Joachim Peiper, German SS officer (b. 1915)
Joachim Peiper (30 January 1915 – 14 July 1976) was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and a Nazi war criminal convicted for the Malmedy massacre of U.S. Army prisoners of war (PoW). During the Second World War in Europe Peiper served as personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, and as a tank commander in the Waffen-SS.
As adjutant to Himmler, Peiper witnessed the SS implement the Holocaust with ethnic cleansing and genocide of Jews in Eastern Europe; facts that he obfuscated and denied in the post–War period. As a tank commander, Peiper served in the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) in the Eastern Front and in the Western Front, first as a battalion commander and then as a regimental commander. Peiper fought in the Third Battle of Kharkov and in the Battle of the Bulge, from which battles his eponymous battle group — Kampfgruppe Peiper — became notorious for committing war crimes against civilians and PoWs.
In the Malmedy Massacre Trial, the U.S. military tribunal established Peiper's command responsibility for having committed the Malmedy massacre (1944) and sentenced him to death, which later was commuted to life in prison. In Italy, Peiper was accused of having committed the Boves massacre (1943); that investigation ended for lack of war-crime evidence that Peiper ordered the summary killing of Italian civilians. Upon release from prison, Peiper worked for the Porsche and Volkswagen automobile companies; and later moved to France, where he worked as a freelance translator. Throughout his post-war life, Peiper was very active in the social network of ex–SS men centred upon the right-wing organisation HIAG (Mutual Aid Association of Former Members of the Waffen-SS). In 1976, Peiper was murdered in France when anti-Nazis set his house afire after the publication of his identity as a Waffen-SS war criminal.
Despite having been a minor combat leader, Peiper's idolization by aficionados of the Second World War — who romanticise the Waffen-SS in popular culture — developed a cult of personality that misrepresents Peiper as a war hero of Germany. Despite his romanticized military persona, the egocentric Peiper personified Nazi ideology as a ruthless glory-hound commander who was indifferent to the combat casualties of Battle Group Peiper, and who encouraged, expected, and tolerated war crimes by his Waffen-SS soldiers.