Warriors of Death by Whiting Charles;

Author:Whiting, Charles;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

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In the end, according to the immediate post-war inquiry of the Belgian Prince Regent’s war crimes commission, the Leibstandarte had massacred 130 civilians in the valley of the River Ambleve. There was not a single family in the whole valley who had not lost a relative, as is evidenced by their gravestones to this very day.

In the climate of opinion that reigned at the end of the war, after the release of those terrible details from the Nazi death camps, everyone was prepared to believe the worst of Hitler’s own elite guard. The Prince Regent’s investigating committee does not seem to have taken into account the fact that the Ambleve valley was the scene of an American barrage of such intensity that it stopped Knittel’s two columns in their tracks – and an artillery shell makes no distinction between a soldier and a civilian. Indeed, one day after the Gregoire incident, US machine-gunners killed eight members of the Chalon family as they tried to leave their home at the hamlet of Houmont; the Americans had mistaken them for Germans.

But even if the Leibstandarte were not responsible for all the deaths, frustrated young SS men must have gone on a rampage. Ever since the fall of Western Europe to German arms in 1940, German security forces had waged a bitter war in the shadows against various resistance and partisan movements. During their retreat to the Reich after the slaughter of Falaise, they had been plagued by French and Belgian partisans all the way until they reached the safety of the Westwall.

Panzermeyer, that dashing former member of the Leibstandarte, was captured, wounded by the Belgian partisans of the White Army, as it was called, and summarily sentenced to death. He was only saved by the US forces. One of his company commanders, Sturmbannfuhrer Hans Waldmueller, was not so fortunate. He was killed on the spot by his captors, again the White Army. This whole remote, well-wooded, hilly area had been known as a ‘Terroristennest’ by the Germans ever since 1940. In the summer of 1944, German forces fought a pitched battle with a group of them under their commander, Emile Wolwertz, who was killed. But as soon as the Americans started to push into the area, the White Army joined them and fought a series of skirmishes with them until they reached the German border.

Indeed, a little maliciously, Ernest Hemingway noted in a letter to General Lanham after the war: ‘Maybe they ought to send us both back to Houffalize [a Belgian town near the German border] where I saw the members of the Armee Blanche take off their arm-bands when the little fire fight [with the SS] started.’

Not only did the White Army fight back in September to aid the Americans, but there is evidence that they donned their uniforms again in December to battle against Peiper. SS Obersturmfuhrer Frank Hasse, a company commander, was killed by the partisans on 24 December. A wounded SS man left behind by Peiper in Stavelot was beaten to death.

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