Joachim Peiper was a German SS officer whose name became tied to some of the most notorious atrocities committed by Nazi forces during World War II. He was born on January 30, 1915, in Wilmersdorf, then part of the German Empire, as the third son of an imperial army officer.
His father, Waldemar, had served under Emperor Wilhelm II and felt betrayed and angry when Germany lost World War I, which ended on November 11, 1918, with the signing of an armistice in a forest in France. After the war, Germany experienced great political upheaval.
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles imposed harsh terms on the defeated nation, and the monarchy was overthrown. In its place came the Weimar Republic, a democratic government. On the radical right, racist and antisemitic groups emerged, falsely claiming that Jews and communists were to blame for Germany's problems.
One such group was the Nazi Party. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in January 1933, they promoted the "stab-in-the-back" myth, an antisemitic conspiracy theory holding that the imperial German army had not lost World War I on the battlefield but had been betrayed by certain citizens on the home front, especially Jews and revolutionary socialists.
This myth became an integral part of their official history in the 1920s and 1930s. The Nazis denounced the German government leaders who signed the November 11, 1918 armistice as "November criminals" who had stabbed the nation in the back to seize power.
Historians in Germany and beyond unanimously reject this myth, pointing out that the imperial German army had run out of reserves. It was overwhelmed by the entry of the United States into the war and had already lost the war militarily by the end of 1918.
The stab-in-the-back myth was very attractive to many German nationalists such as Waldemar Peiper. His two sons, Horst and Joachim, followed the same life path of nationalist ideology and military service for Germany.
Horst fought in the Battle of France in 1940, and a year later, in June 1941, he died in Poland in an accident that was never fully explained. It is believed that his SS comrades pushed Horst to commit suicide because of his alleged homosexuality.
Joachim's oldest brother, Hans, was mentally ill, and his suicide attempt caused brain damage that left him in a permanent vegetative state. He eventually died of tuberculosis in 1942.
On January 30, 1933, the same day Peiper turned 18, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Peiper subsequently joined the Hitler Youth, the Nazi youth movement. The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization aimed at training boys to become future warriors and soldiers.
As an official organization of the Nazi state, the Hitler Youth had a military structure at the local, regional, and national levels. Boys underwent military exercises and learned to handle weapons. In the summer they also worked on farms and practiced competitive sports, especially boxing.
Some boys enjoyed the physical challenges, competition, and brotherhood. For others, however, the constant focus on war preparation and sacrifice for the fatherland was very difficult.
In October 1933, Joachim Peiper joined the SS. Peiper was ambitious and egocentric, and at a 1934 Nuremberg rally his reputation caught the attention of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.
For Himmler, Peiper embodied Aryanism, the master race concept promoted by Nazism and taught at the SS officer school. Despite not being as tall, blond, and muscular as Nordic recruits, Peiper compensated by being a handsome, charming, and confident SS officer.
From April 1935 to March 1936, Peiper trained at one of the SS Junker schools, educational institutions established by the SS to train and educate future officers. In March 1938 he joined the Nazi Party, and in June of that year he became adjutant to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler.
Because he was Himmler's favorite, by 1939 he was his adjutant at all official ceremonies. World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
Peiper traveled on Himmler's personal train and was sometimes a liaison officer for Hitler when the Führer met with army and Waffen SS generals near the eastern front line. The Waffen SS was the military branch of the SS.
On September 20 in northern Poland, in Bydgoszcz, Himmler and Peiper witnessed the public execution of 20 Polish community leaders who could have led partisan resistance against the Nazi occupation.
On December 13, 1939, in west-central Poland in the village of Owińska near Poznań, Himmler and Peiper observed a poison gas execution as part of the Nazi euthanasia program codenamed T4, which involved the mass killing of mentally ill patients in psychiatric hospitals.
In postwar interrogations conducted by the U.S. Army, Peiper was matter-of-fact and emotionally detached in describing his firsthand experience of mass murder. He said: "The gassing action took place before a circle of invited guests. The insane were brought out into a prepared casemate whose door had a plexiglass window. After the door was closed, you could see that at first the insane were still laughing and talking to each other. Soon, however, they sat down on the straw, evidently under the influence of the gas. Very quickly they stopped moving."
In May 1940, Himmler and Peiper followed the Waffen SS through the entire Battle of France. On May 18, Peiper became a platoon commander in the first motorized regiment of the SS Panzer Division.
For his brave soldierly conduct he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class, and a month later the Iron Cross First Class. As an additional reward and payment, Peiper took a French sports car back to Germany for personal use, and in June 1940 he returned to his role as Himmler's personal adjutant.
In September 1940, Himmler thanked the commanders of the first motorized regiment of the SS Panzer Division and said: "We had to have the hardness of heart. It must be said and quickly forgotten, to shoot thousands of leading Poles."
Himmler also emphasized the psychological difficulties of Waffen SS soldiers in carrying out executions, deporting people, and displacing crying and hysterical women to clear Polish lands for German colonization.
In February 1941, Himmler informed Peiper of the upcoming Operation Barbarossa, aimed at invading, conquering, and German-colonizing the Soviet Union. From June 11 to 15, 1941, adjutant Peiper attended an SS conference where Himmler presented plans to exterminate 30 million Slavs in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia.
Peiper's adjutancy to Himmler ended in the summer of 1941, and in October of that year he was transferred to the motorized regiment of the first SS Panzer Division, with which he fought on the eastern front near the Black Sea.
Peiper gained a reputation for his fighting spirit and aggressive command in battle, but his victories came at the cost of many German tanks and infantry casualties. During the third Battle of Kharkov in Soviet Ukraine from February 19 to March 15, 1943, Peiper's unit became known for a daring rescue of the encircled 320th Infantry Division.
In a letter home, Peiper described hand-to-hand combat with a Soviet ski battalion to lead the division, including its sick and wounded, to safety. The climax of the rescue operation was a fierce battle with Soviet forces in the village of Krasnaya Polyana.
After entering the village, Peiper's troops made a terrible discovery. All the men of his small medical unit who had been left there had been killed and then mutilated. In revenge, Peiper ordered the entire village burned and its inhabitants shot.
Peiper's reputation preceded him, and his unit earned the nickname the "Blowtorch Battalion." This nickname came from the burning and massacre of two Soviet villages in February 1943, where in revenge for the wounding of two SS officers Peiper ordered the killing of 872 men, women, and children, of whom 240 were burned alive in a church.
In March 1943, for his heroism and bold and unconventional orders, Peiper was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the most prestigious military decoration of the Second Reich. In July 1943, after the Battle of Kursk, when the Red Army seized the initiative on the eastern front, Peiper's unit was transferred from Russia to northern fascist Italy.
In September 1943, after Italy's capitulation to the Allies, German forces quickly occupied northern and central Italy to prevent Allied forces from gaining a foothold in the region. Germany established the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, who had been rescued from captivity.
The occupation resulted in a brutal and oppressive regime with mass arrests, executions, and confiscation of resources, while facing fierce resistance from Italian partisan groups. On September 19, 1943, during an exchange of fire with Waffen SS occupiers, partisans of the Italian resistance killed one soldier and captured two others in the area of Boves in northwestern Italy.
After this event, Peiper and his unit were called in to free the German soldiers and took up a position in Boves, controlling access to the town and threatening to destroy it and its inhabitants if their demands were not met. Peiper pledged to spare the town if the German soldiers were released.
The parish priest of Boves, Giuseppe Bernardi, and local businessman Antonio Vassalo, who acted as negotiators between Peiper and the Italian soldiers and partisans, successfully secured the release of the prisoners and the return of the body of the dead German soldier.
Despite contrary promises, Peiper sought revenge and ordered his men to open fire on the town. Father Bernardi and the local businessman who had organized the release of the prisoners were doused with gasoline and burned alive.
The remaining victims consisted mainly of old, sick, or infirm civilians, since everyone else had left the town before the massacre to hide. The SS soldiers spared no one and even killed a deaf-mute man who tried to put out the fire after Peiper's men set his house alight.
They also murdered a disabled veteran who was shot while trying to escape across the fields. An 87-year-old woman who could not move from her bed was burned alive when Peiper's men set her house on fire. Assistant priest Don Mario Giabaudo was killed while giving absolution to an elderly man who had been shot by a German soldier.
In total, 23 civilians were murdered and 350 homes destroyed in retaliation for the villagers' resistance. In November 1943, Peiper returned to the eastern front and, although he lacked experience in commanding tanks, he replaced the deceased regimental commander and thus took command of the first SS Panzer Regiment.
Peiper's overly aggressive command style led him to disregard tactical common sense in deploying the tanks and infantry of the first SS Panzer Regiment in battle against the Red Army. Peiper's battlefield victories cost the SS more casualties than would have been lost using textbook tactics to achieve the same victory.
After a month under Peiper's command, the first SS Panzer Regiment had only 12 operational tanks. In December 1943, because of his destructive command of the first SS Panzer Regiment, Peiper was relieved of combat duty and transferred to division headquarters, where he worked as a staff officer.
In March 1944, the first SS Panzer Division was withdrawn from the eastern front, and three months later it was deployed on the coast of the English Channel to face the expected Allied invasion. On June 6, 1944, under the codename Operation Overlord, American, British, and Canadian forces crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy in France.
This operation, known as D-Day, was the largest amphibious invasion in history, deploying more than 160,000 Allied troops by air, land, and sea. Fifty thousand vehicles, about 5,000 warships, and more than 11,500 aircraft supported the initial invasion. This largest seaborne invasion in history was one of the main turning points of World War II.
Peiper's unit fought on the defensive until the end of July 1944, when the U.S. Army destroyed all the tanks of the first SS Panzer Division and killed a quarter of its force of nearly 20,000 soldiers. After a nervous breakdown, Peiper was relieved of command in August 1944, and in the following months he stayed in a hospital for treatment of the breakdown.
On December 16, the German military launched the Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, which was the last major German offensive campaign in Western Europe. Hitler hoped the German counterattack would encircle British and American troops and halt the Allied offensive against Germany.
However, the German offensive in the Belgian Ardennes region was only a temporary success in halting the Allied advance. Despite suffering terrible losses, U.S. forces managed to delay the enemy long enough to allow reinforcements to be brought up to stop the German offensive.
On December 17, 1944, the first SS Panzer Division commanded by Joachim Peiper moved west from Büllingen in Belgium. This movement was part of the general German advance during the Battle of the Bulge.
At the same time, an American convoy consisting of 30 vehicles and nearly 140 men from the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion was heading south from the Hürtgen Forest toward Ligneuville. The two forces converged just before noon in the village of Baugnez, 4 kilometers south of Malmedy.
The SS soldiers immediately opened fire on the American troops, who fell into a panic. Those who did not flee, including medical personnel, quickly surrendered. After being searched and stripped of personal belongings, the American soldiers were lined up in eight rows in a field at the crossroads.
Survivors of the atrocity recall that a group of about 120 American prisoners of war stood in a farmer's field as SS soldiers fired machine guns into the grouped Americans. Panicked by the machine-gun fire, some prisoners fled the field, but the SS soldiers shot and killed most of the men standing there.
Some prisoners fell to the ground and pretended to be dead. Nevertheless, after the initial machine-gun fire, the SS soldiers walked among the lying bodies, looking for wounded survivors to finish off with a shot to the head.
Moreover, some of the American soldiers who fled the farmer's field ran to a café at the Baugnez crossroads and hid inside. But the SS soldiers set the café on fire and killed every American soldier who emerged from the burning building.
When the Germans left the site, at least 84 American soldiers were dead. Just over 40 Americans survived the incident known as the Malmedy Massacre, escaping into the forest or pretending to be dead.
Other murders of prisoners of war and civilians were recorded on December 17, 18, 19, and 20. The SS group was ultimately found responsible for the deaths of about 350 unarmed American soldiers and about 100 Belgian civilians.
On May 1, 1945, while in Austria, Peiper's men learned of the death of their Führer Adolf Hitler, which had occurred the previous day. On May 8, the German High Command ordered units of the first SS Panzer Division to surrender to the U.S. Army.
Peiper was captured by U.S. forces on May 22, 1945, and subsequently interrogated. In July 1945, during interrogations, Peiper revealed his involvement in Nazism. When military interrogators asked him about his opinion on the plight of Poles and Jews, Peiper replied with unease that all Jews are bad and all Poles are bad.
"We have just cleansed our society and moved these people to camps, and you have let them out," he said. Moreover, as a Waffen SS officer, Peiper also lamented to his military interrogators that the U.S. government had made a mistake by refusing to include the Waffen SS in the American army to prepare to fight the Russians in defense of Western civilization.
On May 16, 1946, the trial began of SS members who had taken part in the Malmedy Massacre and other killings during the Battle of the Bulge. All the defendants, including Joachim Peiper, were charged with violating the laws and customs of war and with deliberately participating in the killing, shooting, and torture of American soldiers and unarmed civilians.
Two months later, on July 16, 1946, the American military court at Dachau sentenced 46 Waffen SS members, including Joachim Peiper, to death by hanging. Another 23 received life imprisonment, and the remaining men received sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years in prison.
The convicted SS men claimed that American interrogators had used unlawful methods and even torture, and that all the testimony given had been coerced. There were allegations that all but two Germans in 139 cases investigated by the Americans had been kicked in the testicles, with effects that could no longer be repaired.
A commission was organized to investigate these allegations, and some commission members questioned the legitimacy of the entire trial. In 1948, judicial reviewers of the Military Tribunal's sentences commuted the death sentences for war crimes of some defendants in the Malmedy Massacre trial to life imprisonment.
In 1951, Peiper's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1954, the sentence was changed to 35 years in prison, and on December 22, 1956, Peiper was released on parole. When two American soldiers told Peiper he had been released, he was so shocked that he stared at them in silence.
After his release from prison, Peiper found work at the Porsche automobile company, but Italian trade union workers formally complained that Peiper was unacceptable as a co-worker because he had remained a Nazi and because of the wartime Boves massacre committed under his command.
The owner of the automobile company, Ferdinand Porsche, personally sought to give Peiper a managerial position. However, the trade unions firmly opposed working with a former SS man. Despite his personal friendship with Porsche, Peiper was dismissed from the company, since employing a Nazi war criminal risked losing the market in the United States.
In 1972, Joachim and his wife Sigurd moved to Traves in eastern France, where he owned a house. Peiper worked as a self-employed translator of military history books from English into German.
In France, Peiper lived under his real name, which quickly drew the attention of anti-fascists. In June 1976, anti-Nazi political activists distributed leaflets in the Traves community informing residents that Peiper was a Nazi war criminal.
Confirmation of Peiper's Nazi identity and his presence in France attracted journalists, to whom Peiper willingly gave interviews in which he claimed he was a victim of communist persecution because of his role in the war. He claimed he had paid for his war crimes with 12 years in prison and said: "In 1940, the French were not brave, that is why I am here."
These offensive remarks enraged both the press and local residents, and a month later Peiper finally paid for his war crimes. On July 14, 1976, when a group of French anti-Nazis calling themselves avengers attacked his house and set it on fire, Joachim Peiper, then 61 years old, was burned alive.
Because of the intense heat generated by the fire, Peiper's body shrank to a length of about 60 centimeters and was barely recognizable as a human body. When his neighbor saw the body, he said: "It is him, but he is miniaturized." No tears were shed for Joachim Peiper.