I finished this late last night. And I have to confess, I found it a fascinating and compelling read.
Not sure where I read it (the intro, possibly?), but Parker says this book is part three of a ‘quadrilogy’ on Peiper. Clearly he’s obsessed with his subject! He also states that these works are the result of two decades of research. Impressive!
This is the only one of the authors’ books I’ve read, thus far. He hasn’t quite got the literary polish of your Stephen Ambrose, or Anthony Beevor types. And, like a good deal of specialist publishing, a bit more editorial finessing wouldn’t go amiss. But, all things considered, this is a very impressive and terrifically engaging work, on a sometimes darkly fascinating character, during some of the most awful and exciting times of the tumultuous 20th Century.
As the title says, this is the story of Peiper’s War. And as a prominent and favoured member of the elite Waffen SS – Himmler’s adjutant for a spell – he sees action all over; on both the Ostfront, and D-Day campaigns, in Northern Italy, during the Battle of the Bulge, and even in Hungary, at War’s end.
The SS were, infamously, not just an equivalent of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, but, more sinisterly, the oft’ fanatical ideological enforcers of Hitler’s deeply racist ideology. So, as well as the usual (and very compelling) military stuff, we also have to deal with complicity in many atrocities, on all Fronts.
From Krasnaya Polyana in the East, and Boves in Northern Italy, to Malmedy, in Belgium, Peiper’s SS Men repeatedly – and fairly routinely, it would seem – took their ideological warfare to non-combatants. From helping round up Jews, as part of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’, to reprisals against civilians, in the horrific tit-for-tat of guerrilla war, SS units, like those of Peiper’s Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, were unremittingly brutal.
The book covers all of this, with plenty of maps and supporting notes, very well. I was a bit surprised and disappointed that, near war’s end, the blow by blow narrative ceased; for some reason Peiper’s Battle of the Bulge and Lake Balaton stuff isn’t covered here. One suspects Parker will cover it in more detail elsewhere.*
Instead the last two chapters of this book focus on, 1) the infamous Malmedy massacre, and 2) P. O. Box 1142. The latter being a secret location (Fort Hunt) in the US, where German prisoners were bugged whilst kept captive, to gather intel’ for post-WWII war crimes trials.
What I liked best about this book, if I’m honest, is the ‘ordinary’ military stuff. When Peiper and co. are fighting their armed adversaries. And given that they do so all over the various theatres of war, that aspect is the core of this book. There’s even a very sizeable chunk where we follow not just SS Leibestandarte Adolf Hitler, but the whole disintegration and rout of German forces in France, during which time Peiper was convalescing behind the lines.
In terms of an exciting and compelling read, I’d say this is five star stuff. But, given the nature – and size and scope – of Parker’s interest in Peiper, on its own this wartime volume has, most notably at the end, some lamentable lacunae.
For this, and an occasional lack of editorial finesse, I go with four and a half stars. Nonetheless, it’s very readable book, and highly recommended.
*This – I discovered it’s existence after writing this review – will be the reason:
