The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas

by Christopher Robbins

  Lieutenant-Colonel Joachim Peiper, commander of the Rampfgruppe, arrived at the Baugnetz crossroads in a captured American jeep, attracted by the sound of gunfire. Peiper, the ‘Siegfried of the Waffen-SS’ and one-time adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, was a natural soldier who had spent ten years with the division and stood high in Hitler’s personal favour. He now reprimanded his men for needlessly expending valuable ammunition on a target that could have been captured. ‘Those beautiful trucks which we need so badly, all shot up.’ He ordered his troops to cease firing, and American soldiers crawled out of the ditches and emerged from behind burning trucks with their hands in the air. They were gathered into small groups and SS soldiers removed rings, watches and cigarettes. They also stripped the Americans of their gloves, which the Germans particularly prized. One SS soldier went down the line of prisoners putting a pistol against each man’s forehead, saying they would all be shot in retribution for American bombing. The American commander objected that his men were prisoners of war and demanded that they be treated honourably. The German returned the pistol to its holster.

  Peiper now left the scene of battle, together with the majority of his tanks and half-tracks, while about one hundred and thirty American prisoners were herded into a field next to the café. These included several GIs who had been captured after the farmer, Le Joly, had betrayed their hiding place to the Germans. The men were joined by a captured American colonel who drove up in his own jeep accompanied by two teenage SS soldiers.

  The prisoners stood in the mud with their hands in the air. The farmer, still watching from the café, was surprised at the men’s apparent lack of concern as they chatted easily to one another. They seemed relieved to have survived the initial strafing and now waited without apparent foreboding for trucks to arrive to take them to the rear.

  A tank manoeuvred into the road alongside the field and attempted to lower its gun to cover the prisoners. It was unable to do so, and was replaced by two SPW half-track armoured personnel carriers that pulled into the field and stopped. An SS soldier in the rear of one stood, took his pistol from its holster and pointed it towards the huddled prisoners. He fired, and a GI fell backwards, knocking down several other prisoners in the tightly packed group like so many skittles. The men began to shout and scream, and those in the front row fought to get to the back.

  ‘Stand fast!’ an American officer commanded, alarmed that panic might provoke more shooting. The GIs fell silent.

  A second pistol shot rang out, killing a medical officer. An order was then shouted: ‘Alle kaputt machen!’ - Kill them all! Two machine guns mounted on the SPW armoured personnel carriers opened up, and panic broke out as bullets ripped into the prisoners. Some turned and ran across the field while others were cut down where they stood. The machine guns methodically raked the bodies from one end to the other, and the men cried out in fear and pain as the living tried to burrow beneath the dead for protection.

  The automatic fire stopped. The brief silence was punctuated by occasional rifle and pistol shots as SS soldiers moved across the field and inspected the bodies for survivors. The low groans of the wounded sounded like the lowing of cattle.[175] The Germans called out to anyone surviving to make a sign so they could receive medical attention. Those unwise enough to do so were shot. The soldiers kicked those bodies showing signs of life in the head or groin for a reaction, and if anyone moved he was shot. One German soldier perversely allowed a medic to help a wounded comrade, and then shot them both.

  Once the Germans had left, the field survivors began to call out to one another, and frozen GIs crawled out from under the bodies of their comrades. Some ran into the woods, but twelve went into the Café Bodarwé. They were seen by German troops, who moved on the café, set it alight and then shot down the unarmed men as they ran out.

  Over the next two hours, as more troops from the Panzers passed the scene, some of the men fired into the pile of bodies for sport. One tank, delayed through a breakdown, arrived at the crossroads in the late afternoon and spotted the abandoned trucks and the field full of corpses. The commander, an SS sergeant, detected movement. He climbed down from the tank and went into the field, where he hauled an unwounded GI to his feet by his collar. The American was ordered to take off his watch, jacket and combat boots. As the prisoner stooped to remove his boots the SS man shot him in the back of the neck with his 9mm Belgian automatic, and twice more in the chest as he fell. The tank gunner then pumped a burst of machine-gun fire into the bodies in the field.

  Soldiers from a tank crew threatened to kill the farmer, Le Joly, even though he had delivered the hidden Americans to them. They eventually let him go after abject pro-German protestations. Adele Bodarwe disappeared, and her body was never found. But despite all the shooting, the massacre proved to be an inefficient business. Miraculously, forty-six Americans survived the field of death. Five nights after the massacre, the bodies of their eighty-four dead comrades-in-arms were temporarily buried in a fall of deep snow.[176]

  Kampfgruppe Peiper moved on to attack nearby Stavelot, where the Americans had stashed millions of gallons of fuel. Peiper summoned Rnittel to his command post and ordered him to use the Schnell Group to take the town.

  As he left the meeting, Rnittel remarked: ‘Die haben eine ganze Menge auf der Kreuzung umgelegt’ - They’ve killed a good few at the crossroads.

  ‘The crossroads?’

  Rnittel reminded Peiper about Baugnetz, south of Malmédy, where the road turned towards Ligneuville. ‘There’s a lot of Amis [Americans] dead there.’

  It was the first Peiper had heard of the killings, but he had more pressing matters on his mind, and returned to the plan of attack on Stavelot. Rnittel was given three heavy Tiger tanks to strengthen his force and immediately moved his men into position. He established his tactical HQ in the cellar of the Ferme Antoine, to the west of the town near the Amblève river, and split his men into two units for the assault. The larger group was sent along the main road, while a smaller force moved north through back roads and hamlets standing on high ground. The Germans were shelled remorselessly by the Americans throughout the battle: three thousand shells were fired in such rapid succession that the artillerymen had to throw cold water over the barrels of their guns.

  The attack heralded the beginning of a new slaughter by the SS men, this time random shooting of civilians, all of whom had been declared by Peiper to be ‘terrorists’ in reaction to Résistance activity in the area. The Germans had been shot at from buildings and the SS were to take a terrible revenge. The killing was haphazard, almost casual. An SPW armoured half-track first passed through Stavelot as a machine-gunner fired into the kitchen of a house, killing a fourteen-year-old boy; a farmer was shot in his barn; a woman was killed as she lay in her bed. Locals were rounded up in small groups of two or three, taken into houses and shot. The houses were then set alight as the soldiers moved on.

  In one particularly brutal killing in Stavelot, twenty men were packed into an eight-by-twelve-foot shed. A machine gun was set up outside and two belts of ammunition fired into the writhing mass of panicked humans. SS soldiers then entered, firing pistols into the heaped bodies, before they threw down straw and set the shed alight. Somehow, eight people survived the conflagration.[177] In another incident, a group of twenty-six locals sheltering in a cellar were flushed out when soldiers threw a grenade down the stairs. Unhurt, a woman called out in German that they were all civilians, and they were ordered to come up into the open. A dozen SS men - mostly in their teens, as at Baugnetz - lined up the terrified group of women, children and old men, who ranged in age from four to sixty-eight. One soldier with a rifle and another with a pistol walked down the line and methodically shot them one by one. Only three people from the cellar were spared: the woman who spoke German and her two children. Another twenty civilians were murdered at a nearby hamlet with a population of just one hundred.

  Altogether, one hundred and thirty-eight unarmed Belgian civilians were killed in thi
s way by men under Knittel’s command during the battle of Stavelot. And while there is no evidence that he was present at any of these killings, or personally ordered them, the large number suggests that his troops were encouraged to behave in this manner and that their actions were condoned.

  As the battle raged, the Germans’ position became increasingly untenable, but Knittel held on. On the afternoon of 21 December, he left the cellar of his command post at the Ferme Antoine to investigate a report that a number of recently destroyed American tanks might be part of an advance force of forty-five armoured vehicles. Knittel was on foot and unarmed as he walked to the Ambleve Bridge, passing several destroyed enemy tanks on his way. A single Tiger tank secured the road and eight German soldiers provided the only infantry cover. The commander of the giant Tiger reported that more American tanks were out of sight around the curve in the road, guarded by three Shermans hidden in the mouth of a railroad tunnel.

  Knittel walked over to inspect a nearby anti-tank gun emplacement on the river bank and was alarmed to find it abandoned with the guns unmanned. He walked quickly to a deserted house standing close by and demanded an explanation from the anti-tank gun commander. The commander had bad news. An SPW had been destroyed and its crew killed, while Knittel’s second-in-command had been killed in a separate incident. In a sworn statement given later, Knittel reported that he was enraged that the Americans had been allowed to break through. The death of the second-in-command, a brave man who was a favourite, particularly upset him.

  ‘What have we thrown against them?’ he asked the commander.

  ‘I’ve taken the men away from the Paks [anti-tank guns] and ordered them to reconnoitre,’ the commander replied. ‘I couldn’t make the drivers of the vehicle column go forward.’

  Knittel fully understood the gravity of the situation. He was faced with a strong concentration of enemy tanks both in front and behind his positions, and his only possible retreat was through a wooded area difficult to reconnoitre. And there were no reserves left. Nothing. He was facing catastrophe.

  As he discussed things with his commander, a badly wounded German soldier limped out of the woods.

  ‘What’s happening up there?’ Knittel shouted.

  ‘All quiet,’ the soldier replied. ‘Everybody seems to have taken off.’

  He had scarcely finished replying when eight American GIs emerged from the woods.

  ‘Goddamn it, those are Amis,’ Knittel shouted. He ran with the anti-tank commander and took cover behind the wall of the abandoned house. The wounded soldier limped back into the woods.

  As the Americans came closer it became apparent that they were prisoners covered by the rifles of two German soldiers following close behind.

  ‘What are we going to do with them?’ Knittel asked the commander. ‘If we’ve got to take off we can’t take them along with us through the woods.’

  Knittel remembered the words of the Panzer Army’s leader, Sepp Dietrich, at the opening of the campaign, reported to him by the general’s adjutant: ‘No foreign soldier will stand on German territory at the beginning of the New Year. Everything that helps you advance is permitted. The Fuhrer covers you. Think of the Fatherland, which suffers under the enemy bombing terror, and be ruthless towards the civilian population. When military necessity demands it Allied prisoners of war should be shot.’[178] The solution to the American prisoners was obvious. Knittel also admitted later that he was emotionally upset by the news of the recent deaths of his men and wanted revenge.

  As the soldiers came close, Knittel called out to the guards: ‘From which division are they?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ one replied. ‘We don’t speak English.’

  Knittel waited until the American soldiers reached the house, then ordered their guard, ‘Mach’ sie fertig!’ - Finish them off!

  The Americans were led in a line behind the house while Knittel and the anti-tank commander remained in the front. Five minutes later there were pistol shots. The two guards returned showing each other gold rings and watches taken from the prisoners.

  ‘You swine!’ Knittel shouted at them. ‘That’s not going to bring you any luck!’[179]

  On Christmas Eve, Knittel was forced to accept that the situation was impossible. He gave the order to retreat. This meant snaking through heavily wooded country covered in fourteen inches of snow and infested with American para-troopers. It also involved crossing a number of rivers where the bridges had been destroyed. Exhausted by days of combat without sleep, and fuelled only by hard biscuits and occasional shots of cognac, the soldiers struggled through the woods. A sergeant and five SS men were left behind to cover the retreat and destroy the last two operational tanks of the Kampfgruppe, a pair of seventy-two-ton Royal Tigers abandoned outside the Ferme Antoine. Then, before first light on Christmas morning, they too stole away.

  Knittel’s men reached the icy, fast-flowing Salm river in full flood, and swam across. After covering twenty-five hellish miles and losing thirty men on the way, the survivors of Kampfgruppe Peiper - some seven hundred and seventy men in all - struggled into the German-held sanctuary at Wanne on Christmas Day.

  They enjoyed only a brief respite before the remnants of the division were reorganised and sent back into battle at Bastogne on 30 December. Knittel was wounded the following day and taken out of the battle. The division fought on for another two weeks before retreating yet again to an area west of Cologne.

  The Battle of the Bulge was over, and the Germans had suffered a rout. Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler was reorganised yet again, and Kampfgruppe Peiper along with it. Back on German soil it was reinforced almost to its original strength, drawing troops from every source available, and sent to Hungary where it took part in an operation designed to break through the Russian front to the Danube. Hitler’s Own received another dreadful mauling, fighting in a sea of mud, and suffered appalling casualties. Unable to sustain its position the division fell back, against Hitler’s express but impossible command. Infuriated, the Fuhrer ordered that his elite bodyguard, which had fought fanatically for him in the toughest campaigns throughout the war, be stripped of its armband.

  The war was lost, and on 8 May the order came for Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler to destroy its vehicles and armour. The men retreated rapidly westwards on foot, desperate to be captured by Americans rather than fall into the hands of vengeful Russians. Some men threw down their weapons, burned their uniforms and escaped into the mountains. The majority, however, crossed the Demarcation Line and were surprised to be casually waved through by American troops.

  Once across, many tried to make it to their homes, but most were later arrested and put into camps, alongside three hundred thousand other prisoners. Some of the SS men, in a final irony, were among those housed in Ebensee. The senior officers were moved to the US Forces’ main interrogation centre at Camp King in Oberürsel, near Frankfurt - which had been the Luftwaffe’s primary interrogation centre. But Knittel had not served with the division in Hungary because of battle injuries sustained at Bastogne - the last of seven occasions on which he was wounded - and had disappeared.

  Gustav Knittel had married a French woman when in Paris and they had had a baby boy together whom he had never seen. His wife had then moved from France to Germany to live in the family home in Ulm. Although she had not seen her husband since before the Ardennes offensive, and he had not returned to Ulm, Michel put her under surveillance. ‘I had to set up a system to find out any possible contact he might make with family or friends. I had my people pose as insurance agents and officials to approach the family without their knowledge.’

  Among the agents activated to find Knittel was a beautiful, highly intelligent twenty-eight-year-old woman named Anna Konrad.[180] ‘We created the legend for her that she was actually the wife of a high-ranking SS officer who had been arrested by the Allies and charged with war crimes.’ She posed as a fellow victim of Allied oppression, befriended Knittel’s wife and was soon accepted by the family.


  Anna became a regular at the Knittel household. She confided her terror of the American Military Police and CIC agents, who constantly questioned her, and asked to be introduced to contacts who might help her obtain a new identity through ODESSA. The occasional visit became a regular event, and Anna spent long evenings with Knittel’s wife, a high-spirited if not very bright young woman in her late twenties. She became distraught at any mention of her husband’s disappearance, and demonstrated genuine devotion to him that was beyond doubt. Her worst fear, she confided, was that he might be dead. But months of contact and constant surveillance revealed nothing more than the fact that KnittePs wife was as ignorant of her husband’s whereabouts as CIC.

  Knittel’s family and friends had been subjected to constant questioning for months before Michel took over the hunt. ‘I put a stop to the practice in the hope that the family would believe the heat was off, and pass this on to Knittel so he might think it safe for a visit. It seemed reasonable to believe he would surface - turn up somewhere, however briefly - to see his wife and child. I expected him to do so at Christmas, if only for a moment.’ Michel was so confident of this that he even cancelled a skiing trip he had planned to take over the holidays, but Christmas came and went and Knittel did not appear. ‘I went to midnight mass with Ted and found the service beautiful and moving.’ Michel now became convinced that he would show up over the New Year, and once more cancelled long-overdue leave. Again, there was no sign of the fugitive. Michel began to wonder whether the SS man might be dead after all.

  And then Anna reported a breakthrough. On one of her visits to the Knittel household the wife appeared to be reborn and could not contain her joy and excitement as she passed on her wonderful news: her husband was alive! He had sent word that she was to be ready at a moment’s notice to meet him at a secret rendezvous. As she spoke, the depression that had dogged her lifted, and the light returned to her eyes.