The Malmedy Massacre

The Malmedy Massacre

Author: Steven P. Remy

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-03-14

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 067497722X

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During the Battle of the Bulge, Waffen SS soldiers shot 84 American prisoners near the Belgian town of Malmedy—the deadliest mass execution of U.S. soldiers during World War II. The bloody deeds of December 17, 1944, produced the most controversial war crimes trial in American history. Drawing on newly declassified documents, Steven Remy revisits the massacre—and the decade-long controversy that followed—to set the record straight. After the war, the U.S. Army tracked down 74 of the SS men involved in the massacre and other atrocities and put them on trial at Dachau. All the defendants were convicted and sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Over the following decade, however, a network of Germans and sympathetic Americans succeeded in discrediting the trial. They claimed that interrogators—some of them Jewish émigrés—had coerced false confessions and that heat of battle conditions, rather than superiors’ orders, had led to the shooting. They insisted that vengeance, not justice, was the prosecution’s true objective. The controversy generated by these accusations, leveled just as the United States was anxious to placate its West German ally, resulted in the release of all the convicted men by 1957. The Malmedy Massacre shows that the torture accusations were untrue, and the massacre was no accident but was typical of the Waffen SS’s brutal fighting style. Remy reveals in unprecedented depth how German and American amnesty advocates warped our understanding of one of the war’s most infamous crimes through a systematic campaign of fabrications and distortions.


The 1st Schutzstaffel Panzer Division In the Battle of the Bulge

The 1st Schutzstaffel Panzer Division In the Battle of the Bulge

Author: Steve Kane

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2020-02-26

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 167817355X

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Merriam Press World War 2 History. An extremely readable account of the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" (LAH) throughout the Ardennes Offensive relating the actions of the LAH and a variety of German units who fought with them as well as considerable detail about the American units that fought against the 1st SS Panzer Division. Contents: Background; The Saga of Kampfgruppe Peiper; The Rest of the Saga; Analysis; Appendices: Waffen-SS/U.S. Army Officer Rank Equivalents; Chronology; Bibliography; Afterword; End Notes. 128 photos, 14 maps.


Soldiers of Destruction

Soldiers of Destruction

Author: Charles Sydnor

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1990-05-21

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780691008530

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Surveys the emergence of the Nazi SS and its Death's Head Division, noting the impact of this elite and powerful army upon military history.


The Waffen SS

The Waffen SS

Author: George H. Stein

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1966

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780801492754

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This landmark study, first published by Cornell University Press in 1966, shows how Hitler's elite army grew from a praetorian guard of barely 28,000 men at the beginning of the Second World War to a combat-hardened army of more than 500,000 in 1945. George H. Stein examines in detail the structure and organization of the Waffen SS and describes the rigid personnel selection and intensive physical, military, and ideological training that helped to create the tough and dedicated cadre around which the larger force of the later war years was built.


The 12th SS

The 12th SS

Author: Hubert Meyer

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-09-01

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 0811769232

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Part two of the defining work on Hitler's elite fanatical boy soldiers continues with the survivors of the bloody fighting in France regrouping to make a final stand in the Ardennes and Hungary before Germany was overcome by the Allies. A detailed and gripping account of the most famous, and infamous, division to fight in World War II for any side.


Loss and Redemption at St. Vith

Loss and Redemption at St. Vith

Author: Gregory Fontenot

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2019-11-15

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0826274358

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Loss and Redemption at St Vith closes a gap in the record of the Battle of the Bulge by recounting the exploits of the 7th Armored Division in a way that no other study has. Most accounts of the Battle of the Bulge give short-shrift to the interval during which the German forward progress stopped and the American counterattack began. This narrative centers on the 7th Armored Division for the entire length of the campaign, in so doing reconsidering the story of the whole battle through the lens of a single division and accounting for the reconstitution of the Division while in combat.


Swinging The Sledgehammer: The Combat Effectiveness Of German Heavy Tank Battalions In World War II

Swinging The Sledgehammer: The Combat Effectiveness Of German Heavy Tank Battalions In World War II

Author: Major Christopher W. Wilbeck

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1782897534

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This thesis is a historical analysis of the combat effectiveness of the German schwere Panzer-Abteilung or Heavy Tank Battalions during World War II. During the course of World War II, the German Army developed heavy tank battalions to fulfill the concept of breaking through enemy defenses so faster, lighter mechanized forces could exploit the rupture. These heavy tank battalions had several different tables of organization, but were always centered around either the Tiger or the Tiger II tank. They fought in virtually every theater of Europe against every enemy of Germany. Ultimately, the German military created eleven Army and three Waffen-SS heavy tank battalions. Of the Army battalions, the German command fielded ten as independent battalions, which were allocated to Army Groups as needed. The German Army assigned the last heavy tank battalion as an organic unit of the elite Panzer Grenadier Division Grossdeutschland. The Waffen-SS allocated all of their battalions to a different Waffen-SS Corps. Because these units were not fielded until late in 1942, they did not participate in Germany’s major offensive operations that dominated the early part of World War II. Germany’s strategic situation after mid-1943 forced their military onto the defensive. Consequently, there are very few instances when heavy tank battalions attacked as a breakthrough force. During the latter part of the war, they were used in many different ways to provide defensive assistance along very wide frontages. This study assesses the German heavy tank battalions as generally effective, primarily because of the high kill ratio they achieved. However, based upon observations from a wide variety of examples, this study also outlines several areas where changes may have increased their effectiveness.


Himmler's Bosnian Division

Himmler's Bosnian Division

Author: George Lepre

Publisher: Schiffer Publishing

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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This is the story of the "Handschar," a Muslim combat formation created by the Germans to "restore order in Bosnia." What actually transpired was quite different.