war crimes

LTG Masaharu Homma Executed on This Day 1946, For Bataan Death March

Masaharu Homma was a Lieutenant General of the Imperial Japanese Army and during in the early days of World War II, his command, the 14th Army was tasked with routing the American and Filipino forces from Bataan. And after the surrender of 76,000 American and Filipino troops there, Japanese troops under Homma’s command forced them to march up to 65 miles to a POW camp. At least 5500 either died or were killed during the “Bataan Death March” in April of 1942.

Japanese soldiers guard American and Filipino prisoners during the Bataan Death March.

Homma was later charged with war crimes after the war was over, becoming known as the “Beast of Bataan”, and was convicted in the Philippines as a war criminal and executed by a firing squad on April 3, 1946.

While the heinous crimes of the Japanese soldiers were well documented and as the commander of the Japanese troops there, he was ultimately responsible (and executed for), was Homma really in fact, “the Beast of Bataan” or just a convenient target for a biased General MacArthur to exact his pound of flesh? Americans and especially Filipinos hated the Japanese for their brutal tactics and atrocities carried out during the war.

Early Life and Military Career:

Homma was born on Sado Island in January 1888. As a child and a young man, he wanted to be a writer. By the time he was in high school, he had poems and short stories published in Tokyo magazines.

His dreams of being a writer would be dashed forever with the Ruso-Japanese War of 1905 when he was just 17. As he wrote later, “with the pitch of patriotism raised to the highest degree”, he joined the military and in 1907 graduated at the top of his class from the Tokyo Military Academy.

Just two years later, Homma attended the Imperial Army Staff College, graduating with highest honors. One of his classmates there was Hideki Tojo, the ambitious, ruthless, and hawkish future prime minister who would lead Japan into war with the West. Homma hated him. “His dogmatic character was deeply repugnant to me, and his pro-German idea was widely in variance with my liberal views.”

In 1917 while assigned to the Imperial General Staff, Homma was sent to study English and be an attache to Great Britain. Back then, Britain and Japan were allies. He saw the Western Front firsthand attached to the East Lancashire Regiment part of the British Expeditionary Force. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1918.

Thus began a period in his life when he was thrust into the European continent and developed a deep understanding of and an affinity for the West. Homma met Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, attended the coronation of King George VI. He lived for a few years in New Delhi and was fascinated by the Indian people and their culture. He also spent time with British units in Afghanistan and Palestine.

Among Japanese circles, he was known as the “Poet General” for his affinity for writing verse during battle. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Homma served as a division commander in China from 1938 to 1940 and directed the blockade of the foreign concessions in Tientsin, where he led the negotiations with the British. He was relieved of front line duty when he stated publicly that for Japan, “unless peace is achieved immediately it will be disastrous”.

However, despite this, due to his exemplary career, he continued to rise and was promoted to Lieutenant General.

World War II, the Philippines:

At the start of the war, Homma was given command of the 14 IJA (Imperial Japanese Army). He immediately earned the ire of his superior General Hisaichi Terauchi by ordering his troops not to treat Filipinos as enemies but as friends, and to respect their customs and religions.

The poor reports written by Terauchi on Homma were not lost on his own subordinates. Many in the Japanese military believed Homma too “Westernized” that he cared too much about his own soldiers’ welfare. Army Chief of Staff Hajime Sugiyama frequently cabled Homma to press home his attacks on the Bataan peninsula regardless of Japanese casualties. One of his own staff officers, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji countermanded Homma’s orders and in the general’s name ordered the execution of a Supreme Court Justice and the attempted execution of former Speaker of the House of Representatives, which Homma was able to stop.

Reprisals against the Filipino people were carried out mercilessly. Homma was locked into a war he didn’t believe in, fighting for a totalitarian regime he hated but in the end, his oath as a Japanese officer would cost him his life. After the war he wrote in his journal that he didn’t want war against the U.S. and the West:

“War against the USA would be a disaster, I knew, but I could not show any feeling in it, as … I would have been called a traitor,” he wrote. “Tojo did not understand Anglo-Saxon temperament and its potential strength… Japan was already exhausted from its prolonged war in China and was not in a position to wage another against the U.S. and Great Britain. It was sheer madness.”

But once the Americans and Filipino troops, starving, sick with malaria and dysentery surrendered, the mid-level Japanese forces mistreated the POWs horribly despite Homma’s orders that they were to be treated fairly.

Initially thought to be 25,000, the Japanese were shocked to discover that there were in fact 76,000 POWs. They had no facilities, nor any plan on how to deal with that many POWs. The Japanese also considered the allies as having disgraced themselves rather than surrender.

During the Bataan Death March, 5500 Allied soldiers died, many were shot, bayonetted or beheaded if they fell out of the ranks during the march. Others died of disease or malnutrition. However, the Japanese furious at Homma for the delay at Bataan and the lenient treatment that he was advocating for the treatment of the Filipinos, was relieved of his command and forced to retire. He spent the rest of the war in near seclusion in Japan.

But after Japan’s eventual defeat and surrender, the Americans had Homma arrested and charged with war crimes. It wasn’t until his trial in December 1945, that Homma found out about the charges against him for the first time.

Trial And Execution:

General MacArthur wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He hand-picked the judges, prosecutors, and the defense counsel. Homma’s lawyers were fresh out of school and had never tried a case before. The prosecution was given a great amount of leeway into entering into evidence hearsay and circumstantial evidence.

Homma with his lawyers during his trial.

As witness after witness described in awful detail about the atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers, Homma was shocked, learning that they went against everything that he had so ordered. He wrote, “I am horrified to learn these things happened under my command,” he added, “I am ashamed of our troops.”

The most damning testimony was from a U.S. Master Sergeant Jimmy Baldassarre, who not only spoke about witnessing the atrocities but apparently seeing Homma himself on the road that the Death March was held. It was damaging for the defense since Homma claimed he knew nothing about the acts of his soldiers.

He claimed that he was working on the advance on Corregidor and paid the march no mind. It was interesting that Baldassarre could identify him since at that time, few Americans knew Homma was in command and fewer even knew what he looked like.

Moriya Wada, a major with logistics under Homma testified for the defense. He said Homma had indeed ordered his subordinates to treat prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. And that the conditions in the camp after the Death March were so horrible he reported to Homma. The general ordered the removal of the POW camp commander and then told his replacement to clean up the conditions that the prisoners were subjected to.

Wada said Homma set out to get the POWs more food, improve sanitation in the camp, provide for a decent burial of the dead, and putting in water pipes. Homma made 10 different requests to Tokyo for food for the POWs, requesting 100,000 tons of rice. But the Japanese sent him just 1/30th of his request. He also released thousands of Filipino prisoners. Tokyo, not interested in treating the Filipinos and Americans in any civilized manner, then fired Homma.

The court-martial convicted Homma, as it was ordained from the beginning arguing, that if he did not know the atrocities that his troops carried out, SHOULD have known. He was ordered to face death by a firing squad. He was executed early on April 3, 1946.

General MacArthur, having stacked the deck was going to get his pound of flesh. He wrote:

“If this defendant does not deserve his judicial fate, none in jurisdictional history ever did. There can be no greater, more heinous or more dangerous crime than the mass destruction, under guise of military authority or military necessity, of helpless men incapable of further contribution to war effort. A failure of law process to punish such acts of criminal enormity would threaten the very fabric of world society.”

However, a U.S. Supreme Court justice Frank Murphy lambasted the show trial.

“Either we conduct such a trial as this in the noble spirit and atmosphere of our Constitution or we abandon all pretense to justice, let the ages slip away and descend to the level of revengeful blood purges.”

The fact that the Japanese committed horrible war crimes in the Philippines both during and after the Battle of Bataan has never been in question. However, what responsibility did Homma have in this? He ordered his troops to treat the prisoners fairly which they did not. While the troops’ conduct reflects directly upon their commander, how high does this responsibility go?

There is no doubt American troops committed war crimes in plenty of places, My Lai during the Vietnam War immediately comes to mind. Should General Westmoreland have been tried for war crimes related to this? Judging from MacArthur’s remarks, the answer would be yes. And one can make that same argument for what is transpiring in trials for U.S. troops for war crimes in Afghanistan as well.

Many of the Japanese soldiers who committed horrible acts during the war escaped prosecution in the aftermath of WWII due to a lack of evidence or witnesses. But this trial was preordained from the start. Unlike what transpired in Nuremberg, this was not a fair trial and there is enough evidence to suggest at least reasonable doubt. But that was never going to happen.

Photos: Wikipedia

Former Green Beret Maj. Mark Golsteyn Charged With Murder of Taliban Suspect

A former Army Green Beret has been charged with murder and conspiracy for killing an alleged Taliban bomb-making suspect. The bomber had allegedly planted an IED that killed two U.S. Marines that were fighting with the Green Berets in the Afghan town of Marjah. Reportedly Major Mark Golsteyn and another soldier shot and killed the suspected bomber and then destroyed his remains.

This case, which happened in 2010 has been dragging on for nine years. The US Army Special Operations Command spokesman Loren Bymer said that on Friday that “sufficient evidence exists” to warrant charges against Golsteyn. Originally this story came to light in a polygraph interview that Golsteyn did with CIA officials as part of a job interview.

“Major Golsteyn is being charged with the murder of an Afghan male during his 2010 deployment to Afghanistan,” Bymer put out in a statement.

According to Army Times, Bymer stated that Golsteyn has been recalled to active duty and is under the command of the USASOC headquarters company. An intermediary commander will review the warrant of preferred charges to determine if the major will face an Article 32 hearing that could lead to a court-martial.

That commander has 120 days to make that decision.

Golsteyn had been placed on voluntary excess leave, an administrative status for soldiers pending lengthy administrative proceedings, Bymer said. He is not being confined at this time.

“I think he’s been betrayed,” his attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, told Fox News on Friday after he was interviewed on his client’s actions. Golsteyn is facing the death penalty if convicted of murder in this case.

Golsteyn, a captain at the time, was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 with 3rd Special Forces Group. During the intense Battle of Marja, an IED planted on a booby-trapped door killed two Marines and wounded three others who were working with the 3rd SFG ODA-3121.

For his actions during the deployment, Golsteyn earned a Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor. Later, an upgrade for his medal was approved but never given for a Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest award for valor just beneath the Medal of Honor.

However, due to his CIA polygraph where he admitted killing the Taliban bomber, CIA officials turned the results over to Army CID (Criminal Investigation Command). Although the resultant Board of Inquiry resulted in no charges filed against Golsteyn, it was ordered that he be stripped of his Silver Star and his Special Forces tab, given to Green Berets at the end of their training. It further ordered that he be given a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions.

The Board of Inquiry found no evidence that Golsteyn committed no Law of Armed Conflict violation, they found him to culpable of Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer.

While investigating the bombing in the Marjah marketplace, Golsteyn and his men found bomb-making materials nearby. Local tribal leaders brought in a tied up suspect that they identified as the Taliban IED bomber. Without enough evidence to hold the suspect much longer, Golsteyn told the polygraph examiners that he feared that the Taliban would take retribution against the tribal leaders and their families who were seen to be working with the Americans.

They made the decision to eliminate the Taliban. They took him off base, shot and killed him and then burned his body in a pit where the U.S. destroyed classified documents. His remains have never been found.

Then during a November 2016 and interview with Fox News, Golsteyn again admitted that he had killed the Taliban bomber, who had been captured by American troops, found with bomb-making material and then released.

“There are limits on how long you can hold guys,” he told Fox News for a news special that they produced on the war and our troops.

“You realize quickly that you make things worse. It is an inevitable outcome that people who are cooperating with coalition forces, when identified, will suffer some terrible torture or be killed.”

Asked if he killed the man, Golsteyn said, “Yes.”

That interview can be seen here:

That prompted the Army to open its second CID investigation into Golsteyn.

CID offered immunity to two SF soldiers to testify against Golsteyn but they refused to talk.

The two Marines Sgt. Jeremy R. McQueary and Lance Cpl. Larry M. Johnson, who had been working with Golsteyn’s A-Team are the forgotten ones in this case.

But the parents of one of the slain Marines believe the charges ludicrous.

“I think that’s crazy,” said David Kleinschmidt, stepfather of victim Sgt. Jeremy R. McQueary.

“I don’t understand why they are bringing this up again,” Kleinschmidt told the New York Post on Friday.

“We were in a war — and things happen in war,” he added, “personally, I think they should just drop [the charges] … I’m glad the guy is dead.” McQueary’s mom said her heart goes out to the family of the former Green Beret. “I’m sure his family has to be stressed out beyond belief,” the mom said of Golsteyn.

“And my heart goes out to them.”

Ashley Johnson, the sister of killed Marine Larry Johnson was also, not surprisingly on the side of Golsteyn. “He, from what I read, is a hero and did what he had to do. I believe at a time like that, you wear your heart on your sleeve and I think it’s what anyone with a heart would do,” she said.

While soldiers who worked with Golsteyn told Army Investigators that they doubted that the Captain would kill an unarmed insurgent, it seems he wasn’t popular with senior officers in his chain of command.

“I have a hard time believing that such an incident ever occurred,” a senior medic in his unit told CID in December 2011. “I further find it hard to believe that Matt Golsteyn would do that. The only reason I could possibly conceive him doing something like that is if he felt his men’s lives were at direct risk.”

But a Lieutenant Colonel in Golsteyn’s chain of command differed and told CID that often Golsteyn was insubordinate and would act with a sense of impunity. According to CID, this LTC stated when asked by investigators if he believed Golsteyn capable of murder, he essentially threw him under the bus. “I would hope not, the colonel stated but “would not doubt it either because of the captain’s attitude,” the investigator wrote.

When the Marines returned from the mission that their comrades were killed and wounded, Golsteyn was there as they reentered the compound. He produced a bottle of whiskey (which is forbidden in a combat zone) and toasted the fallen Marines. That small act went a long way with bringing the SF men and Marines closer but infuriated Army brass for drinking alcohol in a war zone. The fact that the Army was more concerned with a toast to killed Marines rather than removing a Taliban bomber speaks volumes to several Special Forces veterans.

Golsteyn has at least one member of Congress on his side, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter Jr. (R.Calif.), a Marine veteran and frequent critic of the Army secretary.

“Major Matt Golsteyn is an American hero, and his experience calls to attention another hero, retired General James Mattis and something he said: ‘There are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot.’ I know you agree that a known Afghan bomb-maker with the blood of American service members on his hands fits into that category,” the congressman wrote to Army Secretary Eric Fanning and Gen. Mark A. Milley, Army chief of staff.

Hunter said: “Golsteyn is an American hero — a true warrior, in fact. Why the Army is hell-bent on destroying a combat hero’s career is truly astonishing. I’m confident that Army CID has more important things to [do] than investigate Golsteyn again, and you both have the ability to fix this stupidity.”

In a handwritten note, the former Marine said, “Gentlemen, come on! This is a joke. I’m sure you have more important stuff to do. This is getting old.”

This brings to mind a case of similar circumstances back in Vietnam that was known as the “Green Beret Affair” where a suspected Vietnamese double-agent who was responsible for the death of several agents was killed and dumped into the ocean.

And now President Trump says he’ll review the case, “At the request of many, I will be reviewing the case of a ‘U.S. Military hero,’ Major Matt Golsteyn, who is charged with murder. He could face the death penalty from our own government after he admitted to killing a Terrorist bomb maker while overseas,” Trump said on Twitter.

This will likely make this case a politicized event …for better or worse.

Photo: DOD

On This Date in 1962, Nazi War Criminal Adolf Eichmann Hanged in Israel

Adolf Eichmann was a member of the Nazi Party, the SS, and the SD during Hitler’s reign of terror during the 1930s and 1940s. He was an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. He was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General) Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II.

After the war, Eichmann escaped prosecution and fled to Argentina where he lived until 1960. There, he was discovered by members of the Israeli Mossad and arrested and smuggled out of the country to Israel where he stood trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in 1961. He was found guilty and was hanged in an Israeli prison on May 30, 1962.

Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany on March 19, 1906, and soon afterward moved to Austria. He was an indifferent student and never finished his studies. He drifted from job to job in the late 20s and early 1930s before he joined the Nazi Party and shortly after the SS.

In 1934, with the rank of SS-Scharführer (Sergeant) Eichmann joined the Security Service Main Office (Sicherheitsdienst (SD) working on surveillance of Jewish organizations. In 1937, he took an inspection trip to Palestine and Egypt for the purposes of facilitating a Zionist emigration of German Jews to Palestine.

He personally oversaw the forced emigration of Austrian Jews after Hitler took over. His system was deemed so “worthy” by the Nazi hierarchy that it was deemed a template for the Nazis to use elsewhere. Once Germany overtook Czechoslovakia, Eichmann oversaw the forced deportation of Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and created a further Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague, on the pattern of his Viennese model.

Once World War II began Eichmann began to not only continue with the forced emigration of Jews from Germany and occupied territories, but the forced movement of Jews to the death camps. Eichmann during this time was responsible for the movement of nearly 1.5 million Jews to the death camps located in Poland and later parts of the occupied Soviet Union.

By the autumn of 1941, Eichmann had been promoted SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) and the chief of Reich Security Office (RSHA) which, took part in the planning of the annihilation of the European Jews. Since Eichmann was to be in charge of transporting Jews from all over Europe to the death camps, RSHA chief Reinhard Heydrich asked Eichmann to prepare a presentation for the Wannsee Conference. At the conference, RSHA officials advised the appropriate government and Nazi Party agencies on the implementation of the “Final Solution” to what the Nazis called the “Jewish Question.” Eichmann also relayed these plans to his network of officials who would help him to carry out deportation efforts in German-occupied areas and in Germany’s Axis allies in the murder of the Jews.

Eichmann and his underlings organized the deportation of Jews from Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium. In 1943 and 1944 they deported the Jews of Greece, northern Italy, and Hungary. It was in Hungary where Eichmann involved himself directly in the deportation of the Jews. From late April 1944, six weeks after Germany occupied Hungary, until early July, Eichmann and his aides deported some 440,000 Hungarian Jews. Of these 75-90 percent were murdered in the gas chambers immediately after arriving in the death camps.

At the end of World War II, Eichmann changed his name to “Otto Eckmann” and had forged papers as such to avoid detection. He was captured by the Americans but when they found out his true identity, he escaped and with the help of the Catholic Church eventually made his way to Argentina.

But Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal learned he along with the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele were in the South American country. The Israelis dispatched intelligence gathering teams from the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence services and they confirmed Eichmann’s location. Under the supervision of Mossad agent Isser Harel, the Mossad kidnapped Eichmann and smuggled him out of Buenos Aires to Israel to stand trial. Harel’s tale was eventually written into a fine book on the capture, “The House on Garibaldi Street” which is highly recommended.

The Mossad knew his routine and planned on abducting him when he passed an open field near his home after getting off a bus in his town. As he approached the field, a Mossad agent spoke to him in Spanish but Eichmann sensed danger and quickly two other Mossad agents jumped him as a well and the three subdued him as the agents whisked him to a Mossad safe house where he was held for nine days until they snuck him out via a flight from Buenos Aires to Jerusalem via Dakar, Senegal.

Eichmann protested his innocence and used the well-worn “following orders” alibi which was discounted at the Nuremberg Trials. “There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders”, Eichmann said. “I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.”

Eichmann’s trial before a special tribunal of the Jerusalem District Court began on April 11, 1961. The legal basis of the charges against Eichmann was the 1950 Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, under which he was indicted on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in a criminal organization.

The Nazis were meticulous in their record keeping and this was part of the reason that so many Nazis were found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Eichmann was no exception to this rule. His own words were the most-damning toward his case when the prosecution brought forth a statement he made in 1945 that the Nazis had been responsible for over 5 million dead Jews. “I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have five million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction”

Any hope the defense had of receiving clemency from the Israeli courts were quickly extinguished over this statement. Eichmann tried to say that he was speaking about the Russians and enemies of the Reich but later admitted that he was speaking about the Jews.

The verdict was read on December 12, 1961. The judges declared him not guilty of personally killing anyone and not guilty of overseeing and controlling the activities of the Einsatzgruppen (SS Mobile Extermination Units). He was found responsible for the deplorable conditions on board the deportation trains on which the Jews were transported to the death camps. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against not only the Jews but the Poles, Slovenes, and Gypsies. He was also found guilty of membership in three organizations that had been deemed criminal at the Nuremberg trials: the Gestapo, the SD, and the SS.

When considering the sentence, the judges concluded that Eichmann hadn’t been just following orders, but believed in the Nazi cause wholeheartedly and had been a key perpetrator of the genocide of the Jewish people. On 15 December 1961, Eichmann was sentenced to death by hanging.

Eichmann appealed his sentence but on May 31, 1962, the judges rejected his appeal. He was put to death several hours later around midnight on May 31-June 1, 1962.

His final words were about one would expect:

Long live Germany. Long live Argentina. Long live Austria. These are the three countries with which I have been most connected and which I will not forget. I greet my wife, my family and my friends. I am ready. We’ll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in God.

After his death, his body was immediately cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean outside of Israel’s territorial waters.

Photos: Wikipedia

Amnesty International: Nigeria’s Military Raped, Killed Civilians

Amnesty International, the human rights organization says the Nigerian military has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the continuing war against Islamic insurgent groups.

The charges leveled against the Nigerian military include rape, torture, and the killing of civilians. The military is fighting not only Boko Haram but the Islamic State West Africa. The military denies all charges.

The crimes were perpetrated for years and have continued despite a presidential inquiry established last August whose findings have not been made public, said the watchdog.
In a statement, the Nigerian military described Amnesty’s findings as “a false report on fictitious rape incidents in IDP (internally displaced person) camps in the North East region of Nigeria.”
A presidency statement said Amnesty’s report lacks credibility.
The 89-page report is based on hundreds of interviews and is replete with accounts of sexual violence, torched villages and other abuses.
“The soldiers, they betrayed us, they said that we should come out of from our villages,” said a woman whose name was given as Yakura in the report. “They said it would be safer and that they would give us a secure place to stay. But when we came, they betrayed us. They detained our husbands and then they raped us women,” said Yakura, who fled Andara village, Borno state, in December 2016.
Nigeria has waged a nine-year war against Boko Haram and its now more powerful offshoot, Islamic State West Africa. The country has fought alongside Cameroon, Chad and Niger and been supported by the United States, Great Britain and France.
The conflict has killed more than 30,000 people and spawned one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
For years, rights groups, aid organizations and journalists have documented military abuses, with little resulting action from the armed forces.
According to Amnesty’s report, interviewees “said that when the military conducted operations in their villages, they burnt down homes and opened fire at remaining residents indiscriminately.”
Often the military would forcibly take people to camps for people displaced by the conflict, the report said. People the military detained without food and water would die, the watchdog said.
Many of the women were held for six months to two years without charge, some were tortured and beaten, and some, along with 32 children, died, the report said.

Amnesty International claims in their report that hunger, sickness and sexual violence remain an issue at all of the displacement camps and occurs on a large scale.

To read the entire article from Voice of America, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Massacre of American Soldiers at Malmedy December 17,1944

During the opening days of the Germans’ Ardennes Offensive late in 1944, elements of the 1st SS Panzer Division [Leibstandarte] committed a series of grisly atrocities against American prisoners of war [POWs] around the Belgian town of Malmedy. These actions by Kampfgruppe Peiper, led by SS Sturmbannführer Joachim Peiper led to a war crimes trial in Dachau in 1946.

Background: Nazi Germany was on the verge of collapse in late 1944, the Russian Army in the east was steadily pushing them back toward Germany and bleeding an incredible amount of casualties every day. In the west, the Allies had successfully come ashore at Normandy and once they had achieved a breakthrough in the hedgerow country, raced across France. They had penetrated the frontiers of the German border in a few places while their bombers were devastating German war industry and their cities.

Hitler developed a grandiose plan where he was going to withdraw a large part of his Panzer Army from the Russian Front and try to take advantage of the bad winter weather, which would ground Allied aircraft and punch a hole in the thinly defended American lines in the Ardennes forest. He wanted to split the Allies in two and drive to Antwerp. His generals had no delusions about making it to Antwerp. But they thought it could push the Allies back to the Meuse River it would buy them time while delaying the war.
Peiper’s attack was to be the vanguard of the left wing of the Sixth SS Panzer Army. His orders relayed to him by General Sepp Dietrich and from Hitler, himself stated that the Russian Front rules of engagement would be in effect. No quarter to be given, no prisoners taken and the Belgian citizens were to be shown no quarter either. Hitler wanted to shock and frighten the American army. It would have the opposite effect. Once the infantry poked a hole in the American lines, Peiper’s Kampfgruppe spearhead was to race his column of armored and motorized infantry thru the crossroads at Stavelot and Trois Pointes and seize the important bridge over the Meuse at Huy. The timetable for this was 48 hours maximum. This would prove to be too ambitious and the Germans would be behind their schedule almost immediately.

The Germans Attack: At 0530 on December 16, the Germans began their attack along the front. Artillery pounded US positions from between 20-90 minutes. The German Volksgrenadiers who were to punch a hole in the green American 99th Infantry Division were delayed in breaking thru. The untested and heavily outnumbered Americans delayed the German advance for four hours. The result was a huge traffic jam behind the lines for Peiper’s armored force. He didn’t break thru until after dark, far behind his timetable, but drove his men all thru the night, not stopping. He initially lost five of his tanks when they rolled over an old German minefield

Shooting of prisoners at Honsfeld and Büllingen: Peiper’s column raced as quickly as they could all night on the roads in the American rear. At dawn on the 17th, his troops surprised and took the town of Honsfeld, capturing many vehicles and anti-tank guns. They then shot down 17 unarmed Americans, the first of the atrocities committed by these hardened German troops who were accustomed to the bitter no-quarter-given battles on the Eastern Front.

Peiper’s column was already in need of fuel. He learned of an American fuel depot at Büllingen which wasn’t in his sector but the Hitler Youth [Jugend] Division’s sector. Peiper swung two miles off course and quickly captured the fuel depot and capturing 50 Americans. His men forced the Americans to fuel his vehicles and then shot them down in cold-blood, murdering them and leaving them before swinging back on his route and pushing west.

As Peiper’s men pushed west, they just missed running headlong into a column of Combat Command [Brigade] of the 7th Armored Division heading for St. Vith. Had they met a massive tank battle would have taken place, instead, the Americans passed by unaware of the armored column in their rear. Following the American tanks was a column of 125 men attached to the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

Malmedy Massacre: The meeting between the two columns was strictly by chance, the Americans were in unarmored trucks and the Germans disabled the first and last vehicles forcing the men to surrender. They were herded into a small field surrounded by crossroads with other POWs from earlier in the day.

Later reports had about 120 prisoners in the field. As follow-on German columns were approaching on all sides in armored vehicles, the Germans opened fire on the American prisoners. They machine-gunned them in the field. There was no escape, no one was able to run. Unlike in some films that showed Americans running into the woods, that didn’t happen.

After the troops were machine-gunned, SS troops walked thru the field and were shooting any soldier that showed signs of life and mocked Americans who cried out for their mother or God as they applied a coup de grace. 43 men survived by feigning death under the bodies of other soldiers. That was their only chance.

After the Germans moved off, the survivors in ones and twos began making their way back to the American lines. By late that afternoon, the American high command was learning of the Germans executing prisoners of war and the word quickly filtered down to the troops in the line. There would be no more surrendering. In fact, one unit posted orders that no German paratrooper or SS men were to be taken prisoner.

Reaction and Aftermath: The American army interviewed all of the survivors and their stories all matched, they knew that the Germans were conducting atrocities and were looking to gather evidence for a war crimes trial. For the average foot soldier, the feeling was payback. And that is just what they did.

On January 1, 1945, the Americans machine gunned about 30 German POWs outside of the small town of Chenogne, Belgium. It was quickly covered up and no soldier or officer was ever called to answer for their crimes.

Unfortunately, the bodies at Malmedy weren’t recovered until January 14, 1945, when the Americans finally took back the Baugnez crossroads where the massacre took place. An inspection of the dead showed many died from a pistol to wound to the head with powder burns showing execution by the SS.

Peiper’s men were accused of killing other prisoners in several other Belgian towns and the killing of 100 civilians in Stavelot.

An interesting side note to the events was the capture of an American officer, a Major Harold D. McCown of the 119th Infantry Regiment. He was captured in the fighting around Gleize. He was brought before Peiper and knowing about Malmedy, he asked about the safety of his men and himself. Peiper, according to McCown that neither he nor his men were at any risk and that he [Peiper] was not accustomed to killing his prisoners. McCown also testified that neither he nor his men were threatened in any way. McCown would later testify at Peiper’s war crime trial in 1946.

During the trial at Dachau in 1946, Peiper, his commander Sepp Dietrich and 70 subordinates were tried and sentenced for crimes against humanity. There were 43 death sentences, 22 life sentences, and several smaller sentences. No one was ever executed. All of the sentences were commuted and the last to leave prison was Peiper himself in 1956.

After the war, he moved to France where he lived quietly before being murdered by French communists in 1976. Ironically, he had just begun work on a book about Malmedy.

An excellent account of the Malmedy Massacre is the book “Fatal Crossroads” by Danny S. Parker. It can be ordered here:

Photos: US Archives

Convicted War Criminal Dies After Drinking Poison in Court

In a shocking turn of events that played out on live television, Slobodan Praljak, drank poison in a courtroom and died later on Wednesday, after the convicted war criminal interrupted a courtroom hearing to declare his innocence according to Croatian state media.

Praliak, loudly proclaimed his innocence in front of the International Criminal Tribunal and stated, “Judges, Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal!” “I reject this verdict.”

The presiding judge asked him numerous times to stop and sit down, it was then that Praljak. 72, tilted his head back and downed a vial of liquid. He said, “I just drank poison.”

The hearing was suspended shortly afterward, as the other people in the room sought to make sense of the situation. “Please,” the presiding judge asked, “the curtains.”
Praljak soon fell ill and was quickly ushered from the courtroom by paramedics, though their efforts could not save his life.
“The emergency services took Praljak to a nearby hospital, where he died,” tribunal spokesperson Nenad Golcevski told media, also noting that Dutch police have opened an independent investigation into the incident.
Praljak was one of six men sentenced to prison in 2013 for “crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions,” the tribunal notes.
“The Trial Chamber concluded that, from January 1993, all six accused were participants in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at creating a Croatian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina that would facilitate the reunification of the Croatian people, through ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population,” The Hague-based organization explains.

The tribunal has held various trials for war crimes from the brutal civil war that took place in the former Yugoslavia. It has indicted 161 former soldiers for war crimes and has convicted 91.

To read the entire article from National Public Radio click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

ICC Wants to Investigate US Military, CIA for War Crimes

United States forces are being investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague as prosecutors there believe that there are sufficient grounds to believe that the US committed war crimes in Afghanistan in 2003-2004.

Prosecutors believe there was a “reasonable basis” that U.S. forces had tortured prisoners in Afghanistan and at Central Intelligence Agency detention facilities elsewhere in 2003 and 2004.

“Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture,” the prosecutors’ office, wrote. It added that CIA officials appeared to have tortured another 27 detainees.
The prosecutors’ office, headed by Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, said it would decide imminently whether to pursue a full investigation.
Monday’s finding marks a significant step forward in the court’s decade-old examination of conflicts in Afghanistan and could draw a sharp response from a U.S. administration that is set to become less internationalist under President-elect Donald Trump.
“These alleged crimes were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals,” the report said. “They appear to have been committed as part of approved interrogation techniques in an attempt to extract ‘actionable intelligence.’”

The prosecutors believe that all belligerents including the Afghan government and the Taliban are also guilty of crimes against humanity as well. They specifically said that CIA sites in Poland, Romania, and Lithuania may have also been scenes of war crimes as this is where detainees were taken to and interrogated.

To read the entire article from Reuters click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

General Convicted of War Crimes Invited to Teach At Serb Academy

General Vladimir Lazarevic a Serbian general who was convicted of war crimes has been invited to teach at the Serb military academy along with two other senior officers who took part in the bloody crackdown in Kosovo against the Albanians.

Serb Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin praised Lazarevic and the other senior officers despite his being sentenced to 14 years in prison by the U.N. for atrocities committed against the Albanians by his Serb troops during the 1998-99 bloody fighting that left over 10,000 dead and a million homeless. The only way NATO got the bloodshed to stop was a marathon 78-day bombing campaign.

Vulin told Serbia’s state TV on Thursday that Lazarevic, current army chief-of-staff Gen. Ljubisa Dikovic and former Gen. Bozidar Delic are “exceptional people” who would be sought by “any military academy in the world.”
Lazarevic, who commanded Serb troops in Kosovo during the crackdown, was released from prison in 2015 after serving two-thirds of his sentence. Both Dikovic and Delic, who also fought in the former Serbian province, have been accused by human rights groups of war crimes, but they were never tried or convicted.
Vulin said that they are to “relay their war experiences” to the military academy cadets.
“I’m certain that the professors will be exceptional and that any army would desire to get their experience,” Vulin said.

Lazarevic struck a defiant tone while saying he was honored to be asked to teach and is ready to serve his country. He then took a shot at the west and the UN by stating, “I have never hidden during the NATO aggression and I will not hide now,” Lazarevic said.

Many see this as a step back to nationalist policies of the 1990s as Serbia seeks to gain European Union membership.

To read the entire article from US News World click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia