talking about Peiper
he was present at many civilian executions,
he was adjutant to Himmler for long time
he visited ghettos and concentration camps
his units were in the same group as Einsatztruppen on East front
his men killed a lot of POW's
he was sentenced to death by war court based on evidences
On 1 September 1939, Fall Weiß began with Germany invading Poland, and the Soviet Union invading thereafter on 17 September. World War II in Europe had begun. As adjutant, Peiper followed this campaign in Himmler's entourage aboard the Reichsführer-SS's special train. Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was also present.[21] Peiper worked closely to Himmler.[21] On 20 September he was with Himmler in Blomberg when he witnessed the execution of twenty Poles.[21] According to Peiper it left Himmler speechless for several days.[22]. Hitler had already ordered Himmler to eliminate the Polish intellectuals, as Peiper later related to Ernst Schäfer.[22] During the campaign of Poland, Reinhard Heydrich also issued orders to the Einsatzgruppen to kill Polish Jews.[21] Men of Peiper’s Waffen-SS unit from the Leibstandarte participated in such actions in the Burzeum area.[21]
The Feldherrnhalle in Munich
Once Poland was defeated he stayed beside Himmler and he may have been aware of the decisions taken by Himmler and his entourage with respect to the fate of that country.[23] He continued to accompany Himmler and attended the commemorative ceremonies of 9 October 1939 at the Feldherrnhalle in Munich. On 13 December 1939, in Poznan, he and Himmler attended the gassing of a resident of a psychiatric establishment. In postwar interrogations he described this in a technocratic way.
Peiper was appointed first adjutant of Himmler.[27]
At the beginning of the next year Himmler went for an inspection circuit of the Nazi concentration camps and was accompanied by his first adjutant, Peiper. On 14 January 1941, they visited Ravensbrück; on 21 they were in Dachau.[28] In March 1941, together with Karl Wolff and Fritz Bracht, they went to Auschwitz.[29] It was during this visit that Himmler instructed Höss to build the Birkenau concentration camp, but no precise information was yet given as to its final location.[30] During this period the idea of the "Final Solution" was taking form and it seems unlikely that in his capacity as first adjutant that Peiper would not have known something about it. To sustain this theory one needs to remember that during a trial in the 1960s it was demonstrated that Werner Grothmann (Peiper’s successor as first adjutant) was fully aware of the details of the genocide.[27]
The fact that Peiper approved of Himmler can maybe be found in a letter of his spouse to Hedwig Potthast, Himmler’s mistress:
"You know how much he loves, adores and admires KH"
In fact KH was an acronym for König Heinrich (King Heinrich), which also tells much about the advanced stage of familiarity of Sigurd Peiper with the circle of Himmler’s close relations.[31]
Himmler and his entourage travelled to Norway, Austria, Poland and the Balkans, in Greece.[32] These travels included a visit to the Lodz Ghetto about which 30 years later Peiper stated an account:
It was a macabre image: we saw how the Jewish Ghetto police, who wore hats without rims and were armed with wooden clubs, inconsiderately made room for us. The Jewish elders also presented Himmler with a bouquet of flowers.[32]
For Himmler, the war was essentially behind the front lines where SS units were in charge of liquidating the Jews and the partisans.[33] The duties of first adjutant included the presentation of the statistics provided by the Einsatzgruppen relating to the killings perpetrated on the Eastern Front.[34]
During these first months of the war in Russia the first adjutant duties of Peiper gradually came to an end. He transferred his duties to his successor Werner Grothmann and soon took command of a combat unit. He nevertheless remained in close contact with Himmler whom he met at numerous times. Himmler's excellent relations with him, who called him “my dear Jochen” in his letters went on until the end of the war.[33]
However, contrary to what transpired in May 1940, this time it is not Peiper himself who asked to be transferred to a combat unit. Apparently, Himmler wished to shelter Peiper from maneuvers in his entourage. Indeed, rumours were circulating about the death of Peiper’s brother, Horst, including one that he was homosexual.
With his company Peiper took part in the fighting at Mariupol and Rostov-on-Don. He was distinguished because of his fighting spirit but his unit also suffered high casualties. Furthermore, the killing of some prisoners of war foreshadowed what the war in the East would be like (on both sides).[36]
During its progress the Leibstandarte was followed by Einsatzgruppe D which organised the extermination of Jews and Communists. The Einsatzgruppe continued its operations even when the winter provisionally suspended the military operations. The "LSSAH" and the Einsatzgruppe shared the same winter quarters at Taganrog on the Azov Sea and sometimes elements of the division provided assistance to Einsatzgruppe D in its operations.[37]
The Soviets denounced Peiper and his men who were alleged to have set fire to two villages and massacred their inhabitants.[41] On 6 May 1943 the Deutsches Kreuz in Gold was awarded to him for his achievements in February 1943. It was also in February 1943 that his unit gained the nickname of “blowtorch battalion” because of Peiper's preference of attacking enemy held villages by night from all sides while driving at full throttle and firing all weapons which put the straw roofs of the buildings on fire and contributed to panic among enemy troops.[42] The blowtorch even became the unofficial tactical sign painted on the vehicles of the battalion
According to Faustino Dolmazzo, the advocate of the Italian partisans, when Peiper arrived in Boves the Germans empowered two Italians, one the priest of the city, in order to ask for the liberation of the two officers. Peiper promised no reprisals would happen. After the two men were freed around 3.00pm fire was set to all the houses of the village and 22 men were killed when they tried to flee. The two bodies of the two Italian intermediaries were found among the victims.[52]
During the same period the Jews of the area were arrested in order to be deported to the extermination camps. Simon Wiesenthal accused Peiper of providing his assistance for the setting up of the "Final Solution" for Jews of Northern Italy. Until his death Peiper repelled this accusation and accused Wiesenthal of having destroyed his civil existence.[54] He explained that under his own authority he had released a group of Jews from a concentration camp managed by Italians not for sympathy for the Jews but because their leader, a rabbi, was from Berlin like himself.[55] This story comes from Peiper himself and no independent source has confirmed it. Available sources show that within the families arrested in the area of Cuneo there was one that came from Berlin. This family was transferred to Drancy before being dispatched to Auschwitz where its members were gassed as were most of the Jews arrested in the Cuneo area.[54]
Five young recruits, indicted of having looted Belgian civilians, were sentenced to death by the martial court of the unit. During their trial they admitted to have stolen food, poultry and ham. The martial court verdict, one might argue, seemed out of proportion to the seriousness of the offences they committed, especially when looking at other similar cases. Peiper ordered the five executed on 28 May 1944 and made the other young recruits march past the corpses. It seems the execution had a rather negative impact on the morale of the regiment at that time.[63
On 17 December 1944 men belonging to Kampfgruppe Peiper massacred 84 American prisoners of war at the Baugnez crossroads near Malmedy. What has become known as the "Malmedy massacre" was not an isolated incident. Before this in Honsfeld, men of Peiper’s Kampfgruppe murdered several American prisoners.[83][84][85] Another murder of PoWs was reported in Büllingen.[83][84]
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Other murders
After Malmedy it was reported that men of Kampfgruppe Peiper killed at least eight more US POWs in Ligneuville.[86][87] Other murders of prisoners were perpetrated in Stavelot, Cheneux, La Gleize and Stoumont on 18, 19 and 20 December. On 19 December 1944, in the area between Stavelot and Trois-Ponts, while the Germans were trying to regain control of the bridge over the Amblève River (crucial for allowing reinforcements and supplies to reach the Kampfgruppe) men of Kampfgruppe Peiper killed a number of Belgian civilians. Eventually Kampfgruppe Peiper would be declared responsible for the death of 362 prisoners of war and 111 civilians.[88]
