*** biographies Jochen Peiper








World War II Biographies: Jochen Peiper (Germany, 1915�76)

 Jochen Peiper
Figure 1.--Thi is Joachim and his older brother Horst about 1924. Both would begin in the Hiler Youth and then enter the SS. Major influences in their lives were their war hero father and future arch NAZI General Walther von Reichenau.

SS Col. Jochen Peiper was a true believer in the NAZI cause. He was raised in a middle-class family. His father was a decorated Army Captain who served in Turkey during World War I. Walther von Reichenau was a family friend. Reichenau would become one of the most ardently NAZI of the major German generals. Jochen joined the Hitler Youth at an early age, but it is not clear if he joined or was brought into the HJ when the Voy Scouts weee abssorved. He was inducted into the SS at the age of 20 years, immediately caught up into the ethos of a faternal order of Germn patriots Himmler was creating. A biographer describes the experience. "It was one hour before midnight on November 9, 1935, when Joachim Piper swore absolute alligiance to Adolf Hitler .... Great red chalice-like torches--pylons fifreen feet high, adorned with menancing eagles -- stood on the elvated marble stage above the huge central square of the Odeonplatz. The cupped flames blazed brightly on each pedestal, spreding the faint odor of burning kerosene. to the year a backdrop of red curtains, twenty meters high, hung from the curved ceiling, whoch loomed above. Two massive stone lions glowered from the altar on to a 'sea of black steel helmets' in the great plza. The mass of uiformed SS trropers, ordered in rows and column, strangely reflected the blood-red glow of the torch light." [Parker] Heinrich Himmler, as head of the SS, surrounded himself with brutal and remorseless subordinates such as Reinhard Heydrich. Peiper was one of those men. His first important position was Himmler's adjutant. He made his name, however, in the Waffen-SS. He commanded the 1st SS-Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler regiment. He was involved in some of the major World War II battles including Kharkov, Kursk, and finally the Bulge. His brutal style of warfare made him one of Hitler's favorites. Hitler personallt chose him to lead what would be the spearhead of the Bulge offensive. Hitler made it clear to his commanders that nothing was to be allowed to slow them down. There is no dount that he was both committed to his F�hrer and brutal, there is some question about his effectiveness as a commander. Command errors may have ruined whatever small chance the Germans had of success. He was also implicated in major atrocities in Italy and Belgium. After the War, he became the central figure in the Malmedy Massacre investigation. It was never proven that he specifically order the masacre, but such atrocities were standard action in the East. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but later released. He was killed during a shoot out and bomb attack at his isolated retirement home in France, but his killers have never been identified. Given his ardent German nationlism and what the SS did in France, it seems strange and almost suisidal that he would retire there. One of the many unanswered questions about Peiper.

Sources

Parker, Danny S. Hitler's Warrior: The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochn Piper (2015), 480p.






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Created: 9:24 PM 5/29/2017
Last updated: 9:24 PM 5/29/2017