Malmedy massacre

Political Late in the Second World War, the Third Reich's war-crime violations of the Geneva Conventions were a type of psychological warfare meant to induce fear of the and of the in the soldiers of the Allied armies and the U.S. Army on the Western Front (1939–1945) — thus Hitler ordered that battles be executed and fought with the same no-quarter brutality with which the and the fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front (1941–1945) in the Soviet Union. For their part of the Ardennes counter-attack, the was the armored spearhead of the left wing of the 6th SS Panzer Army, under the command of Joachim Peiper. After the infantry had breached the U.S. lines, Peiper was to advance his tanks and armored vehicles on the road to Ligneuville and travel through the towns of Stavelot, Trois-Ponts, and Werbomont in order to reach and seize the bridges over the River Meuse that are in the vicinity of the city of Huy. Because the strategy of the Ardennes Counteroffensive had reserved the roads with the strongest roadway for the bulk traffic of the tanks of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, the convoys of traveled secondary roads with weak roadways that proved unsuitable for the weights of armored military vehicles, such as Tiger II tanks. == German advance to the west ==

German attack In December 1944, for the Ardennes Counteroffensive the Germans' initial, strategic position was east of the German-Belgium border and the Siegfried Line, near the town of Losheim, Belgium. To realize the German advance to the west, SS General Dietrich planned for the 6th SS Panzer Army to advance northwest, through Losheimergraben and Bucholz Station, and then drive through the towns of Honsfeld and Büllingen, and through the villages of Trois-Ponts, to then reach Belgian Route Nationale N23, and then cross the River Meuse. American counter-attack The Germans were surprised that the Ardennes Counteroffensive on the northern front — the frontline "bulge" in the Battle of the Bulge — met much resistance from the U.S. Army; for most of a day, an American reconnaissance platoon of 22 soldiers (18 infantrymen and four artillery observers) battled and delayed approximately 500 paratroops in the village of Lanzerath, Belgium. At dusk, the German 9th Parachute Regiment (3rd Parachute Division) out-flanked and captured the American reconnaissance platoon as they withdrew for want of ammunition to continue the fight — halting the progress of Kampfgruppe Peiper through the village of Lanzerath. In that battle, the Waffen-SS paratroops killed one of the artillery observers and wounded 14 of the other American soldiers. Upon capturing the American reconnaissance platoon, the paratroops paused their attack out of caution, believing that a greater force of American infantry and tanks was hiding in the woods. For more than 12 hours, the over-cautious soldiers of the 9th Parachute Regiment did not act until the midnight arrival of Peiper's tanks to Lanzerath; then the Waffen-SS paratroops explored and found no American soldiers in the woods. == Massacre at Büllingen ==

At 4:30 a.m. on 17 December 1944, the 1st SS Panzer Division was approximately 16 hours behind schedule when the convoys departed the village of Lanzerath enroute west to the town of Honsfeld. After capturing Honsfeld, Peiper detoured from his assigned route to seize a small fuel depot in Büllingen, where the infantry summarily executed dozens of U.S. POWs. Afterward, Peiper advanced to the west, toward the River Meuse and captured Ligneuville, bypassing the towns of Mödersheid, Schoppen, Ondenval, and Thirimont. The terrain and poor quality of the roads made the advance of difficult. At the exit to the village of Thirimont, the armored spearhead was unable to travel the road directly to Ligneuville, and Peiper deviated from the planned route: Rather than turning to the left, the armored spearhead turned to the right, and advanced toward the crossroads of Baugnez, equidistant from the cities of Malmedy, Ligneuville, and Waimes. == Massacre at Baugnez crossroads ==

On 17 December 1944, between noon and 1:00 p.m., approached the Baugnez crossroads, two miles southeast of the city of Malmedy, Belgium. Meanwhile, a U.S. Army convoy of thirty vehicles, from B Battery of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, was negotiating the crossroads, and then turning right, towards Ligneuville and St. Vith, in order to join the US 7th Armored Division. The Germans saw the US convoy first, and the spearhead unit of fired upon and destroyed the first and last vehicles, immobilizing the convoy and halting the American advance. Out-numbered and out-gunned, those soldiers of the 285th Field Artillery surrendered to the . After that brief battle with the American convoy, the tanks and armored vehicles of the convoy continued westward to Ligneuville. At the Baugnez crossroads, the infantry assembled the just-surrendered U.S. POWs in a farmer's field, and added them to another group of U.S. POWs who had been captured earlier that day. The prisoners of war who survived the massacre at Malmedy said that a group of approximately 120 U.S. POWs stood in the farmer's field when the fired machine guns at them. Panicked by the machine gun fire, some POWs fled, but the soldiers shot and killed most of the remaining POWs where they stood. Some G.I.s dropped to the ground and pretended to be dead. After machine-gunning the group of POWs, the soldiers walked amongst the POW corpses, searching for wounded survivors to kill with a coup de grâce gunshot to the head. Some of the fleeing POWs ran to and hid in a café at the Baugnez crossroads. The then set the café afire, and killed every U.S. POW who escaped the burning building. Responsibility There is dispute over which officer ordered the killing of U.S. POWs at Malmedy. Peiper, who had already left the Baugnez crossroads where the massacre occurred, and the commander of the 1st Panzer Battalion, Werner Poetschke, are both considered most likely responsible. After the end of the war, Poetschke was identified by various persons involved and eyewitnesses as the officer directly responsible for the initiative and for giving the order to subaltern officers to execute the American prisoners near the Baugnez crossroads. Whether or not Peiper himself gave the actual order, in addition to his command responsibility, he was responsible for creating the unit’s prevailing culture, in which caring for prisoners of war was a burden to be avoided. == Massacre revealed ==

In the early afternoon of 17 December 1944, 43 U.S. POWs who survived the Malmedy massacre emerged from hiding from the and then sought help and medical aid in the nearby city of Malmedy, which was held by the U.S. Army. The first of the 43 survivors of the massacre were encountered by a patrol from the 291st Combat Engineer Battalion at about 2:30 p.m. on 17 December, hours after the massacre. The inspector general of the First Army learned of the Malmedy massacre approximately four hours after the fact; by evening time, rumors that the were summarily executing U.S. POWs had been communicated to the rank and file soldiers of the U.S. Army in Europe. Unofficial orders spread to not take any SS men prisoner. American soldiers of the 11th Armored Division later summarily executed 80 Wehrmacht POWs in the Chenogne massacre on 1 January 1945. == Recovery and investigation ==

Until the Allied counterattack against the Ardennes Counteroffensive, the crossroads at Baugnez, Belgium, lay behind the Nazi lines until 13 January 1945; and on 14 January, the U.S. Army reached the killing field where the German soldiers had summarily executed 84 U.S. POWs on 17 December 1944. Military investigators photographed the war crime scene and the frozen, snow-covered corpses before they were removed for autopsy and burial. The forensic investigation documented the gunshot wounds for the war crimes prosecutions of the enemy officers and soldiers who killed U.S. POWs. and 10 corpses showed fatal blunt trauma head injuries, in which blows by a rifle butt fractured the skull. Other investigations claimed that the killed fewer U.S. POWs, and put the figure of the dead as being between 300 and 375 US soldiers and 111 civilians executed by the . == War crimes trial ==

The Malmedy massacre trial, from May to July 1946, established that the commanders in the field bore command responsibility for the killing surrendered U.S. POWs; specifically General Josef Dietrich (6th Panzer Army); Werner Poetschke (1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler); and Joachim Peiper () whose soldiers committed the actual war crime at Malmedy. The war-crime cases of the and soldiers and officers were conducted at the Dachau trials held in the deactivated Dachau concentration camp, in occupied Germany, from 1945 to 1947. The Dachau Trials prosecuted and punished war criminals by imposing 43 death sentences (including Peiper and Dietrich), 22 sentences to life-long imprisonment, and eight sentences to short imprisonment. However, none of the death sentences were carried out, and Peiper and Dietrich were released in 1956 and 1955, respectively. == See also ==