Standartenfuhrer Jochen Peiper, 'Siegfried' of the Waffen-SS, and onetime Adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, died in a fire-bomb attack on his home in France in 1976. Many in Europe and America saw this as poetic justice on a man they believed had cheated the hangman's noose.
Peiper's brilliant reputation as panzer leader of the Fuhrer's Bodyguard Regiment, Die Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, was tarnished by his previous close association with Himmler and his alleged involvement with the infamous Malmedy Massacre, when unarmed American POWs were shot during the Battle of the Bulge. After a highly controversial war crimes trial, Peiper was sentenced to death but was eventually released from Landsberg prison in 1956.
This is the first thoroughly objective account of Peiper's role in the greatest land battle ever fought by the United States of America. Michael Reynolds has spent over twenty years making contact with veterans, including survivors of the Malmedy Massacre, and has accompanied former members of Die Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, as well as American soldiers, retracing their footsteps in the Ardennes. Through these contacts, and after painstaking research into Peiper's life, he is able to demolish many of the myths surrounding this part of the Battle of the Bulge and to throw new light on the character and career of one of Nazi Germany's most charismatic, if blemished, soldiers.