LAUSR

The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy, Steven P. Remy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), viii + 342 pp., hardcover $29.95, electronic version available. On December 17, 1944, during the opening days of the Battle of the Bulge, a Kampfgruppe (battle group) from the 1 SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) murdered a group of captured American soldiers at the Baugnez crossroads near the town of Malmedy, Belgium. An investigation of the massacre and the battle group’s other atrocities led to a trial known as the Malmedy Case. The U.S. Army prosecuted the Sixth SS Panzer Army commander, SS-Oberstgruppenführer Josef “Sepp” Dietrich; the battle group commander, SS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper; and other officers and enlisted men of the unit. The proceedings took place at Dachau. The prosecution argued that Dietrich had ordered the German spearhead to employ the most extreme measures, and that Peiper and his subordinates faithfully carried out their commander’s order, making theirs one of the rare (though not unique) SS units that applied brutal Eastern Front practices in Western Europe. The defense maintained that there had been no order to depart from international law, and that any killings were the result of “heat of battle” confusion and the desperate situation facing the hard-pressed German forces. In July 1946, seventy-three of the defendants were found guilty; forty-three, including Peiper, received death sentences. Subsequently, a new narrative argued that although the Kampfgruppe undoubtedly had killed American POWs, the trial and verdicts were tainted by gross investigative and prosecutorial misconduct. Lurid reports of savage beatings, death threats, mock trials and executions, and extorted confessions appeared in both the German and American press. Multiple investigations followed. Amnesty campaigns from diverse quarters gathered momentum. By early 1957, every Malmedy defendant, even those facing death sentences, had been released. Steven P. Remy, author of the well-regarded The Heidelberg Myth: The Nazification and Denazification of a German University (2002), takes a critical look at this apparent case of “victor’s justice” gone awry. He carefully analyzes the various efforts to seek amnesty for the Malmedy defendants and to influence the reviews and investigations of the trial and verdict. These began with the defense counsel, Colonel Willis Everett, who went public with accusations of prisoner abuse and prosecutorial misconduct. Remy deftly outlines the various political currents that fueled criticism of the trials, especially German resentment of denazification and the perceived shame of foreign occupation. He also highlights individuals advocating for the defendants: leading German clergy (both Catholic and Protestant) attempting to conduct a “rescue action,” ex-Wehrmacht personnel seeking to restore German national honor, and various political opportunists hoping to further their own purposes.