Constantly he’d write home to his wife with assurances that he wasn’t fooling around with French or German girls. He promised his sweetheart that he’d make it all up to her once he got back home, but that was another matter.
Willis’ assignment was to the famous Malmedy Massacre trial. Floodlights filled the gray interior of the War Crimes Tribunal, which was actually a converted hall within Dachau concentration camp. Today, judges sat behind a bulky wooden table with the Stars and Stripes looming in the background. The witness chair sat in the middle, and both counsels sat on a deck facing the witness chair. Behind that deck, the 72 defendants of the SS-Leibstandarte were already seated in the bleachers. In unison the defendants turned their heads as Everett came in.
He’d spoken to each of the SS men individually, yet he couldn’t help being a little taken aback when all 72 of them were together. Even from a distance their eyes all spoke of sacrifice and death. Today the judges would hear from defendant number 41, Joachim Peiper. In all his time interviewing the SS defendants, Everett realized that each of them looked up to Peiper, who was the commanding officer for all of them.
Everett was able to speak with commander Peiper only one week before the trial. Peiper spoke of disturbing allegations. He’d handed Everett a list of seven men, which detailed their interrogations. Despite the men’s solitary confinement, all the defendants had roughly the same story to tell.
There was no time to personally interview all 72 defendants. That was probably by design. In fact, since arriving in Dachau, the prosecutors blocked every attempt at discovery, particularly discovery on interrogation methods.
Everett told his recently-arrived translator from New York, Herbert Strong, to make a questionnaire and distribute it to the SS men. As Everett feared, he found almost all of the soldiers had been tortured.
There surely was a massacre of American prisoners at Malmedy, and the Leibstandarte did it, but this was hardly a trial. The methods going on here were un-American, and would tarnish the United States’ image if word of ever got to the press. Even more than that, the whole situation ate away at Willis, personally. He believed in justice, and this wasn’t it.
Up until today there had been several witnesses for both sides. Two Americans who survived the massacre gave two different stories: One story of the Waffen-SS marching American prisoners against the barn and machine gunning them while laughing, and another of American soldiers fleeing for the woods and getting machine-gunned while trying.
Everett and the defense first called up Hans Hennecke, one of three SS defendants that would take the stand. Everett showed Hennecke his own confession.
“Hennecke, do you remember signing this?”
“Yes. I wrote this statement on March 13, 1946.”
“And this statement contains the truth, doesn’t it?”
“It is a pack of lies from beginning to end.”
“Why did you sign something that isn’t true?”
“Because Lieutenant Perl said that he would be my defender in the trial, and swore his word of honor as an American officer. He told me that signing that was the only chance to save my neck, and I had been told two days ago that I would be hanged. Is that not understandable?”
“Hennecke, in all seriousness, you believed that Perl would be your defender?”
“Yes, certainly!”
At that moment Willis felt someone looking his way. He turned around to see that it was Peiper, who nodded at him and turned back to Hennecke. Willis called up two more, but he wasn’t sure how much this would affect the judges, if it affected them at all.
Next, Willis called Hal McCown, a major who was a prisoner of Peiper’s Kampfgruppe for over a week. In a gentlemanly, Southern accent McCown told of how he and 150 other American prisoners were more-or-less treated well under Peiper’s direct command. As Peiper and McCown were about the same rank, the two apparently got on pretty well and talked a lot.
The judges looked like they were getting annoyed at McCown as the major recalled a conversation between himself and Peiper which lasted into the wee hours of the next morning, whereby Peiper explained the “Nazi” philosophical worldview. McCown used a German word for that, but the term was hard to remember.
As good as McCown’s anecdote may have been, this trial was quickly becoming all about Peiper, who Willis knew had to testify if they were to stand a chance at this.
Peiper did, and just then Willis realized this was only the second time he’d spoken to Peiper.
This time they went over everything, including the time Peiper signed the confession that there was a policy of executing prisoners in Ardenne. Peiper claimed he signed it only to take responsibility for his men who were tortured, confused and forced to incriminate one another. Then the prosecutor, Burton Ellis, a thin-mustached tax-attorney in civilian life, flashed Peiper’s confession in front of the defendant’s face to start the cross examination. Everett could feel his heart jump up to his throat.
“Well is that your handwriting? And is that your signature?”
“Jawohl.”
“Well you wouldn’t have signed these if they weren’t true, would you?”
“I already explained to you the situation when I signed them.”
“Well, you told me I thought here earlier that you believed in the sanctity of an oath,” Ellis bellowed out.
“Yes.”
“And now you mean to tell me that now you don’t believe in the sanctity of an oath?”
“I believe in the sanctity of an oath if it’s taken under fair conditions, but not if an oath is taken under the pretext of false facts,” Peiper said with unconcealed disdain.
But Ellis persisted. “In other words, anything that’s damaging would be untrue. And anything that’s not damaging would be true, is that the situation?”
“I already said that I do not care whether some fact is damaging to me.”
Ellis put the confession papers down and stalked his way up to the defendant.
“Well that’s funny, isn’t it? You gave up on the truth when the loyalty of your unit broke down. And now you’re suddenly interested in the truth once again, is that right?”
Peiper ignored Ellis’ presence and looked straight ahead to answer.
“The reason for that, is because today I found out that the comradeship, which I believed to have disappeared, is not an empty illusion. But I clearly see today, that these men only incriminated one another because they were tricked into doing so. That makes it my duty to testify the conditions we were in, so that the German people may learn who we were in all reality. And that for six years we—”
A faint crash rumbled in the distance and the whole procession stopped. The military judge hit his gavel and ordered the translator to repeat Peiper’s words in English. Ellis folded his arms as the words were fed back to him.
“Now were all your men——”
That was the exact moment the explosion happened. It sent every one of the Germans flat onto the floor in a second while the white-capped American MPs looked around in confusion for the source of the blast.
Before Willis knew it, Peiper had tackled him out of the way of a falling piece of stone debris.
“What the hell’s going on here?!” Jochen shouted in English.
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me!” The American responded in an accent that, even now, faintly told of cotton fields and plantation homes.
“They’re coming for you! The werewolves are!” The American continued.
Automatic machine gun fire went off and a chorus of screams could be heard from the bleachers just a couple feet away from them.