The Wartime Years
of SS Leader, Jochen Peiper, 1941−44. Peiper’s
War is a new serious work of military history which presents
a unique view off the Second World War as seen from a
prominent participant on the dark side of history. Peiper
was a handsome Aryan prodigy who was considered a hero in
the Third Reich and had been Heinrich Himmler’s
personal adjutant in the early years of the war. Having
procured a field command in Hitler’s namesake fighting
force, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, he become famous for
a flamboyant and brutal style of warfare on the Eastern
Front. There few prisoners were taken, and motives of racial
genocide were never far from unspoken orders. Transferred to
the west, Peiper’s battlegroup incinerated a tiny
town, Boves, in Northern Italy and killed the village mayor
and priest. Peiper was convicted in the Malmedy massacre
trial and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted,
with Peiper serving 12 years in prison. Being well-connected
to Himmler and other generals of the period, Peiper finds a
place in the narrative of the inner workings of the Nazi
elite.
