SS - standartenführer der Waffen - SS Peiper . Jochen Peiper was born in Berlin - Wilmersdorf on 30 January 1915 son of an army officer . His father Captain Waldemar Peiper served with the small German detachment that took part in the Guerrilla fighting against the British troops & native auxiliaries in German East Africa during WW1 . Jochen Peiper decided to join the SS with the intention of becoming an officer in Himmlers elite guard units . He first joined the elite SS - Reiterstandarte 7 of Berlin & was later accepted for duty with Sepp Dietrichs Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler . Peiper was a member of the first class of officer candidates to graduate from the SS Junkerschule at Braunschweig in 1935 . After WW2 Jochen Peiper was prosecuted as a war criminal for the killings in Malmedy 1944 even though he gave no order to execute prisoners & also he was 7 KM away when the incident occurred . He was convicted & originally sentenced to death however on 30 January 1951 this sentence was changed to life in prison . About the troops under his command in 1944 Peiper said : I recognize that after the battles of Normandy my unit was composed mainly of young fanatical soldiers . A good deal of them had lost their parents their sisters & brothers during the bombings of Germany . They had seen for themselves in Cologne thousands of mangled corpses after a terror raid had passed . During the Malmedy trial Jochen Peiper shared a cell in Dachau with tank commander SS - Untersturmführer Arndt Fischer . On 17 November 1995 Fischer said : we didnt just talk about the daily progress of the trial . For example he once told me that he had worked on the idea of a regimental march song . In this connection I heard the following verses for the first time from his mouth : once we rode in flames to Valhalla they asked us for our invitations then we called out with much laughter were from the Leibstandarte & one said softly that hed known us for a long time theyre from the 1. Panzer regiment . I remember the text so well because I printed it with the stub of a pencil on one of the boards of our bunks for subsequent generations . I wonder if anyone ever read it ? . In 1956 Jochen Peiper was paroled & released from prison . 20 years later in 1976 he was murdered in France . The French did not expend a great deal of energy searching for those responsible for the attack upon Peiper & no one has been charged with the crime to this day . In respect to this revered Waffen SS commander veterans refer to Jochen Peiper as Der Letzte Gefallen The Last Of The Fallen . He is quoted as saying : I was a National Socialist & I remain one . The Germany of today is no longer a great nation it has become a province of Europe & history is always written by the victors & the histories of the losing parties belong to the shrinking circle of those who were their . Images : these photographs of Jochen Peiper were said to have been taken at the Austrian front in April of 1945 . Common : Bundesarchiv .
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 01:31:02 +0000
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