführer: January 30, 1943
- SS-Obersturmbannführer: November 11, 1943
- SS-Standartenführer: April 20, 1945
[edit] Notable decorations
- Horseman's badge in Bronze (?)
- Iron Cross Second (1940) and First (1940) Classes
- SS-Honour Ring (?)
- Knight's Cross (1943)
- Oak Leaves (1944)
- Swords (1945)
- German Cross in Gold (1943)
- Infantry Assault Badge in Bronze (1940)
- Eastern Front Medal (1942)
- Sudetenland Medal (1938)
- Prague clasp (1938)
- Anschluss Medal (1938)
- Close Combat Clasp in Bronze (1943)
- Close Combat Clasp in Silver (1943)
- Tank Destruction Badge (1943)
- SA-Sports Badge in Bronze (?)
- SS Service awards in 4 and 8 years (?)
- Dress Formal dinning award (?)
- Life Saving Award in Gold (?)
[edit] References
- ^ Malmedy massacre Investigation – Report of the Subcommittee of Committee on armed services – United States Senate – Eighty-first Congress, fist session, pursuant to S. res. 42, Investigation of action of army with respect to trial of persons responsible for the massacre of American soldiers, battle of the Bulge, near Malmedy, Belgium, December 1944, 13 Octobre 1949
- ^ Williamson, G: "Waffen SS handbook" p233
- ^ Mitcham 2006, p. 33.
- ^ Westemeier 2004, p. 49.
- ^ From an interview given in 1967 by Peiper to a French writer, quoted in "The Devil's Adjutant" by Michael Reynolds, page 260.
- Agte, Patrick (2000). Jochen Peiper: Commander Panzerregiment Leibstandarte. J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-921991-46-0
- Mitcham, Samuel W. (2006). Panzers in Winter: Hitler's Army and the Battle of the Bulge. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-275-97115-5
- Reynolds, Michael (2004). The Devil’s Adjutant: Jochen Peiper, Panzer Leader, Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors; Pbk edition. ISBN 1-86227-156-9
- Westemeier, Jens (2004). Jochen Peiper: zwischen Totenkopf und Ritterkreuz- Lebensweg eines Fuehrers der Waffens SS. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf ISBN 3-7648-2318-6
- Watt, Jim. "Jochen Peiper: Maligned Hero and Selected Campaign Series Notes." November 2001.
- Williamson, Gordon (2003). Waffen-SS Handbook 1933-1945, Sutton Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-7509-2927-8
- Malmedy massacre Investigation – Report of the Subcommittee of Committee on armed services – United States Senate – Eighty-first Congress, fist session, pursuant to S. res. 42, Investigation of action of army with respect to trial of persons responsible for the massacre of American soldiers, battle of the Bulge, near Malmedy, Belgium, December 1944, published October 13, 1949.
- No Author. "Malmedy Massacre Trial."
- "The Battle of the Bulge" (1965) at the Internet Movie Database
- "The Night of the Generals" (1967) at the Internet Movie Database
- No Author. "Jochen Peiper."
