Because it's still December 16th, I want to start discussion about Oberstgruppenfuhrer Sepp Dietrich. Some authors appreciate him as a good commander, excellent tactic an exceptional leader. The others say he was an alcoholic and didn't care of the war, leaving the work to his staff. What do you think?
According to the Discovery Channel ( ) he was unable to read a map or think abstractly about any situation, but he was a driving and inspiring field commander when leading his men directly. According to other sources, he was more or less a boot up the rear of his soldiers - dumb, clear, hard-driving and unforgiving. A good SS leader overall!
He was involved so far as that he was in command of the men who did it, but he wasn't actually there. According to my information all the executions of POWs in the Ardennes were on the initiative of the guards, not on command.
I have read it was Jochen Peiper who organised the killing of American prisoners at Malmedy. From what sources I have seen, it seems there is confusion over why he did this. The most common explanation offered seems to be that he seriously misinterpreted orders to "spread a wave of terror" across the face of the German advance. If that is the case then it is certainly a terrible/ridiculous misinterpretation; There could have been any number of reasons I guess; pure callousness, revenge for SS prisoners being shot*, terrible decision in the heat of the moment, didnt like something a prisoner said - who knows? Whatever the reason, it was a disgraceful business, unworthy of such a talented commander. *Rumours among the Germans of Americans shooting captured Waffen SS men, and men from elite Wehrmacht divisions (divisions with names instead of numbers), were rife during the last days of the war, during the panic to surrender to the Western allies rather than the Sovs. And going back to the topic of Sepp Deitrich, I have read he had no training whatsoever in the traditional sense for a commander, but was nevertheless a talented, inspirational and aggressive leader.
The account of the massacre, as given by the few prisoners who survived, goes as follows: one SS guard, out of the blue, draws a pistol and shoots a prisoner held among his fellow POWs in a field, packed tightly together. When the fatally wounded prisoner drops to the ground, the other guards, seeing movement among their prisoners, open fire and kill 85 soldiers. This does not sound like an action the SS guards got orders for. Joachim Peiper himself told Charles Whiting after the war that he was merely driving by when it happened, but then again his own testimony is not worth an awful lot. I personally don't think it was done upon orders, but I have no proof of this. In any case Sepp Dietrich wasn't involved at all.
Do you mean Dietrich or Peiper? Both will have heard of this afterwards, but the question remains whether either of them gave the order for it. It doesn't seem logical for them to have done so. For one thing, they had soldiers in enemy uniforms performing secret missions for them behind enemy lines; there was also a small unit of paratroopers dropped behind the front with which contact had been lost. Any hope of mercy for these men if they were captured would have to come from the trust that American POWs were also treated with respect. Another thing is the fact that the Germans throughout WW2 have been fairly good to Western Allied POWs and there doesn't appear to have been a reason to change that policy. If either of these commanders had indeed given the order, it sure backfired on them; as soon as the regular American front line soldiers heard of the massacre, their resolve to fight on to the death and not surrender was reinforced enormously. After all they would certainly be shot if they were captured!
According to Max Hastings in his book Overlord, when Rommel started putting the feelers out to other commanders about negitiating with the Allies - Sepps' reply was ' Your're the boss Herr Feldmarschall, I obey only you - whatever it is you're planning'. I get the impression from this and other comments he knew the game was up if Hitler stayed in power.
