Joachim Peiper Escaped the Rope. Who Came for Him on July 14, 1976?

Joachim Peiper led 117 tanks into the Battle of the Bulge, and his men left 84 American prisoners dead in a snowy field at Malmedy. The US Army sentenced him to hang. Thirty years later he was living free in a French village, until the night someone set his house on fire. This is the full story, from Himmler's office to the King Tigers of the Ardennes, the 18 men who held Lanzerath for a whole day, the bridges American engineers blew in his face, the Panthers stopped at Stoumont station by tanks rebuilt overnight in an abandoned depot, the trial at Dachau, the Senate hearings and Joseph McCarthy, the job at Porsche, and the house above the Saône River where it all ended. We answer the questions viewers ask most: why his death sentence was never carried out, why he moved to France of all places, and whether the body in the ruins was really his. Sources: US Army trial records, Senate subcommittee report of 1949, unit histories of the 99th and 30th Infantry Divisions, the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion and the 740th Tank Battalion, works of historians on the Ardennes campaign. 0:00 Intro 2:33 Himmler's Favorite 6:05 The Blowtorch Battalion 9:41 Watch on the Rhine 13:58 Eighteen Men at Lanzerath 18:01 The Crossroads 21:02 Those Damned Engineers 28:19 The Pocket at La Gleize 32:30 The Trial 37:31 A House in France 41:32 The Night of July 14 43:44 The Answer