Malmedy oder Das Gericht der Sieger (1976)

From May 16 to July 16, 1946, the Malmedy Trial, part of the Dachau Trials, took place before an American military court at the Dachau internment camp against 73 German defendants. It was a war crimes trial in which all defendants were found guilty. Thirty prison sentences and 43 death sentences were handed down, though the death sentences were never carried out. Members of the Panzer Regiment of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler were accused of shooting 77 captured US soldiers in the so-called Malmedy Massacre in December 1944 and of committing 130 murders of civilians in the Stavelot area alone before the conclusion of the Ardennes Offensive. Rudolf Aschenauer, the defense attorney at the trial, claimed that the defendants had been coerced into making incriminating statements and had been mistreated. Fifty-one soldiers later signed sworn affidavits claiming they had been tortured during interrogations. SS-Standartenführer Joachim Peiper was sentenced to death by hanging, and SS-Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich to life imprisonment. Other prisoners included Kurt Sickel, Georg Preuß, and Hubert Huber. Subscribe to chronoshistory: http://goo.gl/IVGjVB #malmedy #malmedytrial #warcriminalstrial #dachautrials