Introduction

Great Crimes and Trials (sometimes titled Great Crimes and Trials of the Twentieth Century) is a 1993-1996 BBC documentary television series and 2011 by Investigation Discovery.

Outline

The Malmedy massacre was a German war crime committed by soldiers of the Waffen-SS on 17 December 1944 at the Baugnez crossroads near the city of Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945). Soldiers of Kampfgruppe Peiper summarily killed eighty-four US Army prisoners of war (POWs) who had surrendered after a brief battle. The Waffen-SS soldiers had grouped the US POWs in a farmer’s field, where they used machine guns to shoot and kill the grouped POWs; the prisoners of war who survived the gunfire of the massacre then were killed with a coup de grâce gun-shot to the head.

Besides the summary execution of the eighty-four US POWs at the farmer’s field, the term “Malmedy massacre” also includes other Waffen-SS massacres of civilians and POWs in Belgian villages and towns in the time after their first massacre of US POWs at Malmedy; these Waffen-SS war crimes were the subjects of the Malmedy massacre trial (May to July 1946), which was a part of the Dachau trials (1945 to 1947).

Great Crimes and Trials Series

You can find a full index and overview of Great Crimes and Trials here.

Production & Filming Details

• Release Date: 1996.
• Running time: 30 minutes.
• Rating: Unknown.
• Country: UK.
• Language: English.

Video Link(s)