Joachim Piper: biography of an SS officer

The future officer of the SS Joachim Piper was born on January 30, 1915 in a military family. His father Valdemar served in the imperial forces and participated in campaigns in eastern Africa.

Before the war

On the day when Joachim turned 18, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. Serious changes began in the country. At the same time, the young man joined his elder brother in the Hitler Youth. In the army began to serve in 1935 and very quickly became an SS officer.

A capable young man received an appointment in the apparatus of Heinrich Himmler. There Joachim Piper was in charge of organizational matters - meetings, the functioning of the office, etc. Here the officer met his future wife Zigurd, whom he married in 1939. In marriage, three children were born.

Personal assistant Himmler

With the onset of the war, Joachim Piper was at the front. For the first time he was in combat during the invasion of France. Even before that, he had helped Himmler work on the arrangement of the Reich in captured Poland. The officer continued to accompany his superior at important meetings. For example, it was a meeting of Himmler with Franco in Madrid in 1940. The Reichsfuhrer also supervised the audits in the new concentration camps. Joachim Piper, together with Himmler, visited Auschwitz, Dachau and other strategic sites.

With the beginning of the eastern campaign, the main activity of the adjutant became connected with the Soviet Union. He informed the chief about the successes of the struggle against "untermenshes" (Slavs, Gypsies, Jews, etc.). Soon Jochen Piper was sent directly to the front. He was one of the commanders in the battles for Mariupol and Rostov-on-Don.

Military operations

Later, Piper was sent to Italy. In September 1943, local guerrillas captured two of his soldiers. The Italians who did this were found. They were killed, but at the same time burned the village where the perpetrators of the conflict lived. Many civilians died in the fire. Later this episode became one of the main charges of the Nuremberg trials.

Piper insisted that his soldiers did not touch civilians. According to him, the death of civilians was provoked by an erroneous blow to German artillery, which he never commanded.

At the final stage of the war, Piper was in Normandy. His connections retreated until they launched a counter-attack in Belgium. At the disposal of Piper was a lot of tanks and guns. However, his skills and talents proved useless, as German soldiers were exhausted by years of fighting throughout Europe. They were not even helped by bad weather, which hindered enemy aviation. In Belgium, the officer led a division, called "Adolf Hitler". His offensive was successful only in the first few days. Soon it choked, and Piper had to return to Germany.

Charges at the Nuremberg Trials

After the Reich was defeated, the Nuremberg trial began . One of the accused was Piper Joachim. The officer's biography was full of various facts of war crimes.

He was accused of illegally shooting several dozen US soldiers. This happened in December 1944, when the Allies were advancing in the Ardennes. Piper's squad shot prisoners of war shortly before retreating from strategically important positions.

This episode was called the slaughterhouse of Malmedy. The US Senate directly engaged in the massacre of American soldiers, which conducted its own investigation. In total, according to experts, from the actions of soldiers led by officer Piper Joachim, killed about 350 military and 100 peaceful Belgians.

In this case, the Allied fighters surrendered before the murder. Their massacre fell under the actions prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

Also, the soldiers of Joachim under his direct leadership burned several peaceful villages in the Kharkov region during the battles on the Eastern Front. Punitive detachments destroyed the huts along with the people who were inside. More than 800 people were the victims of these attacks. Wounded practically was not, because in the SS they were finished off indiscriminately.

The verdict and recent years

Piper had a qualified lawyer who was able to protect his client from most accusations. He managed to draw the attention of the court to the fact that in the course of the investigative actions, Joachaim was tortured and other unauthorized actions by the Americans. They admitted that they used bullying and false evidence. In the end, the death sentence was replaced by life imprisonment. In America, this caused a political scandal. The Senate passed a test, after which Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the army of torturing prisoners, just as they did in the Gestapo at one time.

In 1958, Piper left prison and lived in France and the FRG. For several years he worked at the Porsche plant. Nevertheless, his Nazi past was not forgotten. In the summer of 1976, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the window of his house . 60-year-old Piper suffocated in a dream of smoke. People who committed this violence were never found.