The Malmedy massacre was a German war crime committed by soldiers of the on 17 December 1944 at the Baugnez crossroads near the city of Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945). Soldiers of summarily killed eighty-four U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs) who had surrendered after a brief battle. The soldiers had grouped the U.S. POWs in a farmer's field, where they used machine guns to shoot and kill the grouped POWs; many of the prisoners of war who survived the gunfire of the massacre were executed with a gunshot to the head.
Besides the summary execution of the eighty-four U.S. POWs at the farmer's field, the term "Malmedy massacre" also includes other massacres of civilians and POWs in Belgian villages and towns in the time after their first massacre of U.S. POWs at Malmedy; these war crimes were the subjects of the Malmedy massacre trial (May–July 1946), which was a part of the Dachau trials (1945–1947).
Background
Political
Late in the Second World War, the Third Reich's war-crime violations of the Geneva Conventions were a type of psychological warfare meant to induce fear of the and of the in the soldiers of the Allied armies and the U.S. Army on the Western Front (1939–1945) — thus Hitler ordered that battles be executed and fought with the same no-quarter brutality with which the and the fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front (1941–1945) in the Soviet Union.
For their part of the Ardennes counter-attack, the was the armored spearhead of the left wing of the 6th SS Panzer Army, under the command of Joachim Peiper. After the infantry had breached the U.S. lines, Peiper was to advance his tanks and armored vehicles on the road to Ligneuville and travel through the towns of Stavelot, Trois-Ponts, and Werbomont in order to reach and seize the bridges over the River Meuse that are in the vicinity of the city of Huy. Because the strategy of the Ardennes Counteroffensive had reserved the roads with the strongest roadway for the bulk traffic of the tanks of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, the convoys of traveled secondary roads with weak roadways that proved unsuitable for the weights of armored military vehicles, such as Tiger II tanks.
American counter-attack
The Germans were surprised that the Ardennes Counteroffensive on the northern front — the frontline "bulge" in the Battle of the Bulge — met much resistance from the U.S. Army; for most of a day, an American reconnaissance platoon of 22 soldiers (18 infantrymen and four artillery observers) battled and delayed approximately 500 paratroops in the village of Lanzerath, Belgium.
At dusk, the German 9th Parachute Regiment (3rd Parachute Division) out-flanked and captured the American reconnaissance platoon as they withdrew for want of ammunition to continue the fight — halting the progress of Kampfgruppe Peiper through the village of Lanzerath. In that battle, the Waffen-SS paratroops killed one of the artillery observers and wounded 14 of the other American soldiers. Upon capturing the American reconnaissance platoon, the paratroops paused their attack out of caution, believing that a greater force of American infantry and tanks was hiding in the woods. For more than 12 hours, the over-cautious soldiers of the 9th Parachute Regiment did not act until the midnight arrival of Peiper's tanks to Lanzerath; then the Waffen-SS paratroops explored and found no American soldiers in the woods. After capturing Honsfeld, Peiper detoured from his assigned route to seize a small fuel depot in Büllingen, where the infantry summarily executed dozens of U.S. POWs. Afterward, Peiper advanced to the west, toward the River Meuse and captured Ligneuville, bypassing the towns of Mödersheid, Schoppen, Ondenval, and Thirimont. The terrain and poor quality of the roads made the advance of difficult. At the exit to the village of Thirimont, the armored spearhead was unable to travel the road directly to Ligneuville, and Peiper deviated from the planned route: Rather than turning to the left, the armored spearhead turned to the right, and advanced toward the crossroads of Baugnez, equidistant from the cities of Malmedy, Ligneuville, and Waimes. The first of the 43 survivors of the massacre were encountered by a patrol from the 291st Combat Engineer Battalion at about 2:30 p.m. on 17 December, hours after the massacre. and 10 corpses showed fatal blunt trauma head injuries, in which blows by a rifle butt fractured the skull. Other investigations claimed that the killed fewer U.S. POWs, and put the figure of the dead as being between 300 and 375 US soldiers and 111 civilians executed by the .
War crimes trial
thumbnail|right| Joachim Peiper during the [[Malmedy massacre trial]]
The Malmedy massacre trial, from May to July 1946, established that the commanders in the field bore command responsibility for the killing surrendered U.S. POWs; specifically General Josef Dietrich (6th Panzer Army); Werner Poetschke (1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler); and Joachim Peiper () whose soldiers committed the actual war crime at Malmedy.
The war-crime cases of the and soldiers and officers were conducted at the Dachau trials held in the deactivated Dachau concentration camp, in occupied Germany, from 1945 to 1947. The Dachau Trials prosecuted and punished war criminals by imposing 43 death sentences (including Peiper and Dietrich), 22 sentences to life-long imprisonment, and eight sentences to short imprisonment. However, none of the death sentences were carried out, and Peiper and Dietrich were released in 1956 and 1955, respectively.