Over on the homepage, I have a piece reflecting on the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Here, I’d like to offer a postscript of sorts.
In 1965, a pretty good movie was made about the Bulge starring Henry Fonda, with Robert Shaw playing the part of Jochen Peiper (“Hassler” in the film.) The movie depicts the assault on the fuel depot at Stavelot, but shows the Peiper character being dramatically killed when the desperate GIs defending the depot rolled barrels of oil down the hill onto his advancing Tiger tank column, engulfing him in flames. This did not happen. In reality, Peiper was captured and sentenced to death, at Eisenhower’s insistence, for his role in the Malmedy massacre. His sentence, however, was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was released from jail in 1956. After evading prosecution for various other atrocities, he took up residence on the French Riviera, where, as a highly educated Nietzschean, he found comfortable employment in literary translation. So, in fact, at the time his stand-in was incinerated on screen in 1965, Peiper was around to watch the show, and enjoy many more refined amusements as well.
This situation wasn’t rectified until 1976, when unknown assailants, no doubt still irate over some aspect of Peiper’s past conduct, broke into his house and burned him alive. He remains a cult hero to neo-Nazis to this day. In their literature, they claim he was done in by “French Communists.” That might be true. But I prefer to believe the work of sending the former obersturmbannführer to his infernal rewards was accomplished by middle-aged American tourists — you know, some of those 50-something characters who used to hang around the VFW posts in large numbers back in the 1970s telling war stories to anyone who would listen. Well done, guys.