daniel daners 🍉

On December 17, 1944, during the opening days of the Battle of the Bulge, a column of German SS tanks rolled through a crossroads near Malmedy, Belgium. They captured more than 100 American soldiers. The Americans were disarmed and herded into a snowy field. Then the Germans opened fire with machine guns. 84 American prisoners of war were killed. Survivors later said SS men walked among the bodies, shooting anyone who moved. The tanks belonged to a battle group led by SS Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Peiper. He was 29, a former aide to Heinrich Himmler, and one of the most decorated and feared tank commanders in the German army. His units had already been linked to massacres of civilians in Italy and on the Eastern Front. After the war, the U.S. Army put Peiper and dozens of his men on trial at Dachau for the Malmedy massacre. In 1946, he was sentenced to death by hanging. He never hanged. As the Cold War heated up, the trial came under fire over claims that interrogators had used abusive tactics. Sentences were reduced. Peiper's death sentence was commuted to life. In December 1956, after about 11 years in prison, Joachim Peiper walked free. He went to work for Porsche, then Volkswagen. In the early 1970s, he quietly moved to a house in the woods near the tiny village of Traves, in eastern France. He made a living as a translator. For years, nobody knew who he was. Then in June 1976, he walked into a shop in a nearby town to buy fencing for his dog. He paid with a check. It had his real name on it. A former member of the French Resistance recognized it. Within days, a French communist newspaper ran a story asking what a Nazi was doing living in France. Leaflets went up around the village. Graffiti appeared on walls, promising Peiper a July 14th he'd never forget. Bastille Day. His wife left for Germany. Peiper stayed. On the night of July 13, 1976, someone attacked his house and set it on fire. When firefighters finally got inside, they found a badly burned body. A group calling itself "The Avengers" claimed responsibility. Some refused to believe the body was even his. Rumors spread that Peiper had faked his own death and escaped. French police investigated. Nobody was ever identified. Nobody was ever charged. 50 years later, the murder of Joachim Peiper is still unsolved. The man the U.S. Army sentenced to hang for killing 84 American prisoners walked out of prison a free man. Then somebody else decided to settle the score.