Killing Patton The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General

Joachim Peiper



Heinrich Himmler inspecting a German POW camp in the Soviet Union

It was Adolf Hitler himself who presented his dashing Aryan tank commander with the prestigious Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, making Peiper the youngest officer in the German army ever to be so honored.

During their time on the Russian front, Peiper’s men took few prisoners, believing that the Untermenschen, or “subhumans,” as the Germans called the Russians, did not deserve to live. They also developed a nickname for themselves, based on their passion for using fire in battle: the Blowtorch Brigade. On two occasions Peiper’s tanks completely surrounded Russian villages. His assault troops then set fire to every building, burning to death every man, woman, and child inside them. This is how Peiper punishes the subhuman.

Since the suicide of Field Marshal Rommel, there are few other German tank commanders who can compare to Peiper. He and his men now bring their ruthless talents to Operation Watch on the Rhine, where the need for speed on the battlefield is vital. The Germans must destroy the Allied army before replacement troops arrive, giving the Americans a numerical advantage in soldiers and weapons.

In his final act before Operation Watch on the Rhine launches, Peiper issues orders stating, “There will be no stopping for anything. No booty will be taken, and no enemy vehicles are to be examined. It is not the job of the spearhead to worry about prisoners of war.”

That job would be left to the slower columns of infantry trailing in their wake.

But the spearhead gets off to a slow start.

Thanks to the Ninety-Ninth’s defiant stand at the Elsenborn Ridge, Peiper’s intended route toward the Meuse is blocked. Furious at the sight of his Mark IV and Mark V Panther tanks stuck behind the horse-drawn artillery carriages of a support unit known as the Twelfth Volksgrenadier Division, Peiper personally begins directing traffic in order to take charge of the mess. Fourteen hours after the initial artillery barrage that launched Operation Watch on the Rhine, Peiper finally manages to get his tanks on the move. It is after dark. The dirt roads have been turned to thick, sloppy mud after the winter rains, and have not yet frozen for the night. To his chagrin, many German infantry commanders are ordering a halt, so that their men might find a warm house in which to enjoy a few hours’ sleep.

But Peiper and the men of the First do not sleep. All night long, the five-man5 crews of the twenty-five-ton German Panzers and forty-four-ton Panthers push through the forest, hoping that their tanks do not sink into the mud. Minefields force them to slow even further, and there are brief firefights as they breach the American lines. By morning the breakout is complete. There is no more American opposition. December 17 is a new day for Joachim Peiper and the men of the First Panzer Division. Knowing that overcast skies will keep American fighter-bombers grounded, Peiper races toward the Meuse.

Just before dawn, he and his men pass through the tiny village of Honsfeld, where they spot American jeeps parked outside a row of local houses. As Peiper presses on to the town of Büllingen, where he knows there to be a fuel dump, he leaves the SS infantry behind. They quickly search the houses and emerge with a group of American soldiers, who were literally caught napping. The seventeen men are marched outside wearing nothing but thin army-issue boxer shorts. The Americans stand barefoot in the darkness, cursing their fate even as they marvel at the enormity of the German caravan passing before them. Tanks, halftracks, and trucks curve into the distance as far as the eye can see. Clearly this is no mere spoiling attack.

Suddenly, SS troopers open fire on the unarmed captured Americans. Sixteen are shot dead where they stand. The remaining soldier pleads for his life, but the SS takes no pity, murdering him by throwing him in front of a tank.

Peiper successfully locates the American fuel dump in Büllingen, where two hundred U.S. soldiers are taken prisoner and forced to refuel the German tanks. Meanwhile, twelve members of the Second Infantry Division’s signal company have a bittersweet moment of luck. They manage to avoid detection by the SS, and spend the morning hiding in a cellar. When it becomes obvious that Tuffy, their beloved company dog, might bark and give them away, they reluctantly strangle the animal.

The twelve men later manage to sneak back to American lines. The Americans who have been taken prisoner in Büllingen, meanwhile, are not murdered once they finish gassing up Peiper’s Panzers. These men of the Second Infantry Division are marched back to German lines, where they are locked in POW cages.

They are the lucky ones.

* * *

As George Patton remains in his headquarters in Nancy, unaware of the extent of the German offensive, Joachim Peiper and his men race toward the town of Huy, sixty miles away, where the first key bridge crosses the Meuse. Impatient and frustrated, Peiper urges his crews to press forward with all due haste. He does not need to remind them that American bombers have been leveling German cities, killing innocent civilians—perhaps even some of their own family members. Operation Watch on the Rhine is a chance to achieve vengeance as well as victory.

Dressed in their trademark gray tunics, with the SS lightning-bolt logo on their collars and the death’s-head insignia on their caps, Peiper’s SS troopers have served with him on the cruel battlefields of Russia, in the hills of northern Italy, and during the American invasion of Normandy. The men of the Leibstandarte think of Peiper as a father figure, even though the blue-eyed officer is younger than many of them. Peiper’s men are considered a cut above their fellow members of the Waffen SS, as the military branch of the SS is known. The regular army soldiers in the Wehrmacht would never dream of comparing their battlefield skills or prestige with those of the First SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.6



SS death head insignia

The First surprises a convoy of thirty-three American trucks between Modershied and Liegneuville just after noon. The Americans of Battery B, of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, have just driven through Malmedy. This timeless village is nestled in the valley formed by a ring of low, thickly forested hills. It is a quaint crossroads, with narrow lanes spoking out to the north, southwest, and east. It is the sort of place where cows clog the country roads and where everyone knows one another.

* * *

The first and last trucks in the American column are quickly destroyed by Peiper’s Panther tanks. This makes it impossible for the Americans to flee on the one-lane roads, so they leap from their vehicles and dash in all directions. Some hide as best they can, while others sprint for the cover of a nearby tree line.

Twenty-year-old corporal Ted Paluch, who is thousands of miles away from the safety and comfort of his family home in Philadelphia, crouches in a roadside ditch. He clutches his M-1 carbine, which proves no match for the Panzer that lowers its main gun. Paluch has no choice but to surrender, as do more than one hundred other men from Battery B.

Joachim Peiper watches the herding of prisoners dispassionately from the seat of his halftrack, then orders his driver and the rest of the tank column to continue their rush to the Meuse. He chooses a route to the southwest, not knowing that a single thrust north to Elsenborn Ridge would link him up with the Twelfth Panzer Division, allowing them to destroy the Ninety-Ninth Division and open up those vital roads to Antwerp.

Meanwhile, Paluch and the men of Battery B are marched away from the road, into a small field that offers them no place to hide should they attempt to run. The Americans were on their way to the town of St. Vith. They had stopped in Malmedy for lunch, and enjoyed almost two hours of peace and calm. Now they are led into a field with their hands high. They can clearly see the skull-and-crossbones insignia on their captors’ tunics, denoting that they are not normal German soldiers but the feared SS. The one hundred Americans are frisked and, in defiance of Peiper’s orders, stripped of everything of value: socks, watches, gloves, cigarettes. As this is happening, German halftracks and tanks rumble past just fifty yards away, as part of the long procession following Peiper to the Meuse.

The Americans are tense and confused. The Germans seem to be polite, if a bit brusque.

The first pistol shot comes without warning.

An American POW falls dead.

As if they have been waiting for this signal, machine guns from the single-file column of tanks and halftracks open fire, stopping only to reload as they slaughter the Americans. Terrifying bursts of German automatic weapons fire echo across the wintry countryside. Each weapon is capable of firing at least 850 rounds per minute, meaning 14 bullets per second from every single MG-34 machine gun zoom toward the American targets. Every tank carries more than 5,000 rounds, but the men of the First Panzer are too professional to waste ammo on prisoners. Instead, the gunners fire off a quick burst for fun as they pass through the crossroads. They leave helpless U.S. prisoners in their wake, jerking in spastic dances as bullets riddle their young bodies. Many more have already fallen limp into the snow, where some will remain until the spring thaw reveals their corpses.

The initial round of shooting continues for two full minutes. When it finally stops, SS men walk the field, pistols in hand. “Hey Joe,” they call out, using their best American accents in the hope that a fallen soldier will respond. “Hey, Jim.”

The deception succeeds. Every man who makes a sound is immediately shot in the head.

The SS troopers ask if any of the Americans need medical assistance, then shoot those who reply.

Any man who moans is shot in the head. Any man whose breath can be seen on this cold Sunday afternoon is shot in the head. Any man who flinches or cries out when he is kicked is shot in the head.

Cpl. Ted Paluch lies very still on the cold pasture, playing dead. He hears the Luger pistol shots as his buddies are executed one by one, and the German laughter that accompanies every new murder. Nearby, Cpl. Charles Appman lies beneath a fellow soldier, and feels the body quiver as that man is shot in the head. Appman wonders if he is next, and whether he will feel any pain as the bullet enters his skull. Seeing a bright white light, he will later recall that he feels the presence of God.

In all, eighty-four Americans are murdered in cold blood in what will come to be known as the Malmedy Massacre.

But the killing of POWs is not limited to Malmedy. Even as Ted Paluch and Charles Appman play dead throughout the afternoon, Peiper’s men are slaughtering more American POWs as the SS tanks continue their race to the Meuse. In the next three days, Hitler’s elite bodyguards will murder more than 350 American soldiers and 100 Belgian civilians.

* * *

Corporals Paluch and Appman remain motionless for hours. Their hands and faces are numb when they hear the last tank rumble past. Finally, the coast may be clear. Desperate, Paluch and Appman climb to their feet and sprint across the field and over a barbwire fence to safety, destined to marry, raise children, have careers, and live well into their eighties. Once they and the other survivors reach the American lines and report their atrocities, the horror story of the Malmedy Massacre races up the Allied chain of command.

The speed of the news is unparalleled. A patrol from the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion comes upon the first survivor at 2:30 that afternoon, even as Ted Paluch and Charles Appman are still playing dead. Four hours later the First Army’s top generals know what happened. And four hours after that, every soldier up and down the American lines knows that the SS is murdering American POWs in cold blood.

The Americans seethe. The rules of war make it a crime to kill a man who has surrendered. Many American commanders tell their men that there will be no SS troopers taken prisoner. If the Germans are not going to comply with the rules of war, then neither are the Americans.