Malmedy massacre trial

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The Malmedy massacre
The Malmedy massacre

The Malmedy massacre trial (U.S. vs. Valentin Bersin, et al) was held in May–July 1946 in the Dachau concentration camp to try the German Waffen-SS soldiers accused of the Malmedy massacre of December 17, 1944. The highest-ranking defendant was the former SS general, Sepp Dietrich. It attracted great attention because of the nature of the crime and the later disputes about the conduct of the trial.

Contents

[edit] Before the trial

The revelation of the Malmedy massacre had outraged the American forces in the European theater as well as in the United States. Thus, it is no wonder that from the end of the war, the allies started to look for the persons who had perpetrated these massacres among the hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war they had under their control. However, during the investigation, it was not possible to prevent the accused from communicating with one another. As a consequence, they could easily determine what the investigators were looking for. Moreover, it seems that they devised versions of the facts which were relatively concordant.

It was ultimately only once that they were gathered in a German civil prison, Schwabisch Hall, requisitioned by the military authorities of occupation, that it was possible to prevent organized communication between the accused. The defendants were held in this prison from December 1945 to April 1946. It was during this period that the interrogations by the investigators took place.

Because of the demobilizations at the end of the World War II, the American army, which was investigating the facts, was confronted with a shortage of staff with sufficient experience of legal procedures. To solve that problem, it called upon Europeans who had little understanding of American criminal law. Furthermore, some of the people had apparently had problems with the Nazi regime before leaving Europe. Among others, it seems that two of the main investigators, Lieutenant Perl and a civil auxiliary, were Jews who had fled from Germany to the United States before the war.

This might explain why the interrogations and the preliminary investigations were not carried out rigorously. It was later proven that some defendants were subjected to mock trials, including false death sentences, in order to extort confessions. On the other hand, as an investigation led by the Senate of the United States after the trial would eventually show in 1949, the defendants were not tortured nor deliberately starved in order to obtain consent. The senatorial commission however admitted that some of them could have been occasionally beaten by their guards.

All these facts would therefore weigh on the trial and its aftermath.

[edit] Trial

The trial – Case Number 6-24 (US vs. Valentin Bersin et al) – was one of the Dachau Trials, and took place at Dachau from May 16, 1946 to July 16, 1946. The defendants appeared before a military court made up of American officers of high rank. The court functioned however according to rules founded previously by the international military tribunal judging the Nazis dignitaries in the Nuremberg Trials.

The defendants were 75 former soldiers, most from the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler". The highest in rank were General Sepp Dietrich, head of 6th SS Panzer Army, his chief of staff, General Fritz Krämer, Lieutenant General Hermann Priess, commander of the I SS Panzer Corps and Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Peiper, commander of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment, the core element of Kampfgruppe Peiper, which perpetrated the massacre.

The counts of indictment related to the massacre of more than three hundred American prisoners "in the vicinity of Malmedy, Honsfeld, Büllingen, Ligneuville, Stoumont, La Gleize, Cheneux, Petit Thier, Trois Ponts, Stavelot, Wanne and Lutrebois", between December 16, 1944 and January 13, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge as well as the massacre of hundred Belgian civilians mainly in the vicinity of Stavelot.[1]

The defense was directed by Colonel Willis M. Everett Jr., a lawyer from Atlanta, assisted by other American and German lawyers. Everett had little or no experience in criminal law and was intimidated by having to defend 75 people on short notice. On the other hand, the German lawyers, although experienced, were unfamiliar with the American military judicial system. The prosecution was led by Colonel Burton L Ellis.

Apparently, no defendant asked for a postponement of the trial in order to obtain more time for the examination of the case and of the documents made available to the defenders.

The evidence of the prosecution were based primarily on affidavits collected before the trial from the defendants and from witnesses. The prosecutors also specified that many statements had been obtained from the defendants thanks to various ruses and tricks.[2] These procedures were however not repudiated by the court, in spite of repeated defense objections, and the affidavits were accepted when they accused the informant himself as well as when they blamed other co-defendants.[3]

Six defendants, including Peiper, complained to the court they had been victims of physical violence or threats of violence intended to force them to provide extrajudicial confessions during the instruction of the trial.[4] The people in charge of these interrogations refuted these charges, which were not upheld by the court.

The defendants were invited by the prosecution to take the stand to confirm the statements they had made before under oath.[5] The defense very quickly decided not to have the defendants take the stand to their own behalf. Indeed, after nine of them had taken the stand, it became obvious that they accused fellow defendants in order to minimize their own roles. For Everett, it was certain that this would considerably weaken the position of the defense. It needed nevertheless to convince the defendants to give up their right to be heard by the court.[6] Among the nine, only three had cited the mistreatment which they had allegedly undergone.

For most of the defendants, the defense made the point that they did not participate to the facts and if they did, it was pursuant to obeying a superior's orders.[7]

The court eventually decided that all the defendants but one were guilty to differing degrees. Forty-three of them were condemned to death by hanging; the others were condemned to from ten years to life in prison. Peiper was sentenced to death; Dietrich was condemned to a life sentence and Priess to 20 years of imprisonment. The men sentenced to death requested to be shot by a fire squad rather than hung, citing their military status, but this was refused by the court.

The deliberations of the court were rather short, on average a few minutes being devoted to each defendant.

[edit] Verdicts

On July 16, 1946 the verdict was delivered on 73 members of the Kampfgruppe Peiper.

  • 43 sentenced to death by hanging, including Peiper
  • 22 sentenced to life imprisonment
  • 2 sentenced to 20 years imprisonment
  • 1 sentenced to 15 years
  • 5 sentenced to 10 years

[edit] After the trial

Once the court had pronounced the sentences, the case could have been closed. In fact, this was only the beginning. One of the issues with the trial was that if it had been held in an American court with standard United States of American federal standards on jurisprudence, then the mock trials used for obtaining statements and confessions alone would have placed the trial in serious jeopardy of being declared a mistrial or having the charges thrown out of court entirely.

[edit] Review procedure

Pursuant to procedure, an in-house review was undertaken by the American occupation army in Germany; the trial was carefully examined by a deputy judge. Taking into account the doubts which surrounded the investigation phase, he issued in several cases recommendations of free pardon or commutation of the death sentences, which were often followed by General Lucius Clay, the commander of the American zone in occupied Germany.[8] This procedure can however not be regarded as a true appeal procedure.

[edit] Other appeals

Colonel Everett was convinced that a fair trial had not been granted to the defendants. Furthermore, in Germany proper, voices rose from various circles to speak for the sentenced men. Among others, the Princess Helene Elisabeth von Isenburg, founder of Stille Hilfe, a movement for the assistance of prisoners of war and internees (sometimes presented as an organization assisting ex-Nazis), managed to mobilize certain members of the Catholic and Protestant hierarchies in Germany in favor of the defendants. Rudolf Aschenauer, who had been the defender of one of the accused in the trial of the Einsatzgruppen had also been in touch with the defendants and had worked for the revision of the trial results.

Approximately sixteen months after the end of the trial, almost all the defendants presented affidavits repudiating their former confessions and alleging aggravated duress of all types.[9] Among others, they claimed to have been punched in the mouth and testicles, resulting in irremediable disabilities.

Colonel Everett lodged appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States and the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The latter declared itself incompetent, since it acknowledged only procedures engaged by states and not by individuals. The Supreme Court made no decision. Four judges decided in favor of a revision and four against. It was impossible to obtain a majority, the ninth judge, Robert Jackson, refusing to issue an opinion because he had been a prosecutor in the main Nuremberg trial.

[edit] The Simpson Commission

The turmoil raised by this case caused the Secretary of the Army, Kenneth Royall, to create a commission chaired by Judge Gordon A. Simpson of Texas to investigate. Apparently, the Commission was not interested only in the facts of the Malmedy massacre trial, but had also to deal with other cases judged by the International Military Tribunals (in fact mainly American) in Europe.

The commission arrived in Europe on July 30, 1948 and issued its report on 14 September. In this report, it notably recommended that the twelve remaining death sentences be commuted to life imprisonment.

The Commission expressed the opinion that the pre-trial investigation had not been properly conducted and that the members felt that no death sentence should be executed where such a doubt existed.[10] The commission did not find evidence of torture in the case of the defendants of Malmedy trial, even if it noted the reality of the mock trials.

One of the members of the commission, Judge Edward L. Van Roden of Pennsylvania, dissented with the conclusions and made several public statements affirming that physical violence had been inflicted on the accused.

Furthermore, under his signature, an article denouncing the conditions under which the assumed guilt of Malmedy defendants and of other questionable cases was going to be published in February 1949 with the assistance of the National Council for Prevention of War.[11] To the charges of violence confining with torture, Van Roden notably added that during the instruction, the defendants had been put in cells isolated for periods from several months or had been starved.

This article would cause great turmoil in the United States, because it described behaviors in total contradiction with the American principles of fair play.[12] In response, General Clay commuted six more death sentences to life imprisonment. He however refused to commute the six remaining death sentences, including Peiper’s, but the executions were postponed.

[edit] The Senate subcommittee

The trial became so infamous that the Senate decided to investigate. Choosing a committee that would carry on the investigation was not easy. Ultimately, the case was entrusted to the Committee on Armed Services over the Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments. The investigation was entrusted to a subcommittee of three senators where the president, Raymond E. Baldwin, had been a member of the same law firm as one of the trial prosecutors.

The subcommittee was set up on March 29, 1949, at the beginning of the Cold War and during the Berlin blockade and worked during several months. Its members went to Germany and during its hearings, the commission heard from no less than 108 witnesses.

A young and ambitious Senator in search of publicity, Joseph McCarthy, had obtained from the subcommittee’s chairman authorization to attend the hearings. Apparently, McCarthy, who felt that his senatorial career was fading, had decided to seize the opportunity for publicity. In addition, his state, Wisconsin, had a large population of German extraction and he may have had political motivations in his work on behalf of the Malmedy defendants.[13]

The fact is that McCarthy seemed to have taken complete charge of the subcommittee’s investigations and tried to press his views at all costs, although he was only attending because of Baldwin’s courtesy. He used quite aggressive questioning, even towards the survivors of the massacre, whom he on occasion accused of being liars.[14] Moreover, employing tactics for which he would be later become infamous, he usually distorted the facts in order to corroborate his vision of the case. In that way, all the investigators were Jewish, and many of the sentenced had not only had been illegally beaten but were also 15 or 16 years old teenagers.[15]

The last clash took place in May 1949 when he asked that Lieutenant Perl to be given a lie detection test. Since this had been rejected by Baldwin, McCarthy left the session claiming that Baldwin was trying to whitewash the American military.[16] Thereafter, he tried to denounce Baldwin in front of the whole Senate, but this was repudiated by the Commission on Armed Forces, which clearly showed its support for Baldwin and eventually adopted the report of the subcommittee. A little later, McCarthy started the witch-hunt that made him famous.

[edit] The subcommittee report

In its report, the subcommittee acknowledged some facts, such as the mock trials, the use of hoods or containment. On the other hand, its findings did not support the most serious charges, like the beatings, torture, the fake hangings and the starvation of the defendants. Furthermore, it had completely rejected the allegations of Judge Van Roden.

In addition, the subcommittee considered that commutations of sentences pronounced by General Clay had occurred because of U.S. Army recognition that the investigations had not always been properly carried out or that procedural irregularities could have occurred during the trial.

On the other hand, the commission did not take a position on the culpability of the condemned. On the contrary, it endorsed the conclusions General Clay issued in the particular case of Lieutenant Christ. In summary, Clay had written that “he was personally convinced of the culpability of Christ and, that for this reason his death sentence was fully justified. But, to apply this sentence would be equivalent accepting a bad administration of justice, which led him, not without reserve, to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment”.[17]

[edit] Last commutations

Ultimately, the commission report combined with the intensification of the Cold War, which required that the United State have the West Germans on their side, led the American army to commute the last death sentence to life imprisonment. In following years, all of the men were released, one after another, the last being Joachim Peiper.

[edit] The aftermath

 This section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (April 2008)

Since 1946, the trial and its shortcomings have been used by the revisionists and negationist media in the United States and in Europe in order to try to invalidate the results of the Nuremberg trials as well as the existing information concerning the Holocaust.

For instance, already in 1950, French author Maurice Bardèche devoted a whole chapter of his book Nuremberg II or the False Money Makers to the Malmedy massacre and the trial that followed. The bulk of his account of the lawsuit is however based on the disputable article of Judge Van Roden which, according to the subcommittee, quoted unproven facts. Furthermore, Bardèche did not hesitate to mix lies and truth, notably writing that some of the men sentenced to death for the Malmedy massacre had already been executed.[18]

But this was only the beginning. Since then this case is regularly brought up in the revisionist literature and is presented as a show trial, the outcome already determined. The way the Malmedy massacre trial is presented and commented upon is however often quite biased. Among others, it often happens that only the Malmedy massacre is taken into consideration while it is generally overlooked that it was not the only one that came under examination of the court, since several massacres of prisoners of war and civilians had taken place within a few days.

On the other hand, there is little doubt that some of the perpetrators escaped any punishment, whereas innocents were condemned for crimes they did not commit.

Michael Reynolds might well have written the most relevant conclusion on this episode of the Second World War: “In the final analysis, justice itself became another casualty of the incident.”[19]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ War Crimes Office (1948). Case Number 6-24 (US vs. Valentin Bersin et al). U.S. Army Trial Reviews and Recommendations. United States Department of War. Retrieved on 2006-12-18. This is a web transcription of microfilmed archives of the original US Army documents. See the site's introduction for more information. The URL is to a HTML frame, you must select "US011" in the left pane to get to case "6-24". The direct URL to the case page is here.
  2. ^ Ib., p. 37
  3. ^ Ib.
  4. ^ Ib.
  5. ^ Ib.
  6. ^ Malmedy massacre Investigation – Report of the Subcommittee of Committee on armed services – United States Senate – Eighty-first Congress, fist session, pursuant to S. res. 42, Investigation of action of army with respect to trial of persons responsible for the massacre of American soldiers, battle of the Bulge, near Malmedy, Belgium, December 1944, 13 octobre 1949, p. 27
  7. ^ United States v. Valentin Bersin, and al., Case nr. 6-24, Review and recommendations of the Deputy Judge Advocate for war crimes, 20 October 1947, quoted above
  8. ^ Ib.
  9. ^ Malmedy massacre Investigation, quoted aboe, p. 4
  10. ^ Malmedy massacre Investigation, p. 28
  11. ^ American atrocities in Germany, by Judge Edward L. Van Roden, The Progressive, février 1949.
  12. ^ Malmedy massacre Investigation, p. 30
  13. ^ The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate, Robert Griffith, University of Massachusetts Press, 1987, p. 22
  14. ^ The Nightmare Decade: The Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy, Fred J. Cook, Random House, 1971, p. 133
  15. ^ The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate, p. 24
  16. ^ The Nightmare Decade: The Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy, cité ci-dessus, p. 133
  17. ^ Malmedy massacre Investigation, p. 31
  18. ^ Nuremberg II ou les Faux monnayeurs, Maurice Bardèche, Editions Les Sept Couleurs, 1950, pp. 70 et suiv.
  19. ^ Massacre At Malmédy During the Battle of the Bulge, Michael Reynolds[1]

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