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Civilian murders at Wanne, Belgium - Dec 44

Discussion in 'Western Europe 1943 - 1945' started by KodiakBeer, Jun 19, 2013.

  1. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    Info from "The Unknown Dead" Peter Schrijvers.

    I've seen references to these killings in other works, but the info is always vague because... the English language works are more concerned with the battle or atrocities against POW's. At any rate, Wanne is 3 miles south of Stavelot and SE of Trois Ponts. Elements of KG Peiper passed through this village on the 18th, followed by KG Hansen and Schnellgruppe Knittel who settled in here for some days. Both of these groups directed attacks at Stavelot in an attempt to clear the way to KG Peiper, and both of these groups sent reinforcements to Peiper - light vehicles and infantry since none of the bridges they held would support armor.

    On the 21st, after American artillery began taking a toll they (and I don't know if these were members of Hansen or Knittel's group, or both) suddenly began turning on the inhabitants, accusing them of giving away the positions of their artillery and armored vehicle lagers. One Jean-Francois Counet was beaten unconscious and then shot. Emil Henrouille, a forester, was dragged to the church and shot. Two other men were shot in the Priests garden. A 20 year old woman, Denise Manguette, was shot as she crossed the road seeking a better hiding place. Another man named Marechal was shot point-blank in the head in his stable.

    In Refat, just to the south, nine SS men entered a home and dragged three women from the cellar and raped them.

    I wish I could find more on civilians in the battle.
     
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  2. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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    Here is the memorial to the Civilian dead of Wanne.....

    [​IMG]

    And the touching little ceremony which took place before it when I stayed there in 2011...

    [​IMG]

    I agree it's not easy to find out too much about the atrocities at Stavelot, Parfondruy and Wanne. I've always assumed that the Waffen-SS didn't ( or couldn't ) say too much afterwards and neither could the victims.
     
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  3. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

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    I´ll look into this when I´m back from holiday (I´m in Burgundy, France at the moment). One of my sources for my research is the bilingual booklet (French and German) "Dokumentation Kriegsverbrechen Stavelot Dezember 1944 – Documentation Crimes de guerre Stavelot, décembre 1944", written by Bruno Kartheuser and published in 1994 by Krautgarten in Sankt Vith. It sums up the findings of the Commission of Inquiry of the Belgian Defense Ministry, based on the findings of the Liège Section of the Commission of Inquiry which visited the area in February 1945 to interview survivors and interviewed captured Leibstandarte soldiers which were captured by 30th US Inf.Div. on December 22, 1944, and were held in custody in Liège.
     
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  4. SKYLINEDRIVE

    SKYLINEDRIVE Member

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    It has been mentioned before, but Hans Schrijver's "The Unknown Death" is where you find the best compilation of all the victims of atrocities throughout the Bulge. If you want to understand the workings of the Waffen SS and how they managed to come out nearly unharmed of the war and the following war crime inquiries and process' and how they built up myth of being an "apolitical corps of honorable elite fighters" you should read Jens Westemeier's "Himmlers Krieger".
     
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  5. ptimms

    ptimms Member

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    The "Heroic Pan European Anti Bolshevik White Knight's" of the Waffen SS.
     
  6. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

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    That would be Peter Schrijvers. Interesting book but it still lacks detail regarding the murders in the Stavelot area. His descriptions of the murders are more or less copy-paste translations from the above mentioned report from the Commission of Inquiry of the Belgian Defense Ministry but beyond that there isn't any additional info. The killers are left unidentified apart from "recce battalion". Duel in the Mist has additional info but the authors did not double-check with the the report from the Commission of Inquiry and allowed some inaccuracies to slip in.
     
  7. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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    It's quite frustrating to try to find out what actually happened in Wanne from published sources ; one wonders if now it will be lost to history.

    I thought it may interest members to see just how small a place Wanne is ; I took this view on an evening walk in June this year. The Chateau (Leibstandarte Div HQ) is the large square building on the left. The Ambleve valley is in the distance, and Stavelot is in the valley, around the shoulder of the hill on the right.

    [​IMG]
     
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  8. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

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    Here's what the Commission of Inquiry had to say about Wanne (from Kartheuser, page 102 to104).

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
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  9. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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    It's going to take me a little while to Babelfish that one...... :hypnotize:
     
  10. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    Thanks for that photo in post 7, Martin. It's such an idyllic little place that it is hard to associate it with the events of December, 1944.

    Most of the atrocities committed against civilians in the general area seem to be associated with Knittel's men. Does anyone have any thoughts about that? Perhaps Knittel was just a more brutal man? Or perhaps as recon - Schnellgruppe - they just tended to contact more civilians on the periphery of the fight and thus had more opportunity to make trouble?
     
  11. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

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    After almost twenty years of specifically researching Knittel and his men I have a lot of thoughts about that which I have detailed in my manuscript.

    First of all: the Schnelle Gruppe wasn't used in a recce role. Knittel received orders to follow the leading Kampfgruppen of Peiper and Hansen without enemy contact until the northern exit of the Hohen Venn. Once one of the leading Kampfgruppen had made a breakthrough, Knittel had to take one of the Meuse bridges south of Liège in a quick thrust, by avoiding all villages and enemy resistance, in order to allow the rest of the LAH to cross the river. The Aufklärungsabteilung was the usual candidate for such a task, because (on paper) they are equipped with fast vehicles.

    Off course this was just the plan. The Kampfgruppe, instead of making a run for the Meuse, was send back to Stavelot from La Gleize by Peiper on 19.12 after American troops had recaptured Stavelot, which meant that the supply route of the LAH troops west of the Amblève River was cut. Unable to perform this task, due to dominating American artillery and increasing pressure from American tank units, Kampfgruppe Knittel withdrew, together with Peipers force, to the eastern bank of the Amblève on 25.12.

    The main problem with Knittel was that the overwhelming unstoppable power of the Red Army - which decimated his battalion in the Ukraine - and the sheer destructive power of the allied air force and artillery at the invasion front, Mortain and culminating in the decimation of his battalion in the Falaise Pocket - made it perfectly clear to Knittel and other members of the SS-Pz.AA1 that the war was lost. Add to that the fact that he knew he would become a father soon. He did not buy the sacrifice yourself for your Führer and country crap. He wanted to survive for his family as he understood that they also needed him after the inevitable defeat of Nazi Germany. This meant he actively searched for a position behind the frontline, which he found as commander of the Field Replacement Battalion of the division, Unfortunately this position was short-lived as Mohnke called him back to his old command. He even tried to persuade Mohnke to grant Wawrzinek command over the Schnelle Gruppe but the division commander needed Knittels experience.

    This caused the loss of respect for their commanding officer that made the terrible war crimes of Kampfgruppe Knittel possible. In short: Knittel entered his command post west of Stavelot on December 19 and hardly ever left the basement until December 25. This was due to the ongoing heavy artillery fire on the building and the surrounding area and it crippled communications with his company commanders in Stavelot, Ster and Petit Spai causing a serious loss of control over the behavior of his men. Sheer frustration over a senseless and clearly hopelessly failing offensive caused several massacres for which officers, nco's and men of Kampfgruppe Knittel were responsible. Paranoid and scared and unable to understand how accurate the invisible American artillery and infantry could operate during the attack of the Schnelle Gruppe on Stavelot on December 19, Knittels men were convinced that the Belgians actively helped the Americans by giving them shelter and by providing information about German positions. A mixture of veterans with an Eastern Front mentality (look at the sickening behaviour of the same battalion in the East when still led by "Panzermeyer") and green recruits with no frontline experience whatsoever, they took it out on the civilian population, blaming them for their misfortune.

    On December 31, Knittel left his battalion with a serious concussion and never returned to frontline service.
     
  12. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    Dammit! I have again reached my quota of "salutes" for the day. That is very fascinating info, Ruimteaapje! I hope you get published soon, and I hope it's in English.
     
  13. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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    Excellent post by Ruimteaapje.

    Years ago I bought into the 'Nazi SS monsters' type of thinking, but having read as much as I can and visited the relevant areas of the Ardennes so many times I have come to gain - maybe - a little understanding of the background and context which made these events happen ( this includes Malmedy, etc ). Many elements are involved. This is NOT to condone such behaviour ( after all, by all accounts it appears that ,Manteuffel's troops further south did not indulge in such excesses ).

    One has to say that the odyssey of the Leibstandarte in the Ardennes contains a strong element of desperation and the Belgian civilians got a very raw deal indeed.
     
  14. pistol

    pistol Member

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    The whole of the Ardennes Offensive was an act of desperation, still only the LAH committed most the atrocities in the Ardennes. IMO it well reflects the 'mind-set' of the men and (above all) the officers of this unit.

    The justifications given later (sometimes fabricated) do not take away the criminal character of their behaviour.
     
  15. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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  16. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    Note Léon Sandre was the shot way beofre the Bulge and wa sshot as early as March 1944 . The same goes for the MIA and the man who died deported.
     
  17. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

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    I've often wondered about that: the crimes in the Ardennes were basically committed by Kampfgruppe Peiper and Schnelle Gruppe Knittel, I'm not aware of crimes by KG Hansen or KG Sandig. It is perhaps interesting to note that specifically the units of Peiper (III./SS-PzGrenRgt 2) and Meyer (AA LAH) were notorious on the Eastern Front (Charkow battles, February-March 1943) for their behaviour towards civilians.

    In the Ardennes the old "Blowtorch battalion", the SPW battalion III./SS-PzGrenRgt.was the core of Kampfgruppe Peiper. Diefenthal, who commanded the battalion in the Ardennes, was an old protegee of Peiper. The SPW-battalion was the unit Peiper favoured, his "home". Here he was among friends and he was usually with this battalion in Normandy and the Ardennes, leaving command of the Panzers in the hands of Poetschke (no surprise, Peiper was a brilliant SPW-commander but a complete failure as a tank commander). Note that after the Ardennes campaign, despite being a clear failure, Peiper bestowed his friends from the SPW-battalion with high awards, not his Panzer-Regiment.

    In the Ardennes, the AA LAH was still the core of the SS-PzAA1 led by Knittel, who himself served under Meyer as company commander from 1940 to April 1943 when he succeeded Meyer.

    In both cases, the "Eastern Front mentality" these units were notorious for, even within the Leibstandarte, was still very much present in December 1944.
     
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  18. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    Ruimteaapje,

    I wonder if you have any info on another mystery in Stavelot. Peiper claimed to have knowledge of the fuel depot at Stavelot, yet no real attempt was made to get that fuel. This has always puzzled me. I realize they needed to push on to seize the bridges ahead, but one would think that some unit would be detached to seize that fuel as they passed through. Do you know anything about this?
     
  19. Ruimteaapje

    Ruimteaapje Member

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    Unfortunately not, I've always focused on Knittel.
     
  20. Martin Bull

    Martin Bull Acting Wg. Cdr

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    On my visit to Wanne last month, I photographed the newer memorial to the WWII civilian dead of Wanne. The building in the background is the chateau which was used as Leibstandarte Divisional HQ during the battle.

    [​IMG]
     

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