Clemency

The Malmedy massacre of captured U.S. soldiers, during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, was one of the most vicious atrocities committed by Germans in combat during the war. By the testimony of one survivor (who escaped by feigning death after he was shot in the foot), some 160 U.S. soldiers were lined up in a snow-covered field, eight deep and 20 abreast, and raked by machine-gun fire for three minutes.

The survivor heard the "agonized screams" of wounded and dying comrades, and single pistol shots--coups de grace administered by Germans who walked among the fallen victims after the machine-gunning stopped.

After war's end, the Germans responsible for the massacre fell into Allied hands. Among them were two SS bigwigs, General Josef ("Sepp") Dietrich, commander of the 6th Armored Division, and Colonel Joachim Peiper of the ist Armored Regiment (known as "Peiper's Task Force"). But most were youngsters whom Dietrich and Peiper had commanded. In 1946, in Dachau, 73 Germans were brought to trial for the Malmedy massacre. All were found guilty and 43 sentenced to death. It seemed an open-&-shut case. But the Germans' defense counsel (appointed by the U.S.), an Atlanta lawyer named Willis Meade Everett Jr., had discovered facts which turned the case into one of the ugliest in the history of the war crimes trials.

Candles on the Table. Everett submitted an incredible report (first to the U.S. Supreme Court, then to the U.S. Army), which read like a record of Nazi atrocities. He charged that, to extort confessions, U.S. prosecution teams "had kept the German defendants in dark, solitary confinement at near starvation rations up to six months; had applied various forms of torture, including the driving of burning matches under the prisoners' fingernails; had administered beatings which resulted in broken jaws and arms and permanently injured testicles."

He also charged that false confessions were obtained in mock trials, at which "the . . . plaintiff would see before him a long table . . . with candles burning at both ends . . . and a crucifix in the center . . . [The Germans] were informed or led to believe that they were being tried by Americans for violations of international law. At the other end of the table would be the prosecutor, who would read the charges, yell and scream at these 18-and 20-year-old plaintiffs and attempt to force confessions from them . . ."

Blot on the Record. Everett was no longer defending the Germans, most of whom he believed guilty; he was defending justice. For two years, at his own expense, Everett pleaded his case. Finally, last July 29, an Army commission under Justice Gordon Simpson of the Texas Supreme Court was set up to review the records.* The commission corroborated Everett concerning the mock trials and did not dispute or deny the rest. General Lucius D. Clay had already commuted the death sentences of 31 of the 43 condemned Germans. In Washington last week the Simpson commission recommended clemency (commutation to life imprisonment) for the remaining twelve.

This action, however, could not remove the blot on the record of U.S. military justice. It would remain as a terrible warning that, at times, the judges can be conquered by the forces of evil they are supposed to try.

*Three weeks ago a congressional committee, set up to review the case of Use ("Bitch of Buchenwald") Koch, whose life sentence had been reduced to four years, concluded that the U.S. prosecution had bungled. Use could have been given a life term for any one of several proved crimes; instead, she was tried and convicted on the shaky charge of participating in the management of Buchenwald. "Our soldiers," said the committee, "are not lawyers." Use will be free next September, but a German court will then almost certainly try her for crimes against German nationals.

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