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Josef "Sepp" Dietrich

By profession a butcher, Josef "Sepp" Dietrich, had learned something of the soldier's trade in World War I, rising to the rank of sergeant, a rank which attached to him perpetually in the minds of the aristocratic members of the German General Staff. Bully-boy "Sepp" Dietrich was a street fighter described by the lie-boss Goebbels as "the Blücher of the National Socialist movement" [the Napoleonic era Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742-1819) - Blücher's army intervened with decisive and crushing effect in the battle of Waterloo. Blücher retained to the end of his life a wildness of character and proneness to excesses which sprang always from the ardent and vivid temperament which made Blücher a dashing leader.] Uncouth, despised by most of the higher officer class, and with no great intelligence, Dietrich had a deserved reputation for bravery and was known as a tenacious and driving division and corps commander.

Dietrich was born in Bavaria in May 1892. He fought with bravery during the Great Wa, and was a crewman in one of the first German tanks to fight in the war. He had accompanied Hitler on the march to the Feldherrnhalle in l923 and by 1940 had risen to command the Adolf Hitler Division, raised from Hitler's bodyguard regiment, in the western campaign. After gaining considerable reputation in Russia, Dietrich was brought to the west in 1944 and there commanded a Corps in the great tank battles at Caen. Dietrich managed to hang onto his reputation during the subsequent retreats and finally was selected personally by Hitler to command the Sixth Panzer Army.

Field Marshal Model's attack plan, called Herbstnebel (''Autumn Fog''), assigned Lt. Gen. Josef "Sepp" Dietrich's Sixth Panzer Army. The Sixth Panzer Army was to attack in two waves. The first would consist of the LXVII Corps, with the newly organized 272d and 326th Volksgrenadier Divisions, and the I SS Panzer Corps, with the 1st and 12th SS Panzer, the 12th and 277th Volksgrenadier, and the 3d Parachute Divisions. Dietrich planned to commit his third corps, the II SS Panzer Corps, with the 2d and 9th SS Panzer Divisions, in the second wave. The Sixth Panzer Army's 1,000-plus artillery pieces and 90 Tiger tanks made it the strongest force deployed.

Hitler hoped to smash the Allied armies in the West, secure a separate peace, and then turn and finish off the approaching Red Army, which was already in Poland. One of Hitler's oldest and staunchest supporters, Dietrich had the appropriate political qualifications to ensure Hitler's trust but, on his military record, hardly those meriting command of the main striking force in the great counteroffensive. The decision to let the Sixth Panzer Army gather the largest sheaf of laurel leaves, if any, was politically inspired. Dietrich's Sixth Panzer Army, selected to make the main effort, had a distinct political complexion. Its armored divisions all belonged to the Waffen SS, its commander was an old party member, and when regular Wehrmacht officers were assigned to help in the attack preparations they were transferred to the SS rolls. Hitler's early plans speak of the Sixth SS Panzer Army, although on 16 December the army still did not bear the SS appellation in any official way, and it is clear that the Sixth was accorded the responsibility and honor of the main effort simply because Hitler felt he could depend on the SS.

In the Losheim Gap the advanced detachment of the 1st SS Panzer Division, Kampfgruppe Peiper, moved forward through the attacking German infantry during the early hours of 17 December 1944. Commanded by Col. Joachim Peiper, the unit would spearhead the main armored assault heading for the Meuse River crossings south of Liege at Huy. With over 100 tanks and approximately 5,000 men, Kampfgruppe Peiper had instructions to ignore its own flanks, to overrun or bypass opposition, and to move day and night. Traversing the woods south of the main panzer route, it entered the town of Buellingen, about 3 miles behind the American line. After fueling their tanks on captured stocks, Peiper's men murdered at least 50 American POWs. Then shortly after noon, they ran head on into a 7th Armored Division field artillery observation battery southeast of Malmedy, murdering more than 80 men. Peiper's men eventually killed at least 300 American prisoners and over 100 unarmed Belgian civilians in a dozen separate locations. Word of the Malmedy Massacre spread, and within hours units across the front realized that the Germans were prosecuting the offensive with a special grimness. American resistance stiffened.

As commander in chief of the Sixth Panzer Army, Sepp Dietrich was a failure. "He had at most the ability to command a division," said Goring of the general whose blundering cost the Germans some 37,000 men at the Battle of the Bulge. "Dietrich," said Rundstedt simply, "is decent, but stupid."

The Nuremberg quadripartite trials of the major war criminals, such as Goering and Hess were conducted under international auspices and established a new body of international law. After these Nuremberg trials ended, each of the four occupying powers (the United States, France, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom) asserted the authority, the right, to try lesser war crimes suspects who were picked up in their military zones of occupation. So, there were four separate war crimes trials, US, French, British, and Soviet. The United States also conducted these trials at Nuremberg. These included some notorious characters, for example, Major General Sepp Dietrich, who was Commanding General of the SS division that was involved in the Malmedy Massacre. Dietrich was sentenced to death because he was commander of the unit that committed the Malmedy massacre.

Dietrich strove mightily to please when questioned by Allied captors. Choice Dietrich characterizations of the old Hitler Gang: Himmler: "A great hand at hoarding and scrounging."
Reinhard Heydrich: "A great pig."
Goring: "Lazy, a clown."
Hitler: "Knew even less than the rest ... a sucker. . . ."

Dietrich was put on trial for complicity in the Malmédy Massacre during the Battle of the Bulge. Though his direct involvement was never proved, Dietrich was sentenced to life in prison for "offences against customs and ethics of war". Many senior German army officers came to his defence and the sentence was cut to 25 years.

In the United States and Germany, a number of groups considered it a political (and perhaps business) mistake for the United States to be holding German prisoners for what could be decades. The Occupying Powers established bilateral War Crimes Clemency and Parole Boards to review these cases. Each bilateral board had five members, three U.S. (or British or French) and two Germans. Petitioners for clemency and parole submitted applications to the Board. There was one case which resulted in an outcry. That was the Sepp Dietrich case. The German government never put pressure on the American Board members or on anyone else concerning the Dietrich case. After considering the application for a couple of days, the Board decided that Dietrich's crime did not warrant further detention, and he should be considered for parole. The German Government was restrained in its reaction. The German press treated the decision as a routine news item, but the American press picked it up and gave it some prominence. Dietrich was released in 1955 but was re-arrested and charged with taking part in the murders during the Night of the Long Knives of 1934. For this, he got an 18 months prison sentence. He was released in February 1958.

Sepp Dietrich died in April 1966 at the age of 73, of a heart attack; near Stuttgart.