Talk:Malmedy massacre trial

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Elaboration on the criticisms, please? --Tothebarricades.tk 22:20, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I knew nothing about the trial. I read both the Jewish Virtual Library link (which I added) and the scrapbook link, and added the flaws in the trials. Perhaps they need to be expanded a bit and moved to a seperate page, becasue they do not seem to be restricted to just the Malmedy trial.

--Frank.visser 12:34, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

also, on why the death penalties were not carried out. ✈ James C. 01:44, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)

and also a reason for why the right-wing repeatedly brings it up? porge 03:20, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

were the non-death sentences carried out? shortened? commuted? Rmhermen 03:38, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)

They all probably got what they deserved. You don't kill your prisoners. It merely confirmed what we already knew about the discraced SS organization. Nothing more than a bunch of thugs in uniform legitimized by the state. Even though the entire Wehrmacht committed attrocities, the most conducted in the field were by the Waffen SS, The Einsatzgruppen of the TKvB and the Polizie Feld Regiments. All were SS and therefore Nazi Party organizations. They want to get everyone to focus on their being soldiers and not on the fact that they were thugs in uniform who may have fought hard in conbat are now over glorified by a bunch of revisionists and apoligists. The SS was the military arm of the SS and as such got what they deserved. They have been given the equivelent of elite status as the US Marines, The marines however didn't routinely kill its prisoners and round up hapless civilians for deportation to slave labor camps. user: Tomtom 0905, 26 July 2004

Look, you don't have to convince me: I am Dutch and as far as I am concerned they could have hung them from the highest tree. If not for the Malmedy Massacre, then for the atrocities on the Eastern front, or indeed the Einsatzgruppen. Most of them actually got released after a few years, IMO a scandalous decision. However, from a NPOV, the trial was highly disputable, and it actually became quite a scandal in the US a few years later, with anti-semitic and anti-communist undertones. Therefore these criticisms should be reported in the article. The article needs to expanded to include this, McCarthy got his first break actually investigating the trial, so it had quite some impact. --Frank.visser 01:48, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"The way this tribunal conducted its trials has been critizised, not only by extreme right-wing groups but also in the USA." is a strange sentence. There do exist extreme right-wing groups in the US, so the statement notes nothing special as it is. Did the author mean the US government was critical of the trial? "Guilt was established beforehand" is a tough accusation, violating basic law standards and in direct contrast to other trials like those in Nuremberg. Are there serious sources? And for the claim that witnesses were paid to testify? Get-back-world-respect 14:15, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Linked article

I am not entirely certain what bias is held by the article for the Jewish Virtual Library (I think it's likely the work of several different people, each trying to clean up the last's work); but I am quite certain that it is irremediably biased. We don't need to scream about Hitler and the SS being evil for it to be true, nor do those we source. Unless anyone can offer a compelling reason for keeping, I think it ought to be excised. Wally 19:53, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

NPOV

The Wiki article seems to be based on one web page on the net [1]. It needs the input of several more sources to balance it. At the moment the major paragraph is a list of grievances from that article about how unfair the proceeding were. It needs a piece on the case against the accused, the case for the defence, and a piece on the ruling by the judges, preferably with an example of some legal heavy weight stating if it has been used as precidence in any other international case.

• I was the original author of this article in English. I actually based it on the corresponding German topic [2]. I did come up with the link you mention on scrapbookpages.com as part of my corroborating web research. I don't object to any of the other comments about the ways this topic could be improved; I just wanted to be clear about the source of the topic. Jim DeLaHunt 02:35, 20 July 2005 (PDT)

Based on the German Version of the article I reworked the section in question. Funnily enough the German Version war far more NPOV and claimed less then the english one. I coudln't find certain claims made in the English Version in the German one which is why I dropped them completely. If anyone has more information on it, he can be my guest and change it. --Ebralph 10:33, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

The grievances about alleged unfair proceeding should be mentioned but they must be kept in proportion to the rest of the article, because although as the article mentions there are problems with the procedures did they cause an innocent man to be found guilty?

Camparisons with procedures used and the the case presented and against the accused in the Biscari Massacre might be interesting and educational as well. Philip Baird Shearer 16:08, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Much better Philip Baird Shearer 12:10, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

POV Tag

Hi, the article has been reworked and as such, I'll remove the tag in a few days unless someone stills has a bone to pick. --Ebralph 22:09, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if any of you have actually read the Senate report and it's conclusions. Aschenauer was a very effective defense lawyer but the Senate's committee couldn't find any proof of torture and coercion. The smokescreen he created did cause the result he wanted as most of the defendants were released shortly afterwards. On Aschenauer: http://lexikon.idgr.de/a/a_s/aschenauer-rudolf/aschenauer-rudolf.php 2468Motorway

Freda Utley

MALMEDY and McCARTHY Printed in the AMERICAN MERCURY November 1954 By Freda Utley

Factual accuracy Dispute

Who was the lawyer who defended the defendants? As the article stands now we have two external links who state that it was an american lawyer, and one link to a page in german that states that it was a german. The German page is by the way a page which strives to combat right wing extremists by trying to contradict their assertions. I am not at all confident that it can be counted on to be NPOV. Stor stark7 23:15, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

In fact, during the trial, the lawyer who defended the defendants was the American, i.e. Willis Everett. It was also Everett who brought the case before the Supreme Court and the Senate. During the hearings of the Senate subcommittee, Joseph McCarthy - who, BTW, was not member of the Committee, but was attending its sessions - got information material from Aschenauer, who had been the counsel of one of the defendants in the "Einsatzgruppen" trial.--Lebob-BE 20:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Merge

I don't see any reason why article should be seperate from Malmedy massacre. I think I'm going to merge it into that article in the near future. Raul654 16:14, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Last time I looked, the German wikipedia had separate Malmedy massacre and Malmedy massacre trial articles. I think there's value in the English Wikipedia having a parallel structure with two articles. Also, if either of these articles included the detail they deserved, they'd be long enough individually and too long if combined. I think that fleshing out the content will give a bigger return on effort invested than merging the articles. --Jdlh | Talk 05:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I would support a merge.Dduff442 (talk) 11:16, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

just out of memory

I recall the trial was also largely disputed in Belgium and that a government inquiry into the massacre was organised that also came to the conclusion that the trial was at least unfair.

Then a general note. The notion that every SS (or just these SS) should have been shot for belonging to the SS shows plain ignorance of who was in the Waffen SS and how they came to be part of that force. It is also criminally stupid as it goes against all notions of justice, you cannot condemn someone for the crimes of another. That is to say you cannot condemn a 17 year of Waffen SS for the crimes committed by some other Waffen SS of the same unit a few years earlier. Being a member of the Waffen SS does not mean an automatic death sentence is valid. And yes, warcrimes were committed by units of all branches of the German military (I'll include the SS and Waffen SS here, though they were separate). warcrimes were also committed by forces of most other beligerents. All of these have to be seen separately (only blanket exhonerations, as often take place in Germany today, should be condemned).

Oh and lastly it's not just the extreme right or right that criticises the Malmedy trials, though obviously the extreme right tends to abuse the issue.--Caranorn 12:13, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

While one can certainly argue about the Malmedy massacre trial and the way it has been carried out, one should not forget that this trial did not only concern the Malmedy massacre as such, but other cold blood killing of American POWs that happened between 17 and 20 December 1944 on the road followed by the "Kampfgruppe Peiper". POWs massacres happened a.o. in Honsfeld, Büllingen, Ligneuville, Stavelot and Stoumont. The total of POWs killed in total (including Malmedy) was of more than 300. In the same trial men belonging to the same SS unit were also found guilty of having killed more than 100 civilians (including women and children) in the area of Stavelot.

Although being Belgian and leaving in Belgian, I can't remember that the trial has been disputed in Belgium or that a Governement inquiry came to such conclusions. In fact, I could not find any information about this issue. --Lebob-BE 20:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I will have to look it up, but I'm pretty sure I read these things in a book (a Heimdal, so not necessarily a good source for anything non-military) about the campaign.--Caranorn 21:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey guys, I am playing Johny-come lately as usual but I have this to say:

Not every SS men was a war criminal. It is however utterly ludicrous to believe that the innocent accounted for more than a tiny minority. Peiper couldn't give the "I was drafted and I was young and stupid" defense, because he was 29 and JOINED the SS. He was an Eastern Front veteran, '41-'43. For crying outloud, the Germans were murdering Russian civilians by the MILLIONS during those years, intentionally leaving POWs to die of exposure, executing card-holding communists and Jews captured on the spot.... the list goes on. Peiper is damned lucky that he was treated by the highest standard of civilized conduct that such a man as he could hope for. -Jon C —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.225.69.153 (talk) 07:52, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

If you are waiting for someone to jump to the defense of Peiper, I will not be one of them and many of us feel like justice would have been better served by simply lining the lot of them up in front of a firing squad, myself included. However, on the same vein, I won't excuse sloppy trial work once a trial was in fact decided on. Historical accuracy is what we are after here an history is a 4 star bitch about being unfair to my desires. What was put down here seems pretty accurate and Peiper ended up being burned out and killed by less forgiving Frenchmen, I shed no tears. Tirronan (talk) 22:25, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

 According to Richard Gallagher(The Malmedy Massacre, pg.128-129)Van Roden denied that he had said that any prisoners had been struck in the testicles, let alone that their testicles had been permanently damaged. The allegation appeared in the February, 1949 issue of The Progressive.

French page

I have now written an article on the French Wikipedia on the same topic, but I have expanded it quite a lot. --Lebob-BE 22:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Even with my poor French skills, I can see that you've put in a lot of information that's not in the English article, and have a number of good references. Excellent job! --Jdlh | Talk 08:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Tank you. In fact, I was lucky enough to find the report of the Senate’s subcommittee on line. Very interesting to read. Here are links to this document [3][4][5][6][7]. On the other hand, I had to walk through historical revisionist websites, which is less pleasant. I hope someone will volunteer to translate from French into English. Otherwise, I will do it once I find time enough. --Lebob-BE 10:27, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Expanded article

I have now expanded that article quite a lot, mainly translating my fr version. However, since I am not a native English writter, a thorough review of what I have written would be welcome. --Lebob-BE 21:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not native myself, I only took a closer look at the units involved (the accused) and rewrote it a bit for clarity (and my original intent of wiki linking). But if no one else copy edits in the coming days I will try it myself. By the way, as I already asked in my edit summary, do you have Krämer's correct rank, General-Sergeant or the like does not exist. Even if you only have the original German term I could probably decipher the English equivalent (even from SS ranks, though I'd have to dig deep in my library to find those sources).--Caranorn 21:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. I am not really an expert on how military units must be named. With respect for Krämer, I have found in the US documents I could find that he was quoted as Brigadier General (i.e. this is an English document). I think it is the translation software I used to speed up the translation that has shown some flaws  :) --Lebob-BE 22:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I will correct it to Brigadier-General (should probably have checked the french article as I expect you already included it there...).--Caranorn 22:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I was about to do that when I remembered there was no rank equivalent for Brigadier-General in the Wehrmacht, I will have to check whether the SS had something similar. I do notice you have it as Brigadier-General in the French article. I guess for now it will stand as general, which after all is not wrong.--Caranorn 22:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Factual accuracy banner

Since I have reworked this article, I wonder whether the factual accuracy banner is still justified for this page. By lack of contrary opinion, I will remove it by the end of this week. --Lebob-BE 16:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Copy Edit

Apparently much of what was done here was by editors that do not have English as a 1st langauge as the sentence construction and choice of verbage is exceedingly strange. I am not disputing any of the core material but this sure needs some serious copy edit. Tirronan 20:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I have corrected this to the best of my ability while trying not to change anything. Please check to make sure I didn't change anything so as to change the article from the intent. Please feel free to change anything that doesn't meet your requirments. Humbly Tirronan 01:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

In fact, the whole article was a translation of the same article on Wikipedia (fr). The French version is the original one that I have translated into English, but your assumption that English is not my first language is completely right. So, in fact, I am happy that someone takes time to read this article and makes the changes that are needed. I will now read this article again just to make sure your changes did not alter the intend, although after a first quick read I have the feeling it's not the case. Anyway, thank you for the time you have spent on this. --Lebob-BE 14:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

You are most welcome! One point that your article missed was the fact that had this trial taken place in America it would have been thrown out of court for gross misconduct by the prosecution. Evidence obtained in the manner that it was is a gross violation of American Jurisprudence. I feel that most of the accused were guilty but our laws pertaining to how a trial must be run are very clear. While I personally feel that most of them should have been shot for war crimes, the law should have been respected and apparently it wasn't. Tirronan 14:56, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Although I am not familiar with the US judicial procedures, I agree that the case would probably have been thrown out of court should it have been held in the USA. Even according the standards of most West European countries it would probably have been a problem. However, this was a military court and the procedure had set up in accordance with the one adopted by for the Nuremberg trial. The US Senate Commitee has scrutinized these points and came indeed to the conclusion that at least some facts that happened during the pre trial procedure could have made a problem for a US court. I don't know whether you have had the opportunity to read the US Senate Commitee summary report. It is very interesting. I have put a link several weeks ago on this this talk page to a discussion forum where this report can be found. This being said, if you think that some points need to be added to the article, do not hesitate. --Lebob-BE 17:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to rename "Dachau International Military Tribunal" article

There is a proposal to rename the article Dachau International Military Tribunal to be Dachau Military Tribunal, deleting "International". Please review and give your opinion at the move proposal on that Talk page. --Jdlh | Talk 18:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Final name was Dachau Trials. Removed wikilinks to old names. --Jdlh | Talk 19:56, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Missing verdict?

Of 75 defendants, 73 were found guilty, 1 innocent. What happened to the last one? Clarityfiend 21:39, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

According to some information I have found, the last one was a French citizen who has been deferred to the French justice. He was enventually released since the French juridiction couldn't not find enough evidence of the charges against him. --Lebob-BE 15:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Bill O'Reilly story doesn't belong in "Malmedy massacre trial" article

Oh dear, the "Bill O'Reilly on Malmedy" virus is infecting this article, too. An editor just added a section to this article about Bill O'Reilly's factually incorrect statements about the Malmedy massacre in October 2005. I believe that this content does not belong in this article, and I've deleted it. Reasons:

1. O'Reilly is talking about the Malmedy massacre itself, not the trial of the perpetrators. Thus it's not related to this article, which is about the trial.
2. Someone added content much like this to the Malmedy massacre article at the time. The editors there had an extensive debate on their Talk page. (I had enough of this debated then.) The conclusion was that the content didn't belong there either.
3. Where it should be recorded is in the Criticism of Bill O'Reilly article. And indeed this story was recorded there. (It was deleted in April 2007 because editors there thought it was not NPOV. That's a separate matter. See their discussion of his Malmedy comments.)
4. The content in this (Trial) article has uncited claims that "The involvement of McCarthy in the case has led to the perception in some conservative elements in the US political arena that the Malmedy massacre was an American war crime". The citation given doesn't talk about McCarthy. Thus the first part of the paragraph is weak for lack of a citation.

So, I think a story about Bill O'Reilly doesn't belong in an article about the Malmedy massacre trial. Where it really belongs is in Criticism of Bill O'Reilly. Thus I've deleted it. If there's disagreement, let's discuss it here and see if we can reach a consensus. Looking forward to your comments. --Jdlh | Talk 01:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I've added it to the other article. Clarityfiend 04:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure Bill O'Reilly has a great audience and all that but I fail to see how quoting his show adds anything to our understanding about the events. I concure with Jdlh and Clarityfiend. Tirronan 16:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Apparent NPOV violations re Sen. Joseph McCarthy

A young and ambitious Senator in search of publicity, Joseph McCarthy, had obtained from the subcommittee’s chairman authorization to attend the hearings. Apparently, McCarthy, who felt that his senatorial career was fading, had decided to seize the opportunity for publicity

Unwarranted speculation on McCarthy's motives. Or did he actually tell witnesses that he was in search of publicity? If so, why use "apparently" in the second sentence?

A little later, McCarthy started the witch-hunt that made him famous

"Witch-hunt" is obviously a loaded, biased term. He claimed to exposing Communists, not witches. 190.10.6.47 (talk) 15:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

There are few characters in American history this side of Aaron Burr more derisive then Joe McCarthy, unfortunately some of that bleeds into this article apparently. However finding good sources that discuss him with less loathing isn't something very easy to do. One could make a case that "Witch-hunt" which is an American term for seaching for something you are going to find regardless of fact would be a fairly accurate description of what was in fact happening. Tirronan (talk) 17:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Major problems with the tone overall, actually, not just in that section. --Relata refero (disp.) 21:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The SS should have been exterminated like cockroaches without all this pissing about. Wasn't that Churchill's view ?--Streona (talk) 00:58, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

There is some unencyclopedic tone going on in the McCarthy section. I hope someone fixes it, but I'm not, because I don't really know much about McCarthy.  Randall Bart   Talk  08:35, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Malmedy massacre trial

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Malmedy massacre trial's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "MacDonald":

• From Malmedy massacre: MacDonald, Charles (1984). A Time For Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge. Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-34226-6.
• From Joachim Peiper: MacDonald

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 21:06, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

A result of my edits, I'll fix it. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 03:42, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Context

US soldiers had regularly murdered unarmed Axis POWs throughout the Italian and Normandy campaigns, long before the Malmedy massacre took place. 86.148.205.150 (talk) 15:07, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Lieutenant Christ

"The commission did not exonerate the defendants or absolve them of guilt and it endorsed the conclusions General Clay issued in the particular case of Lieutenant Christ. In summary, Clay had written that "he was personally convinced of the culpability of Lieutenant Christ and, that for this reason his death sentence was fully justified"

From the context, one can infer that Lieutenant Christ was a defendant in the trial. He worthy of being singled out at the end of the article, but not at the beginning where individual defendants are introduced. It is my opinion that something explaining who Lieutenant Christ was and why General Clay was convinced of his culpability is in order. Regards, David 4.14.43.226 (talk) 14:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)