The future SS officer Joachim Piper was born on January 30, 1915 in a military family. His father, Waldemar, served in the imperial forces and campaigned in East Africa.
Before the war
On the day that Joachim turned 18, Adolf Hitler became chancellor. Serious changes have begun in the country. Then the young man, along with his older brother, joined the Hitler Youth. He began serving in the army in 1935 and very quickly became an SS officer.
A capable young man received an appointment in the apparatus of Heinrich Himmler. There Joachim Piper was responsible for organizational matters - meetings, the functioning of the office, etc. Here the officer met his future wife Zigurd, whom he married in 1939. Three children were born in the marriage.
Himmler’s personal assistant
With the onset of war, Joachim Piper was at the front. He was first in battle during the invasion of France. Even before that, he helped Himmler work on the arrangement of the Reich in captured Poland. The officer continued to accompany his superior at important meetings. For example, it was Himmler’s date with Franco in Madrid in 1940. The Reichsführer also led revisions in the new concentration camps. Joachim Piper, together with Himmler, visited Auschwitz, Dachau and other strategic sites.
With the beginning of the Eastern campaign, the main activity of the adjutant became associated with the Soviet Union. He informed the boss about the successes of the fight against the “Untermans” (Slavs, Gypsies, Jews, etc.). Soon Jochen Piper was sent directly to the front. He was one of the commanders in the battles for Mariupol and Rostov-on-Don.
Military operations
Piper was later sent to Italy. In September 1943, local partisans captured two of his soldiers. The Italians who did this were found. They were killed, and at the same time burned down a village in which the perpetrators of the conflict lived. Many civilians perished in the fire. Later, this episode became one of the main accusations of the Nuremberg trials.
Piper insisted that his soldiers did not touch the civilians. According to him, the death of civilians was triggered by an erroneous blow of German artillery, which he never commanded.
At the final stage of the war, Piper was in Normandy. His formations retreated until they launched a counterattack in Belgium. Piper had many tanks and guns at his disposal. However, his skill and talents were useless, as German soldiers were exhausted by many years of battles throughout Europe. They did not even help the bad weather, which interfered with enemy aircraft. In Belgium, an officer led a division called the Adolf Hitler. His advance was successful only in the first few days. Soon it choked, and Piper had to return to Germany.
Accusations at the Nuremberg Trials
After the Reich was defeated, the Nuremberg trials began . One of the accused was Piper Joachim. The officer’s biography was full of various facts of war crimes.
He was accused of illegal execution of several dozen US soldiers. This happened in December 1944, when the Allies advanced in the Ardennes. Piper’s squad shot prisoners of war shortly before retreating from strategically important positions.
This episode is called the Malmedy Massacre. The US Senate was directly involved in the massacre of American soldiers, which conducted its own investigation. In total, according to experts, from the actions of soldiers led by officer Piper Joachim, about 350 military and 100 Belgians were killed.
At the same time, allied fighters surrendered before the murder. The reprisal against them was subject to acts prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
Also, soldiers of Joachim, under his direct leadership, burned several peaceful villages in the Kharkov region during the battles on the Eastern Front. Punitive squads destroyed the huts along with the people inside. In total, more than 800 people became victims of these attacks. There were practically no wounded, since in the SS they killed everyone indiscriminately.
Sentence and recent years
Piper had a qualified lawyer who was able to protect his client from most of the charges. He managed to draw the attention of the court to the fact that during the investigative actions, Joachim was subjected to torture and other unauthorized acts by the Americans. They admitted that bullying and false evidence were used. In the end, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In America, this caused a political scandal. A test was held in the Senate, after which Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the army of torturing prisoners, just as they did in the Gestapo at one time.
In 1958, Piper was released from prison and lived in France and Germany. For several years he worked at the Porsche factory. Nevertheless, his Nazi past was not forgotten. In the summer of 1976, a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the window of his house . Piper, 60, suffocated in a dream from smoke. The people who committed this massacre were never found.