Axis War Heroes Joachim Peiper

⁣A video presentation about the life and times of Joachim Peiper.
---Messerschmitt presents the second video in his series on Axis War
Heroes, this time on Joachim Peiper. He started out in an SS cavalry
unit and Schmitt reads out a report from the time detailing his high
points, before going through all the promotions he received and why he
was given them. We then learn that it was France who declared war on
Germany and not the other way around and we even see a news report
confirming this, with French riding back across the border on stolen
German bicycles.Peiper distinguished himself on the Eastern Front, deploying the Panzers
under his command as if they were cavalry and his tactics with the
tanks showed how accurate the earlier SS assessment of him was. He was
captain of one of the units that won back Kharkov in Ukraine from the
Soviets and he also rescued a convoy of ambulances from 30 miles behind
Russian lines. The bridge had been destroyed there but Peiper was able
to get them across on the ice, although the tanks were too heavy, so he
and his men had to make their own way back through the enemy lines.

After hearing more of the battle to liberate the city and seeing the
tanks in action, we learn the incredible odds that were stacked against
him before Schmitt gives us some more anecdotes from the battle of
Kursk. Eventually he became a commander and he continued in this rank
until the end of the war, where he captured four Soviet headquarters. He
was sent to Belgium in 1944 and lost a quarter of his tanks and men
while trying to get to the front to repel the allies. He would win
another medal in the battle of the bulge before taking part in one last
action in Hungary before the end of the war, but while retreating to
Austria he heard about the loss of the Fuhrer.

After being captured by the Allies he was tortured to get a confession
out of him and we see footage of the trial and of the Jewish torturer.
He was given the death sentence, but because he had been tortured, this
was eventually reduced to life imprisonment. He was released after 11
years and ended up working for Porsche, but Communists forced him out of
his job and he moved to France. He had a good life there, but once
again Communists found out where he and his wife were living and they
killed his dogs, before burning the house down with him inside it.

Nobody was ever charged, no effort was made to bring his murderers to
justice, but we do have an epitaph for him in the form of a letter that
he wrote while in prison, which sings the praises of the brave young men
who saved western Europe from the Bolshevik hordes. The Waffen SS were
the first real Europeans, their race united them rather than their
nations and they gave their lives that the rest of us might be spared
from Communism.