ISBN 0-921991-46-0
670 pages

Author's Foreword; Preface; Introduction; photos; documents; Endnotes

   Among students of the Second World War exists a sub-culture of enthusiasts who will embrace Jochen Peiper as one of the finest books of recent years.
   This is a biography, but to call it a mere biography is like calling a Roman bath a mere tub. Where Michael Reynolds was able to offer a workmanlike biography of Peiper in 300 pages with fourteen pages of photos (although he focused heavily on Peiper's campaign in the Ardennes), Patrick Agte's work runs to 670 oversize pages, of which approximately 400 pages are photos (amounting to more than 850 pictures) and another 30 pages contain wartime documents.
   Much of the book proves to be descriptions of tank actions conducted by the unit Peiper eventually commanded, and is most closely associated with, the panzer regiment of the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler," but it also includes his youth, his early years in the military, and his battles in the earlier stages of the war.
   The combat sequences are very detailed, providing exhaustive information about many of Peiper's important campaigns and often noting the actions of individual AFV's, the deaths or wounding of individual men, and the acts for which Peiper's men were awarded decorations. All in all, Jochen Peiper is reminiscent of another of Agte's "mega" biographies, Michael Wittmann, the English edition of which was also published by Fedorowicz.
   Here's one of the more graphic examples of Agte's prose:

   Gostl was then on his own. The enemy had detected him and placed Gostl's machine gun under aimed fire. Suddenly, he was badly hit; the shot shattered his left eye. Now began what Erich Gostl later described as "only doing my duty." He stayed behind his gun and fired belt after belt into the ranks of the attackers. The loud staccato of his MG-42 roared out and his bursts tore into the enemy. Grimacing in pain, the young Viennese lay behind his weapon and fired and fired and fired again. Once more he came under well-aimed fire. Shrapnel wounded him on the upper left arm, but he didn't even glance at the wound.
   Then, suddenly, he took another hard blow to the face which almost tore his head off. His right eye had been hit, and he was now completely without sight. Although he could hear the sound of the exploding shells and the rattle of the machine guns, blood was running down his face and he could see nothing. However, Gostl felt around for his machine gun and continued to fire by sound in the direction from which the enemy was charging toward him and the company. He was suffering horrible pain, but he suppressed it. "I couldn't do anything else at the time," he later said.
   Erich Gostl continued to hold out behind his machine gun. He received another hit in his right cheek and nose in his torn-up face. Wounded and with a jam in his machine gun, Gostl's machine gun was silenced. His friend Elmar Bonn worked his way forward to him and with the help of some other men was able to bring him back under fire.

   Here Agte describes another action with a bit less splatter:

   Only after most of Peiper's Panzergruppe had raced through Honsfeld did the overrun Americans realize the disaster that had befallen them, and a few offered sporadic resistance to the following Panthers and paratroopers. SS-Untersscharfuehrer Willi Kritzler's Panther "232" and SS-Untersscharfuehrer Walter Puplik's Panther "235" of the 2./SS-Panzer-Regiment 1 were destroyed by antitank guns before Honsfeld. Two armored Flak carriers of the 10. (Flak)/SS-Panzer-Regiment 1 were destroyed in Honsfeld and the company commander, SS-Obersturmfuehrer Vogler, was wounded. After treatment, he remained with his company, which was distributed along the march column. When a Tiger from schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501, which was carrying paratroopers from the 14./Fallschirmjaeger-Regiment 9, later ran into antitank gun fire near the cemetery in Honsfeld, the paratroopers jumped off, the Tiger rammed the wall and destroyed two antitank guns. The Tiger had been hit four times without effect. After that, the paratroopers discovered an American supply dump and supplied the Tiger crews passing through from its contents. Some 50 armored scout cars and half-tracks were captured in Honsfeld. Most of the Fallschirmjaeger battalion remained in the village, while a company-sized element stayed on the tanks of the Panzergruppe. The paratroopers continued with the Panzergruppe and accompanied Peiper's entire advance.

   By way of comparison, Reynolds describes the same scene:

   It was only later, after daylight, that the Americans in the houses and farms on the edge of Honsfeld began to offer some resistance. Sporadic fighting lasted for the rest of the morning, mainly involving the paratroopers on the Tigers brining up the rear of Peiper's column. They suffered thirteen killed and thirty-four wounded before the last Americans surrendered. It also seems that two Panthers of SS Lieutenant Christ's 2nd SS Panzer Company were hit during this period. It is just possible that they were engaged from the area of Hunningen but this appears unlikely as the range would have been at least 1000m. One TD of the 1st Platoon A Company 801st, sited near Hunningen and commanded by the Company Commander himself, claimed to have knocked out four Type IV German tanks and an SPW during the morning before it in turn was knocked out, but there is no mention of this on the German side. It seems more likely that the Panthers were lost to bazookas, or perhaps to fire from two guns of the 612th TD Company which were rushed into action once they could see. One, commanded by Sergeant Fayne Haynes, claimed to have hit three enemy vehicles.

   In general, Agte describes more detail and utilizes more German sources, but fewer Allied sources than Reynolds. In addition to being specifically about Peiper, Reynolds' book tends to look more at the bigger picture while Agte's work tends to highlight individual efforts.
   Inevitably, given the accusations (and conviction) for which Peiper is most remembered and his unfortunate murder, the bulk of the last seventy pages of Agte's book are devoted not to Peiper and his troops in combat, but to Peiper in court, in prison, in France after his release from custody, and in death.
   The Reynolds biography is quite an objective study of Peiper, and one which admits that (while there seems to be no conclusive evidence one way or the other) it's possible the Malmedy Massacre was perpetuated on Peiper's orders. Similarly, while pointing out the flaws in Peiper's trial, Reynolds is quick to note that in anyone else's hands Peiper would have been lucky to survive long enough to get to court.
   Agte, on the other hand, is far more sympathetic—even comradely—toward Peiper. Among other things, the author introduces evidence which purportedly proves the innocence of his protagonist in the Malmedy charges and demolishes the trial as a vengeful charade. Of Peiper's unsolved murder, Agte places the blame squarely upon the "the communists in Paris and at Vesoul." And Agte veers far from the role of dispassionate, impartial biographer on the last page when he writes:

   ...Jochen Peiper has an assured place in the long row of the greatest German soldiers of all time. His life as a soldier and as an unbending prisoner of the enemy powers is exemplary and can serve as an example.... Jochen Peiper can be considered, without question, representative of the best in German soldiers and as a servant to his people. Moreover, even during the war, he adopted the idea of one Europe, which had already been given initial form in the Waffen-SS.

   As if this rhetoric were not sufficient to sour the wine, Agte closes his book with Jochen Peiper's own words as though worthy of reverence:

   Where would the torn-apart west be today, without each of those dikes of German bodies that were so important to history and that can no longer be ignored? The line of occidental combat outposts runs in a wide circle from the Caucasus to Finland. Representatives of our entire culture keep watch silently. And although their grave mounds are leveled and many nations are still ashamed of their noblest sons, it is still only thanks to this avant-garde of the idea of a single Europe that Genghis Khan's heirs didn't ride their tanks all the way to the Atlantic.

   Perhaps unwittingly, Agte proves on this final page that whatever can be said about Peiper as a military leader, as a student of history Peiper seems to have learned only what Adolf Hitler taught him.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing.
   Thanks to Fedorowicz for providing this review copy.