81 years ago today- The Malmedy Massacre during the Battle of the Bulge, December 17, 1944. Waffen SS troops under the command of Joachim Peiper murdered 84 U.S. Army POWs who had surrendered in the opening stages of the German offensive. [1024×1143]

17 DECEMBER 1944 – MALMEDY MASSACRE (BATTLE OF THE BULGE)

On 17 December 1944, as German armies advanced through the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge, troops of the elite 1st SS Panzer Division murdered eighty-four American prisoners of war (POW) near the Baugnez Crossroads, just south of the town of Malmedy, Belgium.

Leading elements of the division, Kampfgruppe ("battle group") Peiper, commanded by SS Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper, attacked a convoy of the U.S. Army's Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion as they were heading toward St. Vith, taking many of the Americans prisoner.

Accustomed to the commitment of atrocities and unwilling to be burdened by POW’s, the Waffen-SS assembled the American POWs in a field and executed them via machine gun. Seventy-two of the murdered soldiers were found in the field by the crossroads and twelve others in a nearby pasture where they fell while trying to escape. Many were shot in the head by their captors to make sure they were dead. Their bodies were recovered when U.S. forces re-occupied the area in January and February 1945.

Some 43 POWs survived the slaughter, many escaping to Malmedy itself (at that time still in American hands) while others were sheltered by Belgian civilians.

Pieper's unit was reportedly responsible for killing other Allied prisoners as well as Belgian civilians during the Battle of the Bulge. Several members of the 1st SS Panzer Division (including Peiper) stood trial as war criminals, but none were executed, and all were released from prison in the 1950’s.

Although he escaped full culpability for his horrific crimes and remained a committed Nazi during the decades that followed, Peiper could not escape retribution forever. While living in France, the legacy of Nazi occupation and brutality caught up with the SS-Obersturmbannführer; on 14 July 1976, anonymous assassins set his house alight, killing the unrepentant war criminal.