The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy by Steven P. Remy

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy by Steven P. Remy David A. Messenger (bio) The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy. By Steven P. Remy. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. 342. $29.95 cloth) Steven P. Remy's account of the 1946 war crimes trial of the seventy-four former members of the Waffen SS accused of killing hundreds of American prisoners of war in the vicinity of Malmedy, Belgium, in December 1944, is much more than an account of post-war justice. The Malmedy case was one of the most infamous and significant crimes against American soldiers in the Second World War. As Remy argues, however, what happened after the trial was just as significant, for when accusations of American torture and psychological stressing of German prisoners to get forced confessions emerged, it shaped the memory of the massacre for years to come, among scholars as well as others. Remy's goal is to discount these stories and re-establish the trial—and the crime—as legitimate. More importantly, in the view of this reviewer, is his effort to interpret the accusations and their longevity as part of a larger effort by Germans and Americans to recast Nazi criminals as welcome allies in the Cold War era. Remy evenly divides his book into two parts, the first of the investigation and trial itself and the second concerning the post-trial charges that the United Sates tortured the defendants in order to gain false confessions. Extensive use of war crimes records in American archives, as well as memoirs of participants, allows Remy to detail the investigations as well as the trial. In particular, his study of the prison environment at Schwäbisch Hall allows him to convincingly reject the torture accusations. Post-trial reviews of the verdicts were standard practice, and the initial review accepted the twenty-five death sentences and thirteen other convictions be approved, and thirty-four others confirmed but with reduced sentences (p. 144). The American lawyer who defended the Germans, Willis Everett, charged that the Germans had been tortured to get confessions—Everett had developed an intense disdain for the entire war crimes process, in particular for the role of American [End Page 565] and German émigré Jews in carrying out the prosecutions, which Remy concludes was part of Everett's "conspiratorial anti-Semitism that underpinned his view of a corrupt American occupation" (p. 131). Press coverage in both the United States and Germany of the torture charge grew, an effort Remy quite rightly views as part of the larger effort of Waffen SS veterans to recast themselves as soldiers in the heat of battle, and not part of a criminal organization to wage terror, as the rest of the SS was generally seen during the post-war trials (p. 167). American critics of the trials latched on to this larger German campaign, as did German clergy, who were extremely active. By 1949, a subcommittee of the Senate's Armed Services Committee held hearings in Washington, D.C. and Munich, Germany, involving freshman Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who agreed from the start that the accusations of American torture were true, and who actively pursued the argument that German Jews involved on the American side were vengeful (p. 232). All of this forced American General Lucius Clay in Germany to only carry out death sentences if unquestionable and corroborated evidence existed in any given case. By 1957, every one of the men convicted in the Malmedy case, including those with death sentences, was free. In Germany, the case was seen simply as an example of victor's justice and the abandonment of denazification, championed by the West German government of Konrad Adenauer throughout the 1950s, was justified. The active role of Waffen SS men in helping politicize war crimes trials—not just in the Malmedy case—was hugely significant, especially after 1949 (p. 261). Remy's important book shows us the extent to which these efforts shaped and altered justice in the aftermath of war. [End Page 566] David A. Messenger DAVID A. MESSENGER is professor and chair in the Department of History at the University of South Alabama...