Was German war hero Joachim Peiper a Nazi?

155, 163; background of, 138; receives trial review, 130; recommendations to Clay. 81, 117; Peiper's loyalty to, 135 Hitler's Typhoid Marys, Rosenfeld mentioned in, 50 Hoey, Senator Clyde, 189, 190 Hofmann, Joachim, and alleged beatings. 182 Jaekel, Siegfried, and alleged beatings, 46 Japan, balloon attack on the. Diese Seite auf Deutch. Joachim Peiper (1915 - 1976 ) more often known as 'Jochen Peiper' from the common German nickname for Joachim; born in Berlin on January 30, 1915, was a senior Waffen-SS officer and commander in the Panzer campaigns of 1939-1945. His father was a WW I veteran, and he had two brothers, Hans-Hasso and Horst. By the end of his military career, Peiper was the youngest.

In doing some research on Joachim Peiper and the Malmedy Massacre trial, I came across the Harry Turtledove Wiki on http://www.wikia.com. Harry Turtledove is a novelist who writes alternative history novels like The Man With the Iron Heart in which the fictional Joachim Peiper takes over a fictional German resistance group after the fictional Reinhard Heydrich is killed in 1947 while trying to escape his fictional Alpine Redoubt.

On this page of my own website, I wrote that Col. Jochen Peiper was not a member of the Nazi party. Someone sent me an e-mail, challenging me on that statement, and cited Harry Turtledove’s claim as proof that Peiper was a Nazi. Harry Turtledove’s claim that Joachim Peiper’s Affiliations included the Nazi Party could be part of his Alternative History. I am not an Alternative History buff; just give me the real history and the facts.

On this website, I read this statement written by Jonathan F. Fanton regarding Joachim Peiper:

My father, Dwight Fanton, who is a graduate of the Yale Law School now in his nineties, worked on the prosecution staff for military proceedings at Dachau. He was the Chief Investigator on the case of Joachim Peiper, a leader of the Nazi forces at the Battle of the Bulge. My father documented widespread killing of civilians and other war crimes that led to Peiper’s conviction.

So Peiper was the “leader of the Nazi forces”? That must mean that Peiper was a Nazi. But who was the leader of the German Forces at the Battle of the Bulge?

Joachim Peiper on the witness stand at the Malmedy Massacre trial

I didn’t know that Peiper was convicted as a war criminal because of “widespread killing of civilians and other war crimes.” I thought that he was convicted of participating in a “common design” to violate the rules of warfare during the Malmedy Massacre incident. The Malmedy Massacre trial was one of the trials conducted by the American Military Tribunal. In all of the AMT proceedings, the charge was participating in a “common design.” Joachim Peiper was not convicted of personally perpetrating “widespread killing of civilians and other war crimes.”

The attorney for the defense persuaded most of the accused men not to testify in their own defense. Peiper not only testified, he offered to take the blame for all of the men involved in the Malmedy Massacre case.

The exact number of soldiers who surrendered to the Germans at Malmedy is unknown, but according to various accounts, it was somewhere between 85 and 125. After the captured Americans were herded into a field, they were allegedly shot down by Waffen-SS men from Peiper’s Battle Group in what an American TV documentary characterized as an orgy motivated by German “joy of killing.”

Forty-three of the Americans taken prisoner that day managed to escape and lived to tell about it. One of them was Kenneth Ahrens, pictured above, who was shot twice in the back after he surrendered with his hands in the air. Seventeen of the survivors of the Malmedy Massacre ran across the snow-covered field, and made their way to the village of Malmedy where they joined the 291st Engineer Battalion.

On this website you can read a tribute to Peiper by German author Gerry Frederics who writes real history, not alternative history. He mentions that the testimony of Kenneth Ahrens, a German-American soldier, was discredited.

Thinkmart usb-c ultra hd 5k universal laptop docking station for windows/mac. This quote is from the Gerry Frederics article:

[Peiper] was open and tolerant relative to the cultures and habits of other peoples, never overbearing or arrogant, even though he was accused of exactly that by amongst others the great SS General Sepp Dietrich. This impression was based on his superiority in every way. He was intellectually, culturally, physically and appearance-wise (he was blessed with movie star looks) a bit overpowering – in short he simply was a superior man and was consequently looked upon by lesser men as being ´arrogant´.

It didn´t help a bit that he was an individualist – something of an anomaly in the military. He was openly a-political and refused to join the Nazi party, something which was absolutely de rigueur at the times, particularly for a member of the elite SS. But that which was a given for the majority, meant nothing to a man of his character. To be German and to represent the very best German values and characteristics was the only thing that mattered to him – and indeed, he was German! He never doubted, he never gave up, he never wavered, he was always brave, knightly in his behavior – he was an inspiration, a German leader á la Götz von Berlichingen or Marshall Blücher men who also were individualistic to an extreme. In short, he was an officer in the very best Prussian tradition.

So was Joachim Peiper a member of the Nazi party, and “the leader of the Nazi forces in the Battle of the Bulge,” or was he a German military leader with no political affiliation?

This blog calls Peiper a “monster” but nevertheless points out that Peiper was not a Nazi:

While active as an SS officer, Peiper never joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The official listing of all SS of all middle and senior SS officers officers, SS-Dienstalterslisten, never listed Peiper.