Malmedy massacre - Whats your take?

Discussion in 'NW Europe' started by Drew5233, Jun 25, 2009.

  1. militarycross

    militarycross Very Senior Member

    Ah, so you're quite an expert in this matter with full access to all the archives, veterans and other sources?

    Ease up on Jess. She was making a statement that is very clear -- the truth is hard to know. We weren't there, and what transpired in that moment in time is likely never going to be articulated fully because the thoughts of the minds of the people of the moment can't be reconstructed by anyone, I dare say.

    Hope your studies on this are able to give you a measure of insight.

    cheers,
    phil
     
    Heimbrent likes this.
  2. m kenny

    m kenny Senior Member

    The truth is not hard to know. Hundreds of POW's and Civilians were killed in cold blood. So far as I am aware the defence seems to be that as we do not know with 100% certainty who actualy did the killings then we should just forget about it. We are left with the unseemly spectacle of them all blaming the other or saying they were only following orders.
    It is a mystery to me why so much effort is spent trying to excuse this bunch of convicted criminals.
    Malmedy itself was but one of the incidents in a 5 day killing spree. Peiper personaly ordered and supervised the killing of a US POW in Stoumont.

    This is the list of crimes:

    (1) 86 captured American soldiers on the road from Baugnez , Belgium on 17 Dec 1944
    (2) 50 captured American soldiers around Bullingen 17 Dec 1944
    (3) 19 other American POWs at Honnsfeld, Belgium 17 Dec 1944
    (4) 93 civilians at Stavelot, Belgium 18 Dec 1944
    (5) 31 captured American soldiers at Cheneux, Belgium 18 Dec 1944
    (6) 8 other American POWs at Stavelot 19 Dec 1944
    (7) 44 American POWs at Stoumont on 19 Dec 1944
    (8) 5 Belgian civilians around Wanne, Belgium 20 Dec 1944
    (9) over 100 American POWs at La Gleize, Belgium on 18 Dec, 21 Dec and 22 Dec 1944

    That is over 480 killings in 5 days. Do I detect a pattern here?
     
  3. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

    That gives you some insight into those who dislike the book.
    Exactly, the book has been seriously attacked by those who do not want to believe the truth about Peiper. The ever present Peiper-fanboys and SS-groupies who also made a feeble attempt to discredit the author. The old pattern: they attacked the messenger because they did not like his message.

    Quote from Amazon:
    "Patrick Agte's book is the definitive work on Peiper. This book is awful, plain and simple!"

    The same Agte who hardly writes a word about Peiper's career as adjutant of Himmler but pictures him as an horourable knight in shining armour and even falsified the history of his post-war life.

    Jens wrote in the AHF forum...
    [...] I know, that the SS buffers are hating my book, have a look at amazon.com and the reviews by forum member Mr. Karl Richter (krichter33), but as Joachim Fest said: the sources are speaking for themselfes and I´m not in the mood to defence myself. It was not my agenda to destroy the Peiper icon, this "icon" destroyed himself by the sources. But after knowing all this sources, it is my intention to show, that the picture of Peiper given by apologists and neo-nazis like Patrick Agte is a big lie. His book is a shame for the victims and a shame for the Germans of my generation (born 1966).
    You will find very good sources about Peipers point of view as I would evaluate him as an so called "Alt-Nazi" and Peipers knowledge and duty during his time with his beloved and admired Himmler at Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltung Ludwigsburg. There you will find a lot of statements given by Peiper himself. Very interesting are his statements from 1967 in the context with the Dr. Best trial. He speaks about the Ghetto of Warschau, the gasing of human beings, has always nice excuses, nice storries and not one word of regret. And he is terrible lying. Here only a very small example, not very important, only to show, that he was not this pure reburth of a saint. He said, that he did not join the SS voluntary, he was enforced to join the SS by a deal between the Reichswehr and the SS. A pure lie. And you will be horrified, if you read his statements about the gasing. He even looked through the window during the gasing, his description is ice cold. Yes, for Malmedy, there is no evidence, that Peiper gave the order to shoot the US prisoners, but this was never said in serious books, like Bauserman or Weingartner. It is a typical trick in the right wing books, to say, Peiper did not gave the order or he was not present at the crossroad. Yes, that is correct, but this point was even clearified during the Malmedy trial and was not the big point. But for example, he ordered the shooting of one prisoner at Petit Thier. His troops commited so many attrocities, at Russia, at Belgium, even some killings at Italia, no question that he was a war criminal and his SS spirit and leadership style was the background of the war crimes of his units. He never interferred in the killings of his soldiers, his soldiers knew, that he did not care about their war crimes. Yes, my book is full with examples, sometimes even admitted by vets (Otto Dinse, Walther Herbert, Fritz Kosmehl), but for sure you will never find anything of this in Agtes book. And Peiper the great Tank leader? I can not find any evidence. He burnt down the Regiment within 5 weeks in Russia and where is his brillant leadership during the battle of the bulge? And the Cuneo story about the rescue of the Berlin rabbi? There is no evidence. But forum member c.g. provided me with informations, that there was in deed a Berlin family, but they were sent into the gas chambers. And there is a good threat here about the involving of Peiper Bn in the arresting of the jews. Still something for a further research. From the about 400 Cuneo jews, it seems that 24 survived, perhaps there are some statements of survivers, who arrested them. If you think, this kind of research is a personal agenda, no, this is historical research, open minded in all directions. If you find in Agtes book not a single word about the holocaust or SS crimes, yes, this is for me a political agenda of the author.
    I hope, that my book will be published in English next year, the translation is in progress, and I´m sure, even the Peiper fans in the States will at least to start to think about some of that outcomes.[...]
     
  4. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    ...
    This is the list of crimes:

    (1) 86 captured American soldiers on the road from Baugnez , Belgium on 17 Dec 1944
    (2) 50 captured American soldiers around Bullingen 17 Dec 1944
    (3) 19 other American POWs at Honnsfeld, Belgium 17 Dec 1944
    (4) 93 civilians at Stavelot, Belgium 18 Dec 1944
    (5) 31 captured American soldiers at Cheneux, Belgium 18 Dec 1944
    (6) 8 other American POWs at Stavelot 19 Dec 1944
    (7) 44 American POWs at Stoumont on 19 Dec 1944
    (8) 5 Belgian civilians around Wanne, Belgium 20 Dec 1944
    (9) over 100 American POWs at La Gleize, Belgium on 18 Dec, 21 Dec and 22 Dec 1944

    That is over 480 killings in 5 days. Do I detect a pattern here?

    An investigation line worth exploring might be whether these people shot themselves out of sheer boredom or were taken up in a frenzy for duelling.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Gibbo

    Gibbo Senior Member

    It's noticeable that the Amazon reviewers all give this book either 5 or 1 stars. Looking at the other reviews posted by these people show that 3 of the 4 who gave it the lowest mark (the other hasn't reviewed any other books) favour pro-German books in their WWII reading. One of them has 17 pages of reviews, which start off blamelessly but in the later pages he gives 5 stars to the Nazi anti-Jewish film The Jew Suss and to several Holocaust denial books.

    In the interests of full disclosure, I freely admit to being strongly anti-SS in my views.
     
  6. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    Ruimteaapje, you seem to know the author(s) rather well - could you say something about their background?
     
  7. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

    Danny S. Parker is a well known author of books about World War two and other historical works. Over the past twenty years he worked on his ultimate biography of Peiper and a thorough factual discription of what actually happened in the Ardennes. I'm a bit involved since I helped Jens Westemeier with information from my research regarding Kampfgruppe Knittel and Danny asked me to do the same for him. As you probably know KG Knittel was responsible for most of the warcrimes in and around Stavelot in December 1944. But obviously Danny and Jens did the extensive research on Peiper and his Kampfgruppe and left no stone unturned. Do keep in mind that they teamed up for research but do not co-author their books. Jens' 2006 book about Peiper was quite blast for the SS-groupies and they did everything they could to discredit him. Indeed, he speaks with nothing but disgust about Peiper but that's hardly surprising since Jens too believed the myths about the honorable a-political warrior and experienced a feeling of betrayal when he came across more and more information about the real Peiper. His anger shows in his book but that does not mean the message about Peiper is fabricated or otherwise besides the truth. Danny has a completely different approach to his subject: methodical and factual he brings us the results of his research and the inevitable breakdown of the lies and myths which surround Peiper.

    Here's his website with a sample of the upcoming book...

    DannySParker.com - Author, Inventor
     
  8. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    What about the academic background of Jens Westemeier?
    (Btw, what are you researching for? Are you at university?)
     
  9. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

    I don't know Jens' background. My own research into the Aufklärungsabteilung LSSAH is something that started twelve years ago when I had to write a short paper and still triggered me to find more and more information long after I graduated as a historian.
     
  10. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    Thanks for the clarifications.

    I don't really understand what all the ruckus is about in this thread. Jess is right that the full truth can probably never be unveiled but that's a problem historians usually face anyway.
    I can't comment on the book because I haven't read it (and found no trustworthy review) and as far as I'm concerned nobody else on here has read it. Hence I assume the cause for the heated discussion lies in the topic itself. It's obvious that the Waffen-SS is a highly controversial subject - there's a huge amount of literature on it but actually many "facts" haven't scientifically been proved right or have been proved wrong.
    The only way to get closer to what the Waffen-SS really was (which is more than justified) is by an unprejudiced approach (as difficult as this may be considering crimes and ideologic character etc.). It might lead to some unexpected or uncomfortable insights but the image of the Wa-SS as a whole won't change (the number of PW shot as well as the fact that they were shot by SS troops remains undisputed and so does the criminal character of the SS).
     
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  11. Elven6

    Elven6 Discharged

    An investigation line worth exploring might be whether these people shot themselves out of sheer boredom or were taken up in a frenzy for duelling.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Really? From another thread,

    In this forum people don't usually go very much for the humorous aspect but if you want to carry on please do so.


    I usually tend to take the high road and ignore such things but...

    In regards to the reviews, it works as a double edged sword, those praising could be defending just as those attacking can be defending. ;) This is why I like to go into a form of historical media as neutral as possibly, I try not to read peoples impressions, reviews, etc until after I'm done because it can skew my own progress in a variety of ways.
     
  12. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    From Websters, Sarcasm:1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
    2. a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark.

    Synonyms:
    1. sardonicism, bitterness, ridicule.

    In short, no laughing matter.
     
  13. Elven6

    Elven6 Discharged

    From Websters, Sarcasm:
    1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
    2. a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark.

    Synonyms:
    1. sardonicism, bitterness, ridicule.

    In short, no laughing matter.
    I'm still oblivous as to how you clasify things but what ever.
     
  14. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Take it elsewhere please chaps, this thread's about Malmedy.

    Cheers,
    ~A
     
  15. Passchendaele_Baby

    Passchendaele_Baby Grandads Little Girl

    Ah, so you're quite an expert in this matter with full access to all the archives, veterans and other sources?
    And I'm guessing you do? I'm sorry - but did I say that!?!? No. I was just stating my thoughts. Thankyou very much :glare: Thanks Phil. :)
     
  16. Formerjughead

    Formerjughead Senior Member

    Until clear, definite, irrefutable proof shows up by Heaven send we will have to assume those soldiers died of boredom, right?

    Either that or the SS were a bunch of As* Holes
     
  17. Passchendaele_Baby

    Passchendaele_Baby Grandads Little Girl

    True. true... :)
     
  18. A-58

    A-58 Not so senior Member

    So, where's Andy been lately? He started up this "sheet storm" and has made himself scarce....

    I believe that the SS involved in the massacres were just doing what they do best when they have unarmed soldiers or civilians in their custody, which is to machinegun them down in cold blood and write it off as a neccessity of war. That and the "I vas only following zee orders" thing. No, not all instances were handled as they were in the Battle of the Bulge, but the pattern of their actions in this sector was clear. They were just being themselves, instinct kicked in....

    They jury has rendered it's opinion a long time ago, in my opinion that is....
     
  19. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    So, where's Andy been lately? He started up this "sheet storm" and has made himself scarce....

    I believe that the SS involved in the massacres were just doing what they do best when they have unarmed soldiers or civilians in their custody, which is to machinegun them down in cold blood and write it off as a neccessity of war. That and the "I vas only following zee orders" thing. No, not all instances were handled as they were in the Battle of the Bulge, but the pattern of their actions in this sector was clear. They were just being themselves, instinct kicked in....

    They jury has rendered it's opinion a long time ago, in my opinion that is....

    Follow the link in Post #12 as to why I started this thread.

    Cheers :)
     
  20. A-58

    A-58 Not so senior Member

    Follow the link in Post #12 as to why I started this thread.

    Cheers :)
    Ahhh, the "knowledge is power thing." Ok, good to go.
     

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