The Kampfgruppe Peiper was a ferocious armored unit notably composed of 5,000 SS Panzer Grenadiers, 40 new Mark V Panther tanks, 40 Mark IV Panzer tanks, 15 Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyers, 42 King Tiger tanks, 5 anti-aircraft half tracks, as well as its infantry troops. Its leader was Waffen SS Joachim Peiper, officer from the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. This unit is responsible for the Malmedy Massacre (the town closest to the location of the massacre), which took place on December 17th 1944, at the Baugnez crossroads, in Belgium. Peiper’s avant-garde opened fire on an American convoy composed of roughly 30 vehicles crossing the zone. It was quickly immobilized as the Americans were totally defenseless against the armored unit. The American soldiers surrendered, and were grouped in a farmer’s field, where the German soldiers opened fire on them, for an uncertain reason (the German and American reports do not coincide). A lot of unarmed soldiers were killed, and in the chaos that ensued, some managed to escape. After a merciless hunt, a total of 84 American soldiers were dead, and 43 had managed to reach Malmedy. This war crime, as well as the rest of the abuses perpetrated by the Kampfgruppe Peiper, who had already and had kept committing war crimes in the Bulge, were judged by the military court of Dachau in 1946.The Malmedy Massacre is the only one of this magnitude perpetrated on the American troops in Europe during the conflict. Photo n°1: Kampfgruppe Peiper advancing on Malmedy. Credit: United States Army in World War II. European Theater of Operations. The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge Cole, H. 1964, p. 262. Photo n°22: Memorial in Baugnez, near Malmedy. Each black stone inserted into the wall is engraved with the name of a victim. Credit: American Legion.
