Joachim Peiper by Jens Westemeier, A Review
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Tom Houlihan
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sid guttridge
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Hi Guys,
I think the unseen hand of a moderator has moved to set the thread back on course. Personally I think all posts should always remain up so that others can see who or what causes the problems. However, that quibble aside, some sort of moderator action was clearly in order here. Indeed, it could easily have occurred earlier.
Cheers,
Sid.
I think the unseen hand of a moderator has moved to set the thread back on course. Personally I think all posts should always remain up so that others can see who or what causes the problems. However, that quibble aside, some sort of moderator action was clearly in order here. Indeed, it could easily have occurred earlier.
Cheers,
Sid.
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pzrmeyer2
the split thread pertaining to Allied treatmetn of POWs is here: http://www.feldgrau.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27674
this is about Westemeier's book and my review.
this is about Westemeier's book and my review.
one needent look far when you're around.Personally I think all posts should always remain up so that others can see who or what causes the problems.
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Paddy Keating
A post I made addressing the question of Peiper's NSDAP membership in relation to his membership of the SS has also disappeared along with the off-topic and trolling posts. Bad show.
Here are the quotes again.
"Wenn wir denn Krieg verlieren, wird es uns wegen dieser Dinge ganz schön dreckig gehen [We had better win this war or else we are going to be in big trouble because of these things]" (1943)
"After the battles of Normandy my unit was composed mainly of young, fanatical soldiers. Many of them had lost their parents, sisters and brothers during the bombing. They had seen for themselves in places like Cologne the thousands of mangled corpses after a terror raid. Their hatred for the enemy was such that I could not always keep it under control."
"History is always written by the victor, and the histories of the losing parties belong to the shrinking circle of those who were there."
"I was a Nazi and I remain one...The Germany of today is no longer a great nation, it has become a province of Europe"
"[Malmedy] is so long ago now. Even I don't know the truth. If I had ever known it, I have long forgotten it. All I know is that I took the blame as a good CO should and was punished accordingly."
"I was a Nazi and I remain one...The Germany of today is no longer a great nation, it has become a province of Europe" (1967)
Like many of his comrades, Peiper understood that the Final Solution posed moral problems. He said as much in 1943. His boss, Himmler, referred to the same problems in 1942 when announcing the Final Solution. They knew it was morally wrong according to conventional moral codes.
Of course, the people referring to those moral codes when condemning Germans for what was done in the early 1940s to certain ethnic groups do not seem quite so quick to cite these codes when dicussing other examples of mass-murder by regimes, like the Bolshevik democides and genocides, the Anglo-American terror bombing campaign and the partially implemented American plan to kill off millions of Germans after the war.
I referred to this in some detail in one of the deleted posts. Some might say that it is off-topic in relation to Jochen Peiper but given that Peiper has been accused of aiding and abetting genocide, of murder and of war crimes by Westemeier, it is probably worth looking at the events of the period in question against a wider historical backdrop.
We shall never know what happened at the Malmedy crossroads but the most reasonable explanation is that a young Waffen-SS man of the kind described by Colonel Peiper as fanatical and driven to hatred by Anglo-American terror bombing flipped out and wasted some Americans. Once one soldier opened fire, others joined in in a scenario not unlike the one filmed and photographed at Dachau when some GIs ran amok and massacred members of a Waffen-SS medical unit that had entered the internment camp after the flight of the guards and had been trying to assist internees and restore some sort of order.
Fog of war and all that...
If there were any hard evidence against Jochen Peiper in any of the official files, then some ambitious lawyer or prosecutor would have hauled him back into court in the 1960s or 1970s, a time when anyone who had been posted to a KZ camp for five minutes was being dragged in front of courts in a Germany keen to show her new masters that she really had changed for the better. The Italians would have pursued him were there any evidence. So would the Belgians.
In the end, they had nothing on Peiper. Nothing at all that would stand up, even in a biased courtroom. And they'd already tried it on once before. Peiper had actually offered himself as a sacrifice if his men were allowed to go free. He assumed responsibility, even if he was careful to point out that he did not order the killing of the GIs at Malmedy. He evidently had character, an attribute that is clearly beyond the comprehension of some of the individuals participating in this discussion. And he was honest about his politics. One can be a national socialist without wishing to commit or condone genocide. Genocide and National Socialism do not go hand in hand. Himmler's Final Solution was really just a cynical exercise in economics but as H discussion is out of bounds here, I will say no more about that.
If Peiper was "a HIAG poster boy", then he seems to have been rather an unwilling one. He was Nazi in spirit but like many of his peers and contemporaries in the SS, was clearly disdainful of the NSDAP and the Golden Pheasants who ran things. He joined the LSSAH in October 1933 but did not join the NSDAP until the late 1930s, when political pressure was brought to bear on LSSAH and SS-VT officers to set an example by joining the party.
Of course, this is a dangerous truth from the viewpoint of those charged with ensuring that national socialist ideas to not gain a foothold in the wider consciousness because it shows younger people utterly uninspired by today's political system in the West that one does not have to join a "far right" movement - national socialism and fascism actually being leftwing philosophies - in order to believe in and promote national socialist ideals, ideals that worked quite well in other countries like Egypt and Argentina until the Moneybags of Wall Street ensured the imposition of economic blockades and sanctions against the Nasser and Perón governments. The fact, where German National Socialism is concerned, is that Hitler and his cronies sold the revolution out to the same Moneybags early on so it was always doomed. On that score, men like Jochen Peiper were not only "hard done by" after the Second World War but before and during it too, because they were betrayed by the Messiah for whom they vowed to fight.
Nevertheless, men like Peiper have to be demonised because they cannot be permitted to be seen as heroes or idealists, hence the hachet jobs as typified by Westemeier's revised biography. It all boils down to money and politics in the end and just who gets to control things. Peiper may not have been an idealist but he fought heroically for an ideology that was very widely approved of around the world before 1.9.1939, when Britain and France decided, each for their own reasons, that it was time to do something about the German Renaissance. To suggest, as Westemeier does, that Peiper attempted to conceal the fact that he had been a Nazi is part of the process of demonisation but it is not true. Peiper was an unrepentant Nazi. Just on that question alone, the book fails.
PK
Here are the quotes again.
"Wenn wir denn Krieg verlieren, wird es uns wegen dieser Dinge ganz schön dreckig gehen [We had better win this war or else we are going to be in big trouble because of these things]" (1943)
"After the battles of Normandy my unit was composed mainly of young, fanatical soldiers. Many of them had lost their parents, sisters and brothers during the bombing. They had seen for themselves in places like Cologne the thousands of mangled corpses after a terror raid. Their hatred for the enemy was such that I could not always keep it under control."
"History is always written by the victor, and the histories of the losing parties belong to the shrinking circle of those who were there."
"I was a Nazi and I remain one...The Germany of today is no longer a great nation, it has become a province of Europe"
"[Malmedy] is so long ago now. Even I don't know the truth. If I had ever known it, I have long forgotten it. All I know is that I took the blame as a good CO should and was punished accordingly."
"I was a Nazi and I remain one...The Germany of today is no longer a great nation, it has become a province of Europe" (1967)
Like many of his comrades, Peiper understood that the Final Solution posed moral problems. He said as much in 1943. His boss, Himmler, referred to the same problems in 1942 when announcing the Final Solution. They knew it was morally wrong according to conventional moral codes.
Of course, the people referring to those moral codes when condemning Germans for what was done in the early 1940s to certain ethnic groups do not seem quite so quick to cite these codes when dicussing other examples of mass-murder by regimes, like the Bolshevik democides and genocides, the Anglo-American terror bombing campaign and the partially implemented American plan to kill off millions of Germans after the war.
I referred to this in some detail in one of the deleted posts. Some might say that it is off-topic in relation to Jochen Peiper but given that Peiper has been accused of aiding and abetting genocide, of murder and of war crimes by Westemeier, it is probably worth looking at the events of the period in question against a wider historical backdrop.
We shall never know what happened at the Malmedy crossroads but the most reasonable explanation is that a young Waffen-SS man of the kind described by Colonel Peiper as fanatical and driven to hatred by Anglo-American terror bombing flipped out and wasted some Americans. Once one soldier opened fire, others joined in in a scenario not unlike the one filmed and photographed at Dachau when some GIs ran amok and massacred members of a Waffen-SS medical unit that had entered the internment camp after the flight of the guards and had been trying to assist internees and restore some sort of order.
Fog of war and all that...
If there were any hard evidence against Jochen Peiper in any of the official files, then some ambitious lawyer or prosecutor would have hauled him back into court in the 1960s or 1970s, a time when anyone who had been posted to a KZ camp for five minutes was being dragged in front of courts in a Germany keen to show her new masters that she really had changed for the better. The Italians would have pursued him were there any evidence. So would the Belgians.
In the end, they had nothing on Peiper. Nothing at all that would stand up, even in a biased courtroom. And they'd already tried it on once before. Peiper had actually offered himself as a sacrifice if his men were allowed to go free. He assumed responsibility, even if he was careful to point out that he did not order the killing of the GIs at Malmedy. He evidently had character, an attribute that is clearly beyond the comprehension of some of the individuals participating in this discussion. And he was honest about his politics. One can be a national socialist without wishing to commit or condone genocide. Genocide and National Socialism do not go hand in hand. Himmler's Final Solution was really just a cynical exercise in economics but as H discussion is out of bounds here, I will say no more about that.
If Peiper was "a HIAG poster boy", then he seems to have been rather an unwilling one. He was Nazi in spirit but like many of his peers and contemporaries in the SS, was clearly disdainful of the NSDAP and the Golden Pheasants who ran things. He joined the LSSAH in October 1933 but did not join the NSDAP until the late 1930s, when political pressure was brought to bear on LSSAH and SS-VT officers to set an example by joining the party.
Of course, this is a dangerous truth from the viewpoint of those charged with ensuring that national socialist ideas to not gain a foothold in the wider consciousness because it shows younger people utterly uninspired by today's political system in the West that one does not have to join a "far right" movement - national socialism and fascism actually being leftwing philosophies - in order to believe in and promote national socialist ideals, ideals that worked quite well in other countries like Egypt and Argentina until the Moneybags of Wall Street ensured the imposition of economic blockades and sanctions against the Nasser and Perón governments. The fact, where German National Socialism is concerned, is that Hitler and his cronies sold the revolution out to the same Moneybags early on so it was always doomed. On that score, men like Jochen Peiper were not only "hard done by" after the Second World War but before and during it too, because they were betrayed by the Messiah for whom they vowed to fight.
Nevertheless, men like Peiper have to be demonised because they cannot be permitted to be seen as heroes or idealists, hence the hachet jobs as typified by Westemeier's revised biography. It all boils down to money and politics in the end and just who gets to control things. Peiper may not have been an idealist but he fought heroically for an ideology that was very widely approved of around the world before 1.9.1939, when Britain and France decided, each for their own reasons, that it was time to do something about the German Renaissance. To suggest, as Westemeier does, that Peiper attempted to conceal the fact that he had been a Nazi is part of the process of demonisation but it is not true. Peiper was an unrepentant Nazi. Just on that question alone, the book fails.
PK
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sniper1shot
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Sorry about the Split, but we got waaaaaaaaaaaay off topic on this one.
Appologise about the early split and some posts were moved that maybe could of stayed.....that was my bad.....but in my opinion was definately needed.
Nothing was deleted.
I have tried to move the odd post back on request but it is not happening the way I would like......just copy your post and repost here.
Appologise about the early split and some posts were moved that maybe could of stayed.....that was my bad.....but in my opinion was definately needed.
Nothing was deleted.
I have tried to move the odd post back on request but it is not happening the way I would like......just copy your post and repost here.
Only he is lost who gives himself up as lost.
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Paddy Keating
No sweat. I'd be wary of moving things around in phpBB. You were absolutely right to split off the posts in question and I am sorry about being off-topic. I just felt that the Morgenthau scheme needed airing in view of the sarcastic riposte to the initial passing reference. Anyway, the total lack of reaction from the other team to the question of the attempts to portray Peiper as trying to deny or conceal his Nazism and his - belated - membership of the NSDAP is noted. Of course, they probably haven't read the book. 
Paceque amor.
PK
Paceque amor.
PK
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sid guttridge
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mellenthin
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Re: Joachim Peiper by Jens Westemeier, A Review
I am grateful for the review because it prevents someone from wasting his money. 
Re: Joachim Peiper by Jens Westemeier, A Review
I also read the review but found the book very good indeed ! Read the book in conjunction with Jochen Peiper by Patrick Agte and the two will give you a fuller view of Jochen Peipermellenthin wrote:I am grateful for the review because it prevents someone from wasting his money.
Dutto1
Re: Joachim Peiper by Jens Westemeier, A Review
Herr Jens Westemeyer as an author is not in an enviable position. Whilst not using any wrong facts, his general undertone on the subject of the Waffen SS officer Joachim Peiper does not invite any great acceptance. Peiper was without any doubt a physical hero. To judge Peiper's moral qualities against the background of his time needs a little more than a general downgrading of his character. Quite apart from Herrr Westemeyer's book: The crimes and misconduct that he and the soldiers serving under his command have been charged with in the Soviet Union, in Italy, and in Belgium are largely seen from a moralistic viewpoint of the victor. Some of it clearly contains lies, rumour and innuendo. One example is the use of the term 'Blowtorch Battalion'. Blowtorch means LÖTLAMPE in German and is nothing but a soldering implement used to heat metal surfaces, widely used by mechanized units and armoured units in daily vehicle repair work and maintenace, or to start engines in icy temperatures and not in burning down eastern European villages. A single tracer bullet will suffice to set fire to a whole village of thatch-roofed, wooden, Russian buildings.
The so-called Malmedy Massacre is just another example in which he and his soldiers are totally misrepresented by a host of what might well be called a host of US-apologetic authors, like Danny S. Parker in his newest November 2011 release of 'The Fateful Crossroads'.
The so-called Malmedy Massacre is just another example in which he and his soldiers are totally misrepresented by a host of what might well be called a host of US-apologetic authors, like Danny S. Parker in his newest November 2011 release of 'The Fateful Crossroads'.