One of the most heinous war crimes to occur in Europe during World War II was the mass execution of American prisoners of war by the Nazis’ Waffen SS troops of the 1st Panzer Division on Dec The atrocity came to be called the Malmedy Massacre after its location at a crossroads near the Belgian town 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion Thirty-one of the murdered POWs were from Pennsylvania Volunteers with the nonprofit Stories Behind the Stars (www.storiesbehindthestars.org) have written memorials honoring the sacrifice of the fallen at Malmedy from Pennsylvania who worked as a forelady in a factory and one brother Snyder graduated from high school and worked as an errand boy He enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion after completing basic training Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion departed Schevenhutte enroute to the VII Corps sector to join the 7th Armored Division at the Battle of the Bulge The battery of seven officers and 141 enlisted men was joined by five others from battalion Headquarters Headquarters Battery and a Medical Detachment for a total of 153 men The Americans were traveling in a convoy of 30 vehicles on a main mission to identify the location of enemy artillery using sound ranging and flash spotting the German advance guard of the 1st SS Leibstandarte “Adolf Hitler” Division under SS Lt Joachim Peiper intercepted the American convoy at the Baugnez crossroads south of Malmedy There were 111 of the convoy’s troops present who were outnumbered and outgunned by the Germans The prisoners of war were taken to a nearby field Anyone who survived the initial shooting was shot point-blank in the head Over a dozen escaped the initial massacre and were aided by local citizens until forced to surrender The Germans marched the POWs to a cow pasture where they were tortured and bayoneted to death Some initial escapees hid in a café that the Nazis set on fire They killed every POW who attempted to flee from the burning building Eighty-four soldiers were massacred in the event 69 were from Battery B and 15 were from other units at Baugnez the Malmedy Massacre was not the first execution of unarmed prisoners chargeable to Lt Nineteen unarmed Americans were shot down at Honsfeld and 50 at Büllingen Peiper's command had murdered approximately 350 American prisoners of war and at least 100 unarmed Belgian civilians across 12 different locations along Peiper's line of march The Malmedy Massacre was treated as a war crime and was part of the Dachau Trials of 1946 American soldiers with the 11th Armored Division exacted revenge for the Malmedy Massacre 80 German prisoners of war were summarily executed at Chenogne None of the perpetrators were ever punished Snyder was memorialized at Arlington National Cemetery a US Army tribunal at Dachau sentenced 46 members of the Waffen SS to death for crimes committed against Allied POWs and civilians Top Image: Spectators and US Army military police waiting outside of the building where 74 SS men will be sentenced on July 16 courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration In the first postwar spring, Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp and site of terror for more than 10 years, became the stage for an American courtroom. Beyond the four-nation process of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg also held individual military tribunals in their respective zones The trials presided over by the US Army took place at Dachau from November 1945 to December 1947 The defendants included a wide range of individuals—high-ranking members of the German military They were accused of war crimes against Allied POWs and crimes perpetrated against Allied civilians and prisoners of war in concentration camps One component of the Dachau Trials, the Malmedy Massacre Trial, took place over two months from May to July 1946 and centered on crimes by the Waffen SS against American POWs and Belgian civilians. The Malmedy Massacre was a well-documented and publicized murder of unarmed American POWs by the 1st SS during the Battle of the Bulge elements of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment commanded by Joachim Peiper assembled them in a field and machine-gunned them Some survived buried under their fellow soldiers or by playing dead The murder of prisoners of war at Malmedy was just one of the atrocities committed by Peiper’s SS unit and only one crime considered in the charges which mentioned that his men: at sundry times between 16 December and 13 January 1945 and torture of members of the Armed Forces of the United States of America who were then and there surrendered and unarmed prisoners of war in the custody of the then German Reich the exact names and numbers of such persons being unknown but aggregating several hundred the exact names and numbers of such persons being unknown.” The 1946 trial charged 74 SS members for these crimes and included Joachim Peiper as well as the commander of the 6th Panzer Army SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Josef “Sepp” Dietrich The defendants had been held in various locations since their defeat Once identified as having been associated with the units responsible for war crimes the men were interrogated in Schwäbisch Hall Germany; many were questioned by bilingual US soldiers who had fled Nazi persecution in Europe the prisoners were held together and had the opportunity to coordinate stories and strategize defense Seven Malmedy survivors testified at the trial Belgian civilian witnesses to the murder of unarmed civilians also testified Much of the testimony was written with nearly 100 sworn statements brought before the court including confessions and statements by some of the defendants informing on some of their co-defendants The uniformed defendants sat with numbered identification cards around their necks Only some were given the opportunity to take the stand The prosecution argued that the murder of American POWs and others carried out by Peiper and his men was premeditated the result of Hitler’s orders for a ruthless campaign to inspire fear and terror The defense maintained that the killings had taken place in the heat of battle The American military court at Dachau sentenced 46 members of the Waffen SS to death by hanging for crimes committed against Allied POWs Another 23 were given life imprisonment and the remaining men received sentences between 10 and 20 years What happened in the months and years following remains a source of interest and research The proceedings themselves and the interrogations leading up to the trial became highly publicized The convicted SS men claimed that American interrogators used unlawful methods and even torture and that all of the statements given were coerced Willis Everett continued to work on behalf of the convicted men even after returning home and leaving active duty in 1947.  Publicity regarding the trial mounted and the Secretary of the Army responded by organizing a commission to investigate these allegations and religious organizations who desired the release of war criminals One member of the commission in particular propagated the allegations and questioned the validity of the trial 31 of the death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment The energy behind the abuse allegations was sustained and in 1949 Senate hearings were conducted to investigate New Senator Joseph McCarthy had an intense interest in the case and obtained special permission to attend the hearings seeing the Malmedy trial as a chance for the spotlight A central point of the investigations was the motivation of the interrogators some of whom were Jews who had fled Europe and had become American soldiers Defenders of those declared guilty at Dachau argued that the interrogators especially the Prague-born PhD chief interrogator Lt sympathizing with Peiper and the other SS men aggressively questioning the US interrogators and other witnesses the commission found these claims to be false the allegations of abuse largely fabricated but still procedural haziness was discovered and documented allowing for enough basis to further amend the sentences delivered on July 16 most of the men were released and the only remaining death sentences Peiper’s sentence was further reduced in 1954 Both Sepp Dietrich and Joachim Peiper were released from Landsberg prison in 1956 Some would say that justice came for Peiper when he was killed in his home in France on July 13 The American POWs who were murdered at Malmedy by Peiper’s forces are memorialized at the Baugnez crossroads within sight of the field where they fell This article is part of a series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II made possible by the Department of Defense.  Kimberly Guise holds a BA in German and Judaic Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst She also studied at the Universität Freiburg in Germany and holds a masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) from Louisiana State University and specializes in the American prisoner-of-war experience in World War II Copy MLA Citation Copy APA Citation Copy Chicago Style Citation along with his fellow RAF pilots who have been revered as “the Few,” played a critical role in defending the United Kingdom against Nazi Germany during the summer of 1940.  US Third and Seventh Armies' March 1945 offensive cleared the Rhineland pushing deep into Germany and decisively weakening German defenses before the final Allied push Adolf Eichmann initially escaped justice by fleeing to Argentina where he hid out for nearly a decade until he was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence operatives and taken to Israel for trial Before the Allies could cross the Rhine River Bernard Montgomery’s forces first had to pry the German defenders away from its western bank with two simultaneous operations: Veritable and Grenade.  The Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum confirmed retired Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.'s death saying he passed away peacefully at his home in Bloomfield Hills a lesser-known but significant offensive in Alsace in January 1945 But why did Hitler choose to draw the United States directly into the European conflict If the American forces could break through the Hürtgen Forest there was a chance they could reach the Rhine near Cologne threatening the German industrial region along the Ruhr River and possibly even force a crossing.  View Campus Map  My NewsSign Out Sign InCreate your free profileSections news Alerts is associate professor of history at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center. His latest book is The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy (2017) Edited bySam Dresser 5 commentsSavePublished in association with Harvard University Press REPUBLISH FOR FREE 5 CommentsEmailSavePostShareAmerican soldiers murdered by the 1st SS Panzer Division at Malmedy members of a Nazi SS combat division executed 84 captured GIs near the Belgian town of Malmedy It was the deadliest encounter of its kind between American and German forces General Dwight Eisenhower vowed to hold the perpetrators accountable controversy soon enveloped the US investigation this episode remains an example of how competent professionals confronted a blizzard of fake news and faced down one of the era’s most dangerous demagogues a small team of United States Army investigators built a damning case against 74 former SS officers and enlisted men one of thousands of Jewish refugees from the Nazis who had joined the US Army Trained to obtain information without resorting to physical force Perl and his team began with interrogating hundreds of former SS men and gathered a large amount of information from non-combatant personnel Nothing was considered inconsequential: nicknames ‘even where they had stopped along the route to urinate’ They then used what they learned to approach a suspect with ‘the whole history of his unit’ a suspect would fill in the gaps for the interrogators often admitting responsibility for a crime The process was tedious and time-consuming a US Army court found all 73 guilty of violating provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions A few defendants had told him that interrogators had abused them While only six took the stand to retract their confessions with unconvincing testimony Everett nonetheless accused the interrogators of widespread Everett’s sympathies lay with the defeated Germans rather than the Nazi’s victims He also believed that he could make a great deal of money should the story be made public His threat of an exposé was a bluff: he possessed no credible evidence that the interrogators had tortured anyone nervous Army officials conducted multiple reviews of the investigation and The torture accusations gained public traction in the US and occupied Germany only after the convicted men concocted elaborate stories of pervasive torture and fed them to a handful of ex-Nazi lawyers Backed by two of Germany’s most influential clergymen they took the story to the press and demanded a retrial The prisoners’ descriptions of brutal beatings threats and mock executions read like a hack screenwriter’s attempt at dramatising torture including publications such as Time magazine Editorials demanded that the interrogators be prosecuted the accusations had generated enough controversy to produce a Congressional investigation The credibility of US military courts was at stake The Senate Armed Services Committee held hearings that year producing the most extensive investigation into the conduct of US interrogators until the Feinstein Committee convened 65 years later The hearings were chaired by Raymond Baldwin Baldwin was determined to get to the truth of the matter He gave the former investigators the chance to explain their methods and having no intention of whitewashing the Army ensured that its critics – including some of the chief purveyors of the torture allegations – were given the chance to explain themselves shocked by unverified torture stories published across the country explaining in exhaustive detail how the investigation was actually conducted US medical and prison personnel also testified that no prisoner abuse occurred The committee even had physicians examine the convicted men who swore that the interrogators had permanently damaged their jaws The physicians found no evidence of such injuries US intelligence agents in Germany reported to the committee’s diligent and fair-minded staff lawyer that a network of ex-Nazis and sympathetic clergymen were using the torture claims to discredit the Army’s trials Baldwin’s nemesis on the committee was a junior senator from Wisconsin Neither conscientious nor thoughtful – though eager to bolster his sagging political fortunes – McCarthy decided that the torture claims were true before the hearings began he berated any witness whose testimony did not confirm his suspicions Ill-informed and unable to question witnesses coherently he demanded that Perl submit to a lie detector test ‘I think you are lying,’ McCarthy said to him very smart [but] you cannot fool the lie detector.’ Though Perl agreed on the spot Baldwin and the other committee members thought the idea was wrong-headed He had suffered a humiliating – if temporary – defeat he was still railing on the floor of the Senate against Baldwin and the Army months later Baldwin’s calm persistence and determination to conduct a thorough and even-handed investigation prevailed over McCarthy’s wilful ignorance and boorish behaviour The Committee’s final report was not uncritical of the Army’s conduct but it concluded that the defendants had received a fair trial and dismissed the torture stories as utter nonsense Though the former investigators felt vindicated they understood that the Army’s reputation had been damaged ‘The Malmedy case is a dead pigeon,’ the chief prosecutor told Perl ‘except for the smell and it will smell unto eternity.’ As for the perpetrators of the Malmedy massacre – every one of them was freed from prison by 1956 The fact that any German remained behind bars was intolerable to German public opinion at a time when a re-armed West Germany embedded in NATO was a diplomatic imperative for Washington The creation of a parole and clemency board resolved the matter The records of its proceedings reveal that the stench of the torture accusations had not been washed away by the Senate’s investigation While Army officials – some of them veterans of the Battle of the Bulge – were less inclined toward leniency State Department legal advisers clung to discredited accounts of torture to justify clemency for the convicted men The legacy of the Malmedy massacre trial controversy thus remains an ambiguous one Yet one thing is clear: competent professionalism and an open mind had trumped blatant disregard for the truth The professionals of the Army’s war crimes division were steadfast in resisting popular pressure to overturn the verdicts on the basis of fake torture stories Baldwin stood up to a self-promoting demagogue in his own party who put personal ambitions ahead of his responsibility to the country The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy (2017) by Steven P Remy is out now through Harvard University Press EmailSavePostShareREPUBLISH FOR FREESaveidea Algorithms associating appearance and criminality have a dark past We need highly formal rituals in order to make life more democratic Private gain must no longer be allowed to elbow out the public good Saveidea What we can learn about respect and identity from ‘plurals’ How dystopian narratives can incite real-world radicalism Saveidea I was homeschooled for eight years: here’s what I recommend Queen Mathilde of Belgium enjoyed spending time with young patients today as she visited a holiday camp for children with cancer close to the city of Malmedy smiled broadly as she joined in the fun during activities while at Camp Tournesol The mother-of-four opted for a classic monochrome ensemble as she stepped out in the rainy Belgium city Mathilde donned a short-sleeved black and white blouse with horizontal stripes and wrapped a classic tassel shawl around her shoulders to keep herself warm She paired this with slim black cigarette trousers and polished loafers Mathilde sported a pair of black dangly earrings Mathilde wore her golden blonde tresses down in down in her usual blow-dried bob and went for natural makeup The Foundation Against Cancer has been organising a holiday camp for children and young people undergoing treatment every year since 1989 The organisation says that young patients continue their treatment throughout their stay with voluntary doctors and nursing staff on hand Their website states: 'Even if they continue their treatment throughout the week of the stay the children can forget their illness for a while thanks to the many activities offered by the instructors and organisers.'  go on excursions and receive prizes and gifts during their holiday stay Mathilde sat down on the sofa and had a chat with patients with some looking elated that the Queen joined them on their trip away It comes as her daughter, Princess Elisabeth of Belgium chose to leave Oxford after studying at its prestigious university for three years The 22-year-old is next in line to the Belgian throne as she is the eldest child of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde. A spokesperson for the Belgian Royal Palace told the Oxford Mail: 'The Princess loved studying in Oxford and had a wonderful time in Lincoln College.' She moved to the city in autumn 2021 to start her History and Politics undergraduate course at Lincoln College. Queen Mathilde of Belgium visits holiday camp for children with cancerCommenting on this article has endedNewest{{#isModerationStatus}}{{moderationStatus}} What's more is that Stephen Domitrovich is the last living survivor of what's become known as the Massacre at Malmedy German soldiers executed about 350 Americans who had surrendered and were prisoners-of-war and 100 Belgian civilians during the Battle of the Bulge "I always say 'If it wasn't for the good Lord He was 20 at the time and was serving in the U.S "It's hard to tell it," he said of the experience Domitrovich was part of a family of 12 and he and two of his brothers served in World War II in Europe He was drafted in 1943 and sent to California for training the new soldiers were asked if they knew how to drive He was told "You're a driver now," he remembered "They taught me how to drive the ambulances," he said He shipped out to England first and landed on Utah Beach then we went to Malmedy," Domitrovich said He was in a column of vehicles heading out of Malmedy and was driving his ambulance behind a weapons carrier Domitrovich surrendered to a German soldier who put a rifle to his head and Domitrovich asked for his rights under the Geneva Convention We had to cross a fence with our hands over our head .. "I was in the front line and pretty soon the German called me out." They looked at a bracelet he had on his wrist then he was returned to the line of Americans my buddy said we're going to Germany," Domitrovich said But that wasn't what the Germans had planned he soon learned as he saw a line of Germans with machine guns The cries of the men who were being shot continued "I don't know how long until it quieted down," he said Among those shot included the man next to Domitrovich "I laid there real quiet and pretty soon a German came up to me," he said Terrible," Domitrovich said as he relived the experience for this story He and a few other survivors made their way down a hill and got to a house of fear-filled Belgians who directed them to where the Americans were They went further down the hill and were rescued by other Americans and trucked to a hospital in Liege "I don't know how many days I was there," Domitrovich said He spent his nights screaming in agony there as he relived what had happened to him and others "Screaming and screaming all night long," he said Domitrovich didn't remember the soldier's name a German buzz bomb hit the room where Domitrovich had spent those nights in agony hauling wounded German soldiers to a hospital ran by Americans He served in Europe until the end of the war there and was preparing to be shipped to Japan when all fighting ended Domitrovich returned home haunted by his experiences "The whole thing came out of me all the time," he said of the memories He owned and operated a store in Aliquippa -- aptly named the GI Dairy -- before he married and changed its name to H&S Dairy (for Helen and Steve) after he married his wife Helen in 1952 He now lives in Beaver with his son and has told his story several times and he's thankful to be alive "It's very important to tell people how we were treated over there," he said Foreign Affairs has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs The magazine has featured contributions from many leading international affairs experts Robert H. George UNOFFICIAL conversations between Brussels and Berlin the meeting of French and German ministers at Thoiry the French Council meeting of September 21st together with the journalistic variations on these events have again given prominence to Eupen and Malmedy The territories to which these names apply lie just within the present eastern frontier of Belgium having passed from German to Belgian sovereignty as a result of the Treaty of Versailles They are neither large nor populous -- Prussian statistics of 1910 recorded that Eupen had a population of 26,156 and an area about 65 square miles while Malmedy's 34,768 inhabitants were found within an area of just less than 300 square miles Whether viewed alone or in connection with other international matters the question of Eupen and Malmedy arises from Articles 34-39 of the Treaty of Versailles which articles direct that these one-time Kreise of the German Empire be handed over to Belgium that within six months of the coming into effect of the Treaty registers should be opened by the Belgian authorities at Eupen and Malmedy in which the inhabitants of the Kreise should be entitled to record in writing a desire that all or part of the territories remain under German sovereignty Belgium was engaged to report the result of this public expression of opinion to the League of Nations and pledged to accept the League's decision in the matter and of ethnography lay behind these articles of the Versailles agreement Belgium might with propriety allege that the great bulk of the districts in question were historically part of those forming the modern Kingdom of Belgium -- the more so since Germany's counter claim rested on the unsubstantial basis that they had been included in the Circles of the Holy Roman Empire drawn upon the map in 1512 Prussia's possession of Eupen and Malmedy dates only from 1814-1815 when they were arbitrarily assigned to her as part of that award of population on the Left Bank of the Rhine which was designed to compensate her for her renunciation of claims on Saxony The military consideration was also powerful In the Kreis of Malmedy lay the great German mobilization camp of Elsenborn Established as a summer training camp in 1896 it later constituted a centre for the network of double track railroads with multiple sidings which were connected with the Belgian railroad system by the international line Malmedy-Stavelo Belgium had assisted in the construction of these last few miles of "light railway" which was of standard gauge allowing a speed of 40 miles per hour General Von Emmich gathered his troops for the march on Liège in the region of Aachen To deprive Germany of these mobilization points was to render Belgium more secure In the case of Malmedy the historical and military argument was reinforced by economic and ethnic facts To all appearance this Kreis was in closer economic association with regions lying on its western border than with those to the east; while in spite of more than a century of Prussian control Prussian statistics admitted the existence of a considerable Walloon element in the population with 94 percent of its inhabitants speaking French was the outstanding example of the latter fact although the German plenipotentiaries noted the presence of 9,500 Walloons within the Kreis From these elements the Belgian Government had received petitions asking for annexation the Walloon element was virtually non-existent The economic argument there was weaker in one respect because of the district's proximity to Aachen; but stronger in another since the zinc mines exploited by the works in Neutral Moresnet (a territory disputed since 1815 but assigned to Belgium outright by Article 32 of the Treaty) were situated within the Kreis Eupen contained much timber land which chanced to be the property of the Prussian state would serve as partial and immediate reparation for the destruction of Belgian timber by the German forces during their occupation Belgian control of the headwaters of the Vesdre would be of advantage in the proper operation of the canal system of eastern Belgium That body was merely to be notified of the result of the public expression of opinion recorded in registers opened by the Belgian Government at Eupen and Malmedy the Council of the League was forced to admit its lack of jurisdiction when the German Government complained of the manner in which the "plebiscite" was being held Belgium's Commissioner to consult public opinion under circumstances which cannot be said to have ensured "complete freedom of vote," since General Baltia was well within his rights in limiting the means of recording a protest against annexation to Belgium to the public signing of the register at Eupen or (the only other provided) that at Malmedy In view of the Treaty terms the limitation of possible protestants to such men and women as were resident in the Kreise before August 1 and had attained the age of 21 (or would do so before the end of the registration period) was unexceptionable Granting the legality of the machinery for registration we may affirm that reasonable answers were given by Belgian authorities to German charges that great pressure was being employed to determine the verdict the Belgians' counter charge was sufficiently explicit to indicate the delicacy of their task at a time when General Baltia was forced to employ former German officials in local administration the recorded protests were remarkably few -- merely 62 in Malmedy and 209 in the smaller Kreis of Eupen Of the total of 271 signatures in the registers the Council of the League gave Belgium full sovereignty over both Kreise on September 20 and maintained its own competence in the matter in the face of subsequent German protests Prior to this date the international commission to delimit the actual frontier line had enlarged the territories gained by Belgium Under Articles 35 this body was to determine the frontier between Germany and Belgium "taking into account economic factors and lines of communication." On the ground of economic necessity the Belgian member pressed for that portion of the railroad line Eupen-Rötgen-Monschau-Malmedy which lay beyond the administrative frontiers of the ceded Kreise although Article 372 of the Treaty provided for the operation of such a connecting line under an agreement between the railroad administrations of the nations concerned the Commission gave the line itself to Belgium thus creating a most extraordinary set of German enclaves between the railway and the regular Belgian frontier Germany made an immediate protest to the League Curious and meagre reports concerning conditions in the new Belgian territory have appeared since that time General Baltia has been hailed by some Belgians as the saviour of "pays redimés," and assailed by others as an autocrat who held "a parody on a plebiscite." In March Vith were assimilated with the electoral district of Verviers to which an additional deputy was assigned and on April 5th of that year the inhabitants of the former Kreise participated in a general election Three Catholics and three Socialists were returned from the district and among the latter was one who had conducted his campaign in German and criticized the actions of General Baltia He owed his election to proportional representation since the voters of the three cantons generally indicated their preference for the Catholic representatives A Belgian asserts (in a German periodical) that nearly all those who signed the registers have been expelled from Belgium on the ground that their action constituted an option for German citizenship but goes on to state that German is the language of administration In spite of the latter fact a "Heimatsbund" was formed in St Vith last April "to protect the mother tongue Vith." The customs barrier now existing between Germany and Belgium has forced some economic readjustment at the cost of tramways and industries such matters are at the moment comparatively unimportant The question of Eupen and Malmedy has not been revived as the result of local and popular agitation It owes its present vitality to Grosse Politik Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access Already a subscriber? Sign In Stacie E. Goddard Nathalie Tocci Célia Belin Omar G. Encarnación Hannah Rae Armstrong Charles Edel Nataliya Gumenyuk Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay Tong Zhao Jenna Bednar and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar Zongyuan Zoe Liu * Note that when you provide your email address, the Foreign Affairs Privacy Policy and Terms of Use will apply to your newsletter subscription Published by The Council on Foreign Relations Privacy Policy Terms of Use From the publishers of  Foreign Affairs This website uses cookies to improve your experience You can opt-out of certain cookies using the cookie management page * Note that when you provide your email address, the Foreign Affairs Privacy Policy and Terms of Use will apply to your newsletter subscription The story behind the letter sent home on Christmas by Lenny Miller in “We Are Going To Be Lucky: A World War II Love Story in Letters“ occupied by American troops was bombed by mistake by six medium bombers and 18 Eighth AF heavies during the counteroffensive on Dec The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign of WWII The goal was to surprise the Allies by cutting through the dense forests of the Ardennes and splitting the Allied forces and then forcing a negotiated peace on the Western Front the same route the Germans had taken to successfully cut off the Allies at the start of the war in 1940 The 29th and 30th Divisions were rushed back into Belgium on the hills on the northeast side of the Bulge Letter below from “We Are Going To Be Lucky: A World War II Love Story in Letters” by Elizabeth Fox Colorado (New York State University Press – SUNY) available on Amazon we talked about preparing a little festivity for the evening but in one short evil moment all was changed – only a minute then came the new job (so many strange new jobs since we came here) of going out on errands of mercy And when the serene white moon came out shining on the white frosted piney hilltops and all should have been suited for Christmas Eve we stood & watched the city of Malmedy suffer as too many cities have suffered in wars past and present it is good you & Betty are safe at home – only now I begin to realize the horrors the Nazis brought the world “We will never forget this Christmas ….” Behind these brief couple of lines in the above letter by Lenny to Diana Lenny and his buddies were in the center of Malmedy when the second of three successive waves of Allied bombers mistakenly dropped some of their bombs on Malmedy soldiers and civilian life.  The Christmas Eve bombing was the worst.  Almost the entire center of the town was reduced to rubble by the bombing and the subsequent resulting raging fires.  Miraculously the beautiful Cathedral survived in the destruction of most of the town’s central square Lenny details his personal experience of the bombings in his unpublished memoir We desperately wanted a respite from the havoc and the horror On top of the calamities and the casualties in the first week of the Ardennes battle there had been the shock of an air raid by big bombers which had taken a heavy toll of our men on December 23 A couple of us tried to shake off the leaden cheerlessness by planning a party for the night We had found some books of Christmas carols abandoned by rear echelon men in their flight and a volume of Dickens’ Christmas stories and we had enough eats on hand from our Holiday packages It was a bright and sunny day but we stayed in the cellar of a school building preferring its security from enemy artillery and airplanes About three o’clock we began to hear the unpleasant hum of heavy bombers overhead For infantrymen it is only a question of the particular time no matter how many lucky escapes one has had Then the dreaded swoosh-swoosh came and put an end to our waiting an unnatural wind came through the solid walls and fanned our faces We wondered how close the bombs had fallen They don’t make any of the racket that mortar and howitzer shells do There is only a swish like the breath of tank shell passing over so he ran up the coalpile on one side of the cellar Hodges turned waxy-white and took off to the aid station; they shipped him back for combat fatigue The rest of us ran to join the rescue work picking up stretchers from the medics as we went familiar as we were to scenes of desolation There is something especially terrible when a street of homes is squashed like so many cheap matchboxes The mind can understand a wall torn open by shells but the change from a hotel or a home to a dusty heap of rubbish in one swishing second is fearfully unreal and unnerving We had hardly run a few hundred yards when we heard screams from an alley We turned and saw a couple of elderly men and a young woman frantically struggling with a tangled mass of wreckage “Five people in the cellar,” they signaled to us We could not hear any life from below but we fell to lifting away the smashed beams and shingles A three story building was reduced to a five foot pile of coarse dust and splinters shredded and then woven by the power of the bomb but gradually a cavity began to appear as we got down into the debris we dragged big beams loose from the choking powdered plaster and the restraining laths and a clutching wrinkled sooty hand thrust forth in wild impatience Her face was blackened by the dust and her hair was matted in blood Vic and I put her on a stretcher and ran with her to the battalion aid station Already some forty soldier and civilian casualties lay there some with tourniquets above amputated arms and legs The medics were hustling like nothing we had ever seen before seized another couple of stretchers and ran back As we turned into the alley the boys were lifting out a little girl of seven or eight Some neighbor woman appeared from somewhere wrapped her in a blanket and carried her off to their shelter Continuing to enlarge the opening we soon were able to release the girl’s mother but as she came out into the light she let out a heartrending scream Anni is dead!” We handed her down from the debris to her neighbors From the little girl we had learned that the missing two had not been in the cellar but by the kitchen stove when the bombs fell It took some figuring out to determine the altered position of the kitchen The two men argued over its former location We finally traced it by the crumbling chimney bricks we heard the din of more bombers coming over We froze as we saw a bright gleaming metallic mass drop from one after another They were slowfalling clusters of anti-radar foil Presently we reached close to where the bodies lay and saw enough to know there would be no life there Preferring to go someplace else where there might be a chance of saving life we alibied to the old man that the engineers would be needed to move the heavy beams and that we would send them to retrieve the bodies The old men kept nibbling at the mound of rubble We went down the avenue towards the Cathedral in front of which there were lying a large number of stretcher cases on the ground waiting to be loaded on jeeps for evacuation As the last ones were moved out a flight of five bombers flew over Then again came the rushing swish of the dropping bombs but these bombs had fallen at a distance from us Then I saw that a great panic had begun at the mouth of the great dugout at the foot of the mountain behind the Cathedral Instead of staying inside the air-raid shelter With a couple of other GI’s I ran over and we drove them back under cover I went back to the street and found a couple of my squad mates We went back to the company to see where else we might be needed By dusk most of the buried-alive had been rescued if there was anyone to notice that they were trapped who had left our company by jeep in line of duty just before the first wave came over They were not missed until many hours later when it was learned that they had not reached their destination Some small fires had broken out during the afternoon.  Of all times for the ever-cursed rain to stop engulfing many that had escaped the bombing Soon there was a flaming cauldron from opposite the Cathedral to the Place du Commerce The tongues of flame lapped hundreds of feet in the air Around the base of the leaping fire the flames beat like roaring waves A crucible heat dispelled all the December cold The flames reflected and glistened in the frost of the hilltops around the valley The smoke billowing for acres and acres rose above the burning city like a vast luminous veil all gauze and transparency like a resplendent bridal train spun of fine gold gossamer and spangled with tens of thousands of dancing incandescent gold sparks In the rage of the fire roofs cracked and fell and ever and again a new geyser of flame would spurt up as another furnace was exposed to the sky It had become impossible to fight the fire with water The engineers set about dynamiting a corridor around the blaze From time to time the earth shook with their detonations foodless and clothesless folk began to flee from the city Many were absorbed into the surviving outlying houses and farms Some managed to go crosscountry to towns in the rear Our own cellar was full of these poor refugees but one hysterical girl among them wouldn’t be stilled From one of them we learned there was a big safe cellar in the Sparkasse but some woman managing it had barred the refugees Vic and I picked up our rifles and went over We beat on the door with our rifle butts demanding entry We informed Madame in plain words that the building was hereby declared a public shelter and no more nonsense from her We housed a hundred fleeing people there that night We threw the books of carols into a dark corner of the cellar It was good when Andy brought out a little gimcrack game called “magic race” we laid mythical bets on the speed of horses represented by a cigarette glow singeing lines across a strip of impregnated paper Later through the night we stood guard in hushed awe and watched the city die while in the sky the serene white moon came out and shone down on the white frosted piney hilltops Tags Join us for the first Exchange Summer Lecture Series: The Composers that History Forgot Subscribe to our Email Edition Letter: Local survivors of WWII's Malmedy massacre are heroesBeaver County TimesAs I look outside my dining room window writing this I think and wonder what it must have been like 76 years ago in Malmedy when hundreds of American soldiers were murdered Some escaped and their stories were truly amazing considering their wounds and weather conditions — similar to what I see outside this Dec In reading the book, "Fatal Crossroads: The Untold Story of the Malmedy Massacre at the Battle of the Bulge," by Danny S. Parker, there were two local residents who survived — Stephen Domitrovich of Beaver and Albert M I would want them to know they are heroes to me Editor's Note: Stephen Domitrovich was featured in The Times' "Veterans of the Valley" series on Jan Domitrovich was the last living survivor of what’s become known as the Massacre at Malmedy German soldiers executed about 350 Americans who had surrendered and were Prisoners of War and 100 Belgian civilians during the Battle of the Bulge. Domitrovich was 20 at the time and was serving in the U.S Army as an ambulance driver. Domitrovich died Oct According to the Beaver County Veterans Affairs office Beaver County has one remaining ex-POW,  Beaver County does have one remaining ex-POW This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page X Close Ad Join or Sign In By joining TV Guide, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy -- Mary Ann Smith has so many questions about her father but the 82-year-old Mechanicsville woman knows the answers will never materialize Wondering what would my dad be like as he grew older,” Smith said Her father remains shrouded in mystery despite the soldier’s association with one of the most well-documented and infamous events of World War II Smith was too young to remember much of anything about her dad Coates’ battalion would make history for all the wrong reasons It was a convoy of the different trucks,” Smith said The Germans attacked members of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion near the small town of Malmedy The soldiers expected to spend the duration of the war sitting in a P.O.W But their captors had no desire to take along prisoners "They took them prisoner and took them to an open field and corralled them all together,” Smith said "Somebody made the command to shoot the soldiers gathered in the field." "They mowed them down in the field with a machine gun," Smith said They did anything to make sure the were no survivors Eighty-six Americans were killed in what later became known as The Malmedy Massacre the Coates family shattered when the telegram regarding James Coates' death arrived Mary Ann Smith said her mom Mattie suffered in silence "She said he was my only love,” Smith recalled “I never remember growing up and seeing my mother cry there would be no happy homecoming nor ticker tape parade for Pvt “My dad’s father said he wanted to bring him home the Director of Education at the Virginia War Memorial said the Malmedy Massacre was an unnecessary evil that extinguished so many innocent lives "They thought they would surrender and be safe “Mary Ann lost a lifetime that she could have spent with her father because of that incident It is remarkable how she has spent her life talking about the war Mary Ann Smith has tried to keep her father close and safeguards his few personal belongings like his wallet and dog tag "It means I’m touching something he touched," she said Smith fears that what happened in that distant snow-covered field so long ago will be forgotten forever she has vowed to honor her father’s memory Smith has served as President of the Crater Chapter of the Battle of the Bulge Association ”I want them to know that things like that do happen,” she said “It makes me feel good that I’m able to tell the story." Smith organizes exhibits and attends reunions with WWII veterans Her service is part of her lifelong healing process I just don’t have him to share it with,” she said so many questions remain about Private James H this Gold Star daughter is comforted knowing two things for certain about her beloved dad Belgium with the names of each victim engraved in stone You will receive a link to create a new password via email In all the furor about “McCarthyism”—a term which is used in some quarters to smear any and every effort to expose and root out the Communist conspiracy—few have troubled to examine concretely the political methods of the man McCarthy himself Here Nathan Glazer studies those methods in their pristine state as originally forged by the Senator in an early and by now almost forgotten effort to establish himself as a political figure Analyzing Senator McCarthy’s performance in the 1949 Senate hearings on the Malmédy massacre investigations Glazer attempts to point out for us the political elements from which Senator McCarthy first compounded his career—and speculates as to how far he may hope to get by peddling his peculiar nostrum I feel strongly about labelling products for what they are Poison should be labelled as poison; treason should be labelled as treason; truth should be labelled as truth; lies should be labelled as lies Toward the end of 1948 and beginning of 1949 various reputable American publications reported charges that a number of Germans convicted of war crimes had been subjected to atrocious brutalities by American investigators One group of German war criminals in particular SS troops convicted of having massacred hundreds of disarmed American prisoners of war near Malmédy during the Battle of the Bulge 73 Germans had been tried for taking part in these massacres; 43 were given death sentences These verdicts then went through the regular prescribed series of reviews the number of death sentences had been reduced to 12 In May 1948 a petition was presented to the Supreme Court of the United States and brutality in the investigations which had preceded it There were supporting affidavits by the convicted men recording in detail the physical abuse they claimed to have undergone at the hands of the army investigators almost two years before This petition was rejected by a 4 to 4 decision Everett then presented his case to Secretary of the Army Kenneth C and appointed a commission consisting of Justice Gordon Simpson of the Supreme Court of Texas and Judge Edward Van Roden to go to Germany to investigate the Malmédy death sentences as well as other death sentences not yet executed—a total of 139 in all the Malmédy case had become a cause célèbre in Germany Many Germans were naturally delighted at the chance to charge atrocities to Americans German clergymen of very high position took up the cause and they and their representatives appeared before the Simpson-Van Roden Commission the two judges recommended the commutation of the 12 remaining Malmédy death sentences It was shortly after this that stories on the case came out in the American press Judge Van Roden returned and spoke publicly about it; a number of Congressmen and Senators—from constituencies with numerous voters of German origin—demanded investigations an article appeared by Judge Van Roden in the Progressive magazine which contained the following: “All but two of the Germans in the 139 cases we investigated had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair This was standard operating procedure with American investigators.” Van Roden’s article was inserted in the Congressional Record by a Wisconsin Congressman on March 10 the New York Times capped a number of first-page reports on the alleged atrocities with a page-one story which ran over for three columns on an inside page and which reported in detail the charges that had been made The case had begun to collapse almost with the first witnesses Little was left of it when Judge Van Roden the lion demanding justice for America’s fallen enemies suddenly turned into a vague lamb at the hearings It transpired that he had not written the article in the Progressive but that James Finucane of the National Council for the Prevention of War which had taken a marked interest in the Malmédy case had written it on the basis of a speech by Mr Van Roden himself was compelled to withdraw just about all of its sensational charges He testified: “Where it says ‘All but two of the Germans had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair,’ I did not say that What I said was all but two were recommended for commutation to life imprisonment This investigation becomes of peculiar interest today because during its course Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin conducted the first trial run of the political method that was soon to bring him fame and fortune and make him the most controversial political figure in America Since this investigation never got to the first page of the New York Times and very few people were aware it was going on Senator McCarthy could behave in a far less inhibited way than became necessary in subsequent phases of his career At the Tydings Subcommittee investigation of his charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department in 1950 and since his every word might be weighed for possible perjury he naturally spoke with a certain unwonted caution Senator McCarthy was not the subject of investigation and operated at his ease Even though he was only a guest of the subcommittee invited because of the very strong interest he had shown in the case crude in some degree—but because of that all the more revealing—which were to be shaped less than a year later into a most finished and effective performance Senator Mccarthy was thirty-eight years old when he took his seat as junior Senator from Wisconsin During the first three years of his term his activities were not divorced from immediate material ends as was evidenced on at least two occasions is not with Senator McCarthy’s financial doings but rather with the second three years of his first term he decided that his political fences needed mending His varied activities up to that time had in no way served to define him politically; his political course had been one of simple and undistinguished opportunism The Malmédy case was the occasion on which Senator McCarthy put the first touch to the political image he was to create of himself The Malmédy case was also to serve as a test of the specific political technique that he had already been long using on a personal and a local scale The political character McCarthy chose to assume at this time was accidental—just as accidental as the fact that he began his political career in 1936 as a Democrat running for nomination as district attorney and later turned Republican—but the technique was essential and it is as impossible to separate it from the person as it is to change the spots on a leopard It leaps out at us from the first pages of the Malmédy hearings the first witness to appear before the subcommittee The regular members of the subcommittee—Senator Baldwin (R. have been content to listen—as indeed they do through most of these hearings Guest-member McCarthy is conducting a long line of questioning the Army Committee [Board of Review] said existed and that officer Jones who was assigned to prosecute he takes a ration card away from the accused’s family; assume you find that out and that is part of the findings in the Army Committee’s report assume that you believe that in the dead of night they took this man down and put a black hood over his head and put him before a table with a phony prosecutor sitting behind the table and assigned a member of the prosecuting staff to act as his defense counsel and they convicted him and sentenced him to hang in the morning; assume that you find that along about 2 or 3 hours before he is allegedly to hang the phony defense counsel comes in and says your family will get their ration card restored to them you will get off with 5 or 10 years.” Assume that physical violence was used on other witnesses to make them testify along a certain line do I understand you to say that [in such a case] you will not bring the Army man up for court martial by describing a most atrocious set of circumstances that I recited nothing that is not in the Army report as Senator McCarthy is careful to point out he is merely “reciting,” is published as an appendix to these hearings [On ration cards]: “It is alleged that representatives of the prosecution staff threatened harm to relatives of the accused if they did not confess The Board finds it is probable in certain instances such threats may have been made [On the “mock trials” that Senator McCarthy is purportedly describing]: “No sentence was pronounced [On violence]: “. . . the description of physical violence that is given in the affidavits of the accused is exaggerated beyond anything that might have taken place. . . .” (pp. 1201, 1200, 1203.)5 in Senator McCarthy’s “recitation,” the charge that representatives of the prosecution staff told prisoners that the ration cards of their relatives would be taken away which the Board finds “probable in certain instances,” becomes not only certain—but Senator McCarthy adds as a fact what is not even charged: that they actually were taken away Note that the alleged “mock trials”—which took place in an ordinary interrogation room and was to simulate the solemnity of the judge-conducted investigations of Continental law—become horrendous affairs in which confessions are extracted under the shadow of the gallows And note finally that the violence which the army Board finds occasional becomes an important means for the extraction of confessions Let us consider another piece of testimony who had publicly dissociated himself from the extreme charges that had been made by Judge Van Roden with whom he had served on the commission reviewing death sentences passed on German war criminals You knew it was claimed that these men sentenced to death were crippled for life because they had been kicked in the genitals Didn’t you think it was important to send a doctor to examine two or three of those men I never saw a claim that a man had been injured for life because of a blow in the genitals Didn’t you read over Colonel Everett’s affidavit 10 or 15 times in the documents supporting Everett’s application I do wish you would look these over and discover what you have overlooked is going through Colonel Everett’s petition to discover whether Judge Simpson’s delinquency is really so grave: Chambers just advises me that an examination of Colonel Everett’s affidavit and which was the one which was referred to here apparently shows no claim that there was any number of men or any at all who were damaged or injured in private parts as the results of the conduct of the investigators for the prosecution Just so we don’t get Colonel Chambers or anyone else in a misstatement the affidavits filed by Colonel Everett and supporting documents set forth very definitely the physical violence used in order to get confessions the point that I took a look at this record was to resolve the point that seemed to be in issue between Judge Simpson and Senator McCarthy in which Judge Simpson said he did not recall having seen a charge of 139 or some such number of people being ruined for life by being kicked in the testicles In an effort to clarify that particular point I have checked through here and it is not in the record McCarthy’s counsel will concur in that and there is no question about the fact that Colonel Everett’s affidavit sets forth in detail the physical beatings and the type of punishment used in order to get the confessions Colonel Everett’s petition before the Supreme Court alleged many different types of pressures who had worked as a stenographer for a few weeks during the investigation in Germany and was clearly motivated by resentment against his supervisors—even so he was unable to give any direct testimony as to mistreatment—is testifying: [Lieutenant Perl] was down there in the garb of a first lieutenant of the American Army She had never been in this country; she had spent 4 or 5 years in German concentration camps He had escaped from one after being sentenced to death DO you know whether he was an American citizen or not Ellis [Lieutenant Perl’s superior officer] whether this man Perl and his wife had been in the concentration camp whether they were American citizens or not he came to the United States in 1938 or 1939 He was apprehended at the time of the Anschluss she was picked up sometime during the war and held at some camp for two years Senator McCarthy is questioning Judge Simpson: Let me ask you this question if I may: The testimony this morning was—and apparently it is unquestioned—that the chief investigator one of them had been sentenced to death by Hitler’s gang his wife had been held in a German concentration camp for four years Senator McCarthy had said: “There is only one thing which I claim to have an unimpeachable memory when I am examining a witness” (p emerges in all three passages—and in scores of others that I have not quoted—is that Senator McCarthy is engaged in a process of continuous distortion But Senator McCarthy’s peculiar contribution to the use of distortion in politics is the invention or at any rate the very original elaboration of what Richard Rovere has called the “multiple untruth”—the misstatement inserted in a parenthetical remark The virtue of this technique is that it is possible to pack so much distortion into a given quantity of words as to make it certain that any effort to correct every point of error will only bore the reader the interesting articles in America for December 13 and 20 trying to clear up just one brief passage in Senator McCarthy’s famous address on Governor Stevenson The job of simply clearing away the barbed wire of unimportant misstatements of no apparent relevance to the point is itself Herculean Perhaps this is just the point—the unimportant serves to protect the important I do not wish to suggest that this is entirely conscious: the work of every great innovator is based to some extent on pure instinct Respectable politicians will assert that the Republicans were completely responsible for the depression or the Democrats completely responsible for the war in Korea But we do not speak of such matters; this is not the kind of hyperbolic political rhetoric that is employed as a rule by Senator McCarthy Politicians may sometimes get themselves quite far out on a limb out of an excess of passion; thus it is possible to ascribe Senator McCarran’s charge that all critics of the McCarran Act are Communists Senator McCarran does not speak with his eyes open But we do not detect this kind of passion in the affable McCarthy It would be more correct to classify him with those out-and-out demagogues who appeal to passions which they themselves do not hold But when we take a closer look at such demagogues—some old Populist leaders some more recent Southerners—we find that Senator McCarthy fails to conform to their type in one important respect: he is “modern,” “scientific,” they are not Senator McCarthy operates with “documents,” and his favored pose for photographers as we may see on the back of his book McCarthyism shows him taking a decisive “document” out of his briefcase and Huey Long appealed with their tall tales to the prejudices and ignorance of an uneducated audience they cannot with any justice be likened to Senator McCarthy who comes from a state often considered the most enlightened and advanced in the Union At this place and at this time it would not be an exaggeration to describe Senator McCarthy as the inventor of a new technique of distortion In the few passages we have here taken from the record we discern at least four quite different kinds of distortion First, there is the simple creation of fact to serve the needs of a particular moment. Second, there is the misreading of documents.6 Third which is in effect a repetition of the original offense: Senator McCarthy is never on the defensive rapidly covers his tracks by altering his previous statements—while insisting that they are still the same Senator McCarthy at one point implies that he has been talking only about “physical violence” in general Chambers has to agree with him that Colonel Everett’s petition does speak about that he decides to return to the charge that injury to genitals is alleged in the petition But these are all fairly simple forms of distortion for such a master as McCarthy in which a number of types are combined to imply or charge that someone else is lying; this is one of the Senator’s favorite gambits claim to the court he had been beaten and mistreated Senator McCarthy resumes a few pages later: that this man never claimed on the stand during the trial that he had been mistreated [my italics] Senator McCarthy then quotes from the testimony of the person under consideration that he had been verbally abused but does not refer to beatings In view of the fact that he did so testify do you want to change your testimony in which you said that on the stand he made no claim he had been mistreated [my italics] do you want to change your statement that having read the record you find that he never made any claims of mistreatment Perl evaded this artful trap the Senator decided to stage one of the most remarkable scenes ever beheld the key to his persistent inability to reproduce the facts as they are I think there is one way in which this investigation could be concluded very rapidly to the satisfaction of everyone We have back in my State and a number of States a practice in criminal cases—I have tried a lot of murder cases in which we used it—where we give the defendant in a murder case the option of submitting himself to the lie detector if you would be willing to submit to the Kieler lie detector test that the life of people should depend entirely on it which is torn down by this allegation now in all the Communist-controlled countries If this commission believes it to be correct I believe we would make ourselves ridiculous in Europe I have no objection against the lie-detector I do not think you can fool the lie detector I know you are a psychologist and a psychiatrist and work at it I have been told I can get nothing from you in cross-examination I am convinced you cannot fool the lie detector If you think you are smart enough—I am not saying you are lying I know you are not smart enough to beat it pointed out that this novel idea raised a number of problems We are spending all the time trying to find out whether the claims of brutality are true or untrue All of the claims are made against three men He says he will submit to the lie detector The Chair seems to be afraid of the results of that test It is fair to say that this committee is afraid of the facts If this committee were not afraid of the facts who I think are deliberately lying—to submit themselves to the lie-detector test and once and for all either prove or disprove these claims this confirms what I have suspected all along and that is: This committee is not concerned with getting the facts and is sitting here solely for the purpose of a whitewash of the Army and that phase of the military government in charge of those trials for the chairman to say we will not allow these three key witnesses whom many of us think are deliberately lying— What Senator McCarthy seems to be saying in his extravagant championship of the lie detector is that he really doesn’t believe that anyone can tell the difference between truth and falsehood or indeed that there is any observable difference Anyone may be lying—and most likely is—if he says something in his own interest At the same time that Senator McCarthy thus revealed his “philosophy,” he was also acting with characteristic calculation He knew that the lie detector had never been used by a Senate investigating committee and would not be in this situation—that no Senator would “set aside his own judgment for a mechanical machine.” Senator McCarthy introduced this issue because he saw that he could get nowhere with his argument that the interrogators of the Malmedy Germans had been brutal; he preferred therefore to blow up the whole investigation or to slide out of the job he had undertaken—that of clearing the convicted SS men—while discrediting the subcommittee’s effort to get at the truth and picking up publicity at the same time the New York Times gave Senator McCarthy’s absolutely groundless charges of whitewash at least as much publicity as anything else the subcommittee did—the story got a picture and a two-column head on page 3.) Senator McCarthy: I think we should find out who is responsible for hiring refugees from Hitler men whose wives were in concentration camps men who had every reason to dislike the German race and dislike them intensely and the prosecution goes out and hires those individuals and gives them complete charge of the job of getting confessions The prosecution or whoever was responsible for doing that should be asked to resign from the Army immediately as we go along this picture becomes more and more gruesome That is worse than anything we have ever accused the Russians of doing the desire to clear the convicted men could not conceivably have led to his continual comparing of America’s behavior with Russia’s to our own disadvantage a comparison repeated again and again in these hearings and whose unjustness could only serve to infuriate American officers and officials This comparison obviously had a political point: one could almost hear under “This is worse than anything the Russians have done,” the real meaning: “This is worse than anything the Germans did,” and the intended effect: “Not the Germans In any case, this was the net effect of everything Senator McCarthy did at the Malmédy hearings. He was not appealing to Nazi sympathizers, but he was appealing to that whole broad spectrum in American opinion of which pro-Nazism formed an extreme wing.8 It is this element that has been Senator McCarthy’s strongest support since the Malmédy case; it was with this element that Senator McCarthy decided did not support the war against the Axis with enthusiasm This element was not an ad hoc amalgamation but a permanent grouping of some size and influence in American politics the “isolationists” were made up primarily of Americans of German descent uncomfortable at going to war against Germany and Americans of Irish descent whose hatred of England had consistently cast them into an isolationist and even directly pro-German position (Germany had supported the Irish rebels in the First World War) It included others too: there were Socialists and liberals; and there were also industrialists who found fascism for some reason attractive But it was persons of German and Irish descent who formed the largest and most stable part of this heterogeneous coalition Together with other sections of the American electorate it was responsible for the great Democratic defeat of 1946 that brought Senator McCarthy to the Senate The old isolationists found their economic interests in conflict with their ethnic emotions and they returned in good part to the Democratic fold the isolationism that had flared up so fiercely in 1940 and 1941 seemed to have left few political after-effects—Senator McCarthy himself defeated an isolationist leader in the Republican primary for Senator in 1946 and took a general and ambiguous position in his campaign—by no means a simple isolationist one even though it may be submerged for a while: as Samuel Lubell points out a given body of opinion offers an irresistible appeal to politicians who know that the evocation of the slogans that created it may call it to life again and win its support by 1949 many straws in the wind showed that the old isolationist bloc of the early 1940’s was reemerging The growing tension with Russia produced a division that sharply paralleled the old one On the surface it would appear that the old isolationism insofar as it was based on a sympathy for Germany should have been among the strongest supports of a policy to enlist the Germans against the Russian threat But the pro-Germanism at the bottom of isolationism had been feeling; from the first it had expressed itself negatively rather than positively and what it expressed was distaste for European “entanglements” that had the unfortunate result of putting America in opposition to Germany This helps explain the old mystery of why the so-called “isolationists” can be quite enthusiastic about overseas involvements so long as they are across the Pacific They just don’t want to think about Europe the old isolationists were no friends of European involvement in general But it was a more important factor that helped reconstitute the old isolationist bloc It had begun to dawn on American public opinion that our sympathy with Russia during the war was fostered by more than considerations of national policy (the Hiss case broke in August 1948) and dissatisfaction began to stir in many Americans with the way the Democrats had handled our wartime and postwar relations with Russia Those who had wholeheartedly supported the war expressed their dissatisfaction in one way; those who had not The latter saw in revelations of Communist spy rings and infiltration the belated justification for their position: now it was not we who dragged our feet who were guilty of disloyalty; quite the contrary those who were most enthusiastic about pressing the war now turn out to be disloyal—indeed the violent anti-Communism of the old isolationists had nothing in common with any realistic policy to check Communist expansion The isolationists remained uninterested in pacts or military aid programs primarily interested in was self-justification opposition to Communism played so little a role as compared with self-justification that Senator McCarthy could try to exploit a Communist propaganda line in his effort to discredit our own conduct of the war and occupation What the isolationist element was really saying and what Senator McCarthy was intimating to them was: we were right in being against the war This line began to pay off immediately; contributions poured in from friends and strangers His agitated correspondence with banker Matt Schuh finally comes to a close as a rain of dollars descends on the great Communist-hunter When all the elements that had opposed the war against Germany flocked to Senator McCarthy’s standard and when it was discovered that his chief investigator Smith in Washington to Benjamin Freedman that produced the “evidence” that Anna M Rosenberg was a “Communist,” there was little cause for surprise Nor was it any surprise that Senator McCarthy’s speech on Governor Stevenson should be delivered from the citadel of the old isolationism introduced by the old chairman of the America First Committee There are those who thought that the honest and informed criticism of State Department policy made by Representative Judd and Senator Ferguson and many other Republicans did not suffice against the threat inherent in the presence in the State Department of individuals who had But the larger part of respectable opinion in this country was revolted by Senator McCarthy—many were not only revolted but quite frightened The question that has begun to agitate them is how far he may go They even wonder whether he is capable of emulating in any way the late master of the big lie one must admit that there are no resemblances at all and it is on the face of it farfetched to compare a man who commanded a totalitarian movement with one who commands only investigators and To say that the difference is in the times and the place may be true—but it may also be to say all Senator McCarthy is unpleasant and he is even dangerous but we must be careful in defining in just what ways he is dangerous Political definition—and at the Malmédy hearings Senator McCarthy did finally define himself politically—also means limitation If Senator McCarthy is the idol of the old isolationist element it is nevertheless important to point out that this element has never formed anything near a majority in American politics and has generally had a touch-and-go fight of it in the states in which it is strongest Nor has it ever managed to nominate a Presidential candidate Even if those sincere anti-Communists who are willing to stomach Senator McCarthy are added McCarthy is still far short of what it takes to swing a national convention—that is if one takes the present constitution of the American electorate as more or less stable is really thinking seriously of the Presidency he must find ways to broaden his appeal and expand his political image is usually defined for the rest of his career by his first appearance on the national scene A politician may be ruined for beliefs he held twenty years before—and while this penalizes an honest change of mind it makes it no simple matter for an opportunist who has taken up a position for temporary advantage to live it down Senator McCarthy’s behavior since his reelection suggests that he is well aware of this problem There is his surprisingly moderate reelection statement and the intermittent suggestions that his Committee on Government Expenditures will devote itself to various useful undertakings But I believe that the “respectable” path will not prove satisfying very long for the moderation of a Joe McCarthy will win over nobody then we know pretty much the limits of his power and may properly urge his fellow Senators and those among the public at large who fear him to take heart by Constitutional provision and customary privilege When to this power is added the talents of a Senator McCarthy it is no wonder that men will walk humbly But when one thinks of the matter realistically one finds that Senator McCarthy’s power is in good measure given to him by those who refuse to make use of their own All that Senator McCarthy can do on his own authority that someone equally unpleasant and not a Senator can’t is to haul people down to Washington for a grilling by his committee It is a shame and an outrage that Senator McCarthy should remain in the Senate; yet I cannot see that it is an imminent danger to personal liberty in the United States He has unquestionably hurt a number of guiltless people; he has undoubtedly damaged the effectiveness of government agencies carrying important responsibilities in the fight against Communism he has certainly been aided by a press which bound by its own canons of what constitutes objectivity and newsworthiness has given the widest publicity to his every irresponsible charge and has found no way of enabling the truth to catch up with the misstatement our political structure sets a limit to his power Senator McCarthy’s tissue of distortion did imply in the end one big untruth This was that treason was responsible for our political defeats since the end of the war One need only think of the stab-in-the-back myth that Hitler used so effectively in Germany But the cry of treason is only effective when the community is already deeply divided when one part of it is ready to turn on the other like wild beasts Senator McCarthy certainly acted as if he believed this to be the case But who knows if we can escape great reverses for America There is always that possibility in times of war and near-war like our own the charge of treason may receive wide credit and those who were first associated with it may benefit 1 Malmédy Massacre Investigation Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Comittee on Armed Services 2 We do not mean to suggest that the Senators' terror is justified: other factors than the intervention of McCarthy's assistants may have been responsible for Senator Tydings surprising defeat in Maryland in the election of 1950; and certainly Senator Benton's winning margin in 1950 was so small he could have been expected to lose in 1952 in any case as to the real fear of Senator McCarthy felt by many other Senators there can be no question: Washington correspondents like Joseph Harsch and Doris Fleeson attest to it; the very full biography the “Ism,“ by Jack Anderson and Ronald May (I am greatly indebted to this book for much of the information on which this article is based.) The report of the subcommittee investigating Senator Benton's charges against Senator McCarthy (Investigations of Senators Joseph McCarthy and William Benton Report of the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections to the Committee on Rules and Administration 1952) would be in itself decisive on this point Senator McCarthy refused to testify before the subcommittee on facts suggesting his having been improperly influenced yet the subcommittee did not subpoena him or make any recommendations as to action against him was referred to by Senator McCarthy as a “living miracle the miracle being he has lived so long without brains or guts”; after this attack Senator Hendrickson was observed on the Senate floor in friendly conversation with McCarthy 3 Investigations of Senator Joseph R It is well known that this was an “honorarium” for a pamphlet understood that the size of the sum involved might lead to questions When reporters questioned him three months later as to how much he had received I have to split it with ten people who helped me” (McCarthy It was only when his state income tax returns were investigated that it was discovered that the “embarrassingly small” sum almost equaled his year's salary as a Senator—and that he had split it with no one 5 It later turned out that one of those assigned to this Board of Review was an officer who had acted as defense counsel in the trial; that the defense point of view was more than adequately represented in the course of the day-to-day deliberations of this Board of Review while the prosecution point of view was presented only by written statements; and that this report considerably overstated the situation 7 Here is how Senator McCarthy characterized him when he was sentenced to a prison term by a Nuremberg war crimes court: “Apparently the evidence is all uncontradicted It was to the effect that this was the most valuable undercover man which the Allies had in Germany The evidence is undisputed that he notified Britain before the invasion of Poland that he kept Nevile Henderson informed at all times of the negotiations prior to the signing of the Soviet-Hitler pact “So that we have here a man who was our principal undercover man was firmly convinced—they could not have been otherwise—that this man was the principal undercover man we had in Germany in the process of getting information for us and in the process of getting this information and passing it on to us he had to be friendly with some of the Nazis and that “I think this committee should see what type of morons—and I use the term advisedly—are running the military court over there The kernel of truth which set Senator McCarthy off on this fantastic flight was that like other Germans who bore important responsibilities for the horrors of the Third Reich Von Weizsäcker had tried to cover himself for the future by feeding hints to the British he had covered his tracks so thoroughly that these hints see Sir Lewis Namier's analysis of Von Weizsäcker's memoirs 8 It was a strong German sympathizer according to the account of Anderson and May had lent an official of his firm to help Senator McCarthy to prepare the case and had most likely put him in touch with Dr who supplied him with statements taken directly from the war criminals Walter Hamischfeger was a wealthy industrialist There is a letter extant from Senator McCarthy to his banker well before the Arundel and Lustron episodes and when Senator McCarthy was in financial straits which reads: “I have made complete arrangements with Walter Hamischfeger to put up sufficient collateral to cure both our ulcers .” The letter then goes on to sav that the Senator had missed Hamischfeger and had not been able to complete these arrangements 9 This analysis is of course in direct contradiction to Senator McCarthy's assertion that Communist influences on American policy were his major concern from the day he came to Washington: “Day after day I came in contact with convincing evidence of treason But how to arouse the public to danger before it was too late?” (p But it is hardly likely that Senator McCarthy would have waited three years to make his evidence of “treason” public the evidence he used early in 1950 was lifted from a Congressional report of 1948 sometime after the period to which this passage refers One should also point out that while McCarthy attacked the State Department and American foreign policy for his own motives and with his own techniques he had a rather better case against the State Department than he did against the army On the record-which this article does not pretend to analyze-there were Communists in important posts in the State Department and elsewhere It is not easy at this point to get any clear picture of the extent of this influence It has been obscured as much by the self-protectiveness of the late administration as by the irresponsibility of many of those attacking it Start your risk free trial with unlimited access Explore the scintillating May 2025 issue of Commentary Site design by beck & stone Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Search Companies editorial@fibre2fashion.com When visiting the beautiful town of Malmedy a detour to the cemetery Ligneuville will reveal a local legend and intriguing story to grave hunters looking for something a little off the usual celebrity list You will have located one of Belgiums more riveting deceased when you've located the tomb of Mr This simple grave seems to be no different from the tens of thousands of others just like it but it stands in remembrance of a man whose life was so fascinating Flemish writer Filip Pillecyn published " Dr The Belgian film "Monsieur Hawarden" debuted in 1969 with a young Rutger Hauer in his first role Hawarden that he inspired so much interest and curiosity While truth and fiction have undeniably melded into a pool of half-truths the story goes that Arthur Hawarden was actually Meriora Gillibrand a rough and tumble Havana smoking blood-spitting-hellion Hawarden's reason for the constant and intimidating blood on her lips was said to be caused by a shot to the chest during a duel with an ex-lover that she Of course the more likely cause was consumption Hawarden had always preferred men's clothing as they lent better to her love of brawling but after a would-be suitor ended up dead by her hand Meriora was forced to become Arthur Hawarden to evade police and lived out the rest of her days as a man The grave is located on the cemetery in Ligneuville about 1,640 feet (500 meters) uphill from the church The cemetery is located across the street called Pré Lorette The skulls and bones of thousands of soldiers line the walls of this small Italian chapel For centuries no one knew there were hundreds of bones and precious artwork hidden beneath this Swiss church Mary of Eulogies and the Dead you are left alone to ponder mortality among piles of skulls The final resting place of New England's last "vampire." Plundered and left asunder by grave robbers this ancient necropolis has been painstakingly pieced back together This ancient village and its adjoining cemetery have a beautiful history of death and remembrance Underneath this small church are 15,000 bones The mass grave of a heroic Revolutionary War regiment sits below an empty lot near the Gowanus Canal Members of the worldwide fraternity of the omelette prepare a traditional giant omelette made with 10,000 eggs in Malmedy Link IconCopy linkFacebook LogoShare on FacebookXShare on XEmailShare via EmailLink copied to clipboardTheodore J a World War II veteran and a survivor of the infamous Malmedy massacre of American GIs during World War II of congestive heart failure at the Philadelphia Veterans Community Living Center was drafted into the Army at age 20 and deployed to Europe with the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion a wartime atrocity in which 84 American soldiers who had surrendered in a field in Belgium were gunned down by the Waffen-SS on Dec Paluch survived by playing dead and then crawling to safety his extraordinary account of what happened galvanized the Allied forces to repel the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge it helped form the grist of an attempt to prosecute the Nazi perpetrators It also provided material for Danny Parker's 2013 book Fatal Crossroads: The Untold Story of the Malmedy Massacre at the Battle of the Bulge Paluch made his life's work recounting his wartime experience a Temple University professor and close friend basic guy who loved a good steak and his quiet role in a big event in World War II history Paluch grew up working at his family's candy shop in Kensington While attending North Catholic High School he paid close attention to news reports from Europe when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor from a friend you figure that you will do all the shooting it turned out a little different," he said in an oral history in 2009 Paluch's battalion first saw action in the Hürtgen Forest just before the Battle of the Bulge He saw trees explode as the Germans fired round after artillery round it seemed that every tree within sight was stripped bare of all limbs a dense forest between Belgium and Luxembourg The surprise offensive forced the Americans to retreat Paluch's unit was ordered to join the Eighth Corps his unit encountered German Waffen-SS troops I jumped out of the truck and into a ditch full of icy cold water," he recalled "All we had was carbines and here was this tank coming down the road right at us and the tank commander told us to surrender I threw my carbine down and threw my hands up." Paluch and his comrades were taken captive by two SS troopers who searched them and assembled them in a field near the crossroads of Baugnez "We were standing there in the field with our hands up not knowing what was coming all you could think of was getting away," Mr one of the German vehicles came around the corner and its occupants began firing at the GIs Anyone that was moaning they came around and finished them off," Mr He lay in the field motionless for perhaps an hour Germans came out of a house and shot at Mr "I heard one of them come running towards where I was laying he could have shot me in the back and gotten it over with so he rolled down the hedgerow and crawled along a railroad line toward Malmedy The men went to Malmedy and reported the massacre to American intelligence officers A total of 84 soldiers were killed that day Their bodies were left to freeze in the field The news that Germans were shooting prisoners of war outraged the American public and strengthened the Allied resolve to counter the German offensive in the Ardennes and within two weeks he was back with the remnants of the 285th in the Ardennes he tried not to think about the Malmedy massacre but the memory of his lost comrades haunted him I don't know if we would have done that [to the Germans] but I don't really hold any animosity towards them When asked if the memories of the massacre affected him his eyes welled with tears and his chin trembled I knew almost every one of those guys who were killed that day," he said and I hope no one ever forgets that it did." Paluch returned to the States and held various jobs including as a shipping supervisor for a manufacturer in South Jersey Paluch was a member of American Legion Post 405 at the Union League of Philadelphia and of the Delaware Valley Chapter a wheelchair honor guard of veterans escorted his body to the hearse Burial will be at a time to be determined at Washington Crossing National Cemetery in Newtown Lose Fest’s invite-only sessions are always unreservedly the biggest jumps in mountain biking most experienced freeriders are ever invited that included 16-year-old Squamish rider Jackson Goldstone he’s riding with freeride icons like Andreu Lacondeguy The whole highlights reel is obviously worth watching (and the 10-minute RAW edit below it if only for the T-Bar antics) and everyone is impressive Seeing a 16-year-old throwing down with established pros takes it to another level For more on what Goldstone is up to, including what it was like riding the Nitro Circus and which riders he’s eyeing for his World Cup downhill debut next year (hint: there’s a few Canadian’s on his list), check out his conversation with the folks at ENVE The Fest Series has gained popularity worldwide by pushing freeride forward with massive jumps insane tricks and heavy metal highlight edits The crew is expanding their concept by presenting a new format: Fest Sessions Fest Sessions take a back to basics approach by exploring all aspects of freeride With the simple goal of enjoying sessions with friends in bikeparks and throughout the backcountry bringing a wide variety of terrain to the world’s best and most stylish freeriders “Fest was being labeled as guys who ride big jumps but that’s only a part of what we love and we want to highlight all aspects of riding that we are passionate about Fest Sessions is going to offer new locations for freeriding and sessions.” – Nico Vink Belgium with the BikePark Ferme Libert Edition the Sessions approach had Nico focusing on building an entire bikepark and creating a playground for freeriders BikePark Ferme Libert boasted a new medium jumpline an enormous double-sided hip and more hidden transfers and gaps than there were people to ride them While riding the big line is always the cherry on top Nico knows how wind and weather dependent the world’s biggest jumps are and with this new approach there wasn’t going to be a single missed day of riding the Session brought together a scaled-down crew of 11 riders They were fortunate enough to get plenty of sessions on the big lines with veterans like C Dog and Sam Reynolds pulling massive trains while newcomers Ike Klassen Jackson Goldstone and William Robert brought their unique style to the line Build crew Red Belge and Kristof Lenssens proved they have just as much fun behind handlebars as they do in a digger Fest is a shared vision for freeride focused on progression through riding bikes building bigger jumps and having good times with friends It exists to create the ultimate freeride environment by putting riders first and encouraging boundary-pushing Belgium in compliance with all local Covid-19 regulations Get the digital edition of Canadian Cycling Magazine Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Today's print edition Home Delivery A Belgian town honored its 22-year-old tradition of making a giant omelet on Tuesday amidst an egg contamination scare cooking 10,000 eggs in a pan 4 meters wide Millions of chicken eggs have been pulled from European supermarket shelves as a result of the scare over the use of the insecticide fipronil which is forbidden in the food chain and can cause organ damage in humans.googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1499653692894-0'); }); Hundreds of people gathered in the eastern Belgian city of Malmedy undeterred by the scare and the president of the local branch of the giant omelet fraternity said she was confident Tuesday's dish was safe to eat Under a timid Belgian sun and with music playing they tucked into the giant omelet cooked over an open fire by "The World Fraternity of Knights of the Giant Omelette," which was created in 1973 In a time of both misinformation and too much information quality journalism is more crucial than ever.By subscribing Your subscription plan doesn't allow commenting. 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