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The Malmedy Massacre : the war crimes trial controversy / Steven P. Remy.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017Description: viii, 342 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780674971950
  • 0674971957
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction: an American courtroom in Dachau -- The commitments of a bad reputation: terror war in the Ardennes -- Now it comes home to us: creating the "Malmedy Massacre" -- Like a division reunion: launching the investigation -- The psychological approach: American interrogators -- Nazi method boys: the first torture allegations -- A monstrous slaughter machine: the prosecution's case -- Entirely a heat of battle case: the defense -- Other battlefields: Willis Everett and the amnesty campaign -- The sword of public opinion: the torture stories in the U.S. -- The daring fists of Lieutenant Perl: tales of torture in Schwaebisch Hall -- Avenging angels: German clergy and the massacre -- Lie detectors: interrogating American interrogators -- Red jackets: releasing the prisoners.
Summary: In the opening days of the Battle of the Bulge, members of a Waffen SS division executed 84 American prisoners of war near the Belgian town of Malmedy - the deadliest incident of its kind involving American soldiers in the European theater. After a long investigation, the U.S. Army tried and convicted 74 accused perpetrators. What followed was a decade of controversy in the United States and Germany over accusations that American interrogators had tortured the defendants and forced them to sign false confessions. In Germany, the accusations fueled intense opposition to war crimes trials and tested the limits of the West German-American alliance. The Malmedy Massacre reveals the extent to which ex-Nazis and their sympathizers have shaped our understanding of one of the war's most infamous crimes. At a time when a historically informed debate about military courts and interrogation methods is necessary, the book provides an in-depth look at how a war crimes case was made and unmade at the dawn of the Cold War.--
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 341.6902 R392 Available 33111009589629
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

During the Battle of the Bulge, Waffen SS soldiers shot 84 American prisoners near the Belgian town of Malmedy--the deadliest mass execution of U.S. soldiers during World War II. The bloody deeds of December 17, 1944, produced the most controversial war crimes trial in American history. Drawing on newly declassified documents, Steven Remy revisits the massacre--and the decade-long controversy that followed--to set the record straight.

After the war, the U.S. Army tracked down 74 of the SS men involved in the massacre and other atrocities and put them on trial at Dachau. All the defendants were convicted and sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Over the following decade, however, a network of Germans and sympathetic Americans succeeded in discrediting the trial. They claimed that interrogators--some of them Jewish émigrés--had coerced false confessions and that heat of battle conditions, rather than superiors' orders, had led to the shooting. They insisted that vengeance, not justice, was the prosecution's true objective. The controversy generated by these accusations, leveled just as the United States was anxious to placate its West German ally, resulted in the release of all the convicted men by 1957.

The Malmedy Massacre shows that the torture accusations were untrue, and the massacre was no accident but was typical of the Waffen SS's brutal fighting style. Remy reveals in unprecedented depth how German and American amnesty advocates warped our understanding of one of the war's most infamous crimes through a systematic campaign of fabrications and distortions.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-329) and index.

Introduction: an American courtroom in Dachau -- The commitments of a bad reputation: terror war in the Ardennes -- Now it comes home to us: creating the "Malmedy Massacre" -- Like a division reunion: launching the investigation -- The psychological approach: American interrogators -- Nazi method boys: the first torture allegations -- A monstrous slaughter machine: the prosecution's case -- Entirely a heat of battle case: the defense -- Other battlefields: Willis Everett and the amnesty campaign -- The sword of public opinion: the torture stories in the U.S. -- The daring fists of Lieutenant Perl: tales of torture in Schwaebisch Hall -- Avenging angels: German clergy and the massacre -- Lie detectors: interrogating American interrogators -- Red jackets: releasing the prisoners.

In the opening days of the Battle of the Bulge, members of a Waffen SS division executed 84 American prisoners of war near the Belgian town of Malmedy - the deadliest incident of its kind involving American soldiers in the European theater. After a long investigation, the U.S. Army tried and convicted 74 accused perpetrators. What followed was a decade of controversy in the United States and Germany over accusations that American interrogators had tortured the defendants and forced them to sign false confessions. In Germany, the accusations fueled intense opposition to war crimes trials and tested the limits of the West German-American alliance. The Malmedy Massacre reveals the extent to which ex-Nazis and their sympathizers have shaped our understanding of one of the war's most infamous crimes. At a time when a historically informed debate about military courts and interrogation methods is necessary, the book provides an in-depth look at how a war crimes case was made and unmade at the dawn of the Cold War.--

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