Joachim Peiper is the most notorious figure in this range, and the reasons are not to his credit. An SS-Obersturmbannführer who had served as a personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, he commanded the armored spearhead of the 1st SS Panzer Division in the December 1944 Ardennes offensive. On 17 December, near the Baugnez crossroads outside Malmedy, men under his command machine-gunned some eighty-four American prisoners of war in a field — the Malmedy massacre. His battlegroup killed other prisoners and Belgian civilians during the same drive. Tried after the war and sentenced to death, Peiper had the sentence commuted and was released in 1956.

The figure shows Peiper in the black Panzer uniform of an SS armored officer, Knight's Cross at his throat — a deliberately austere, historically exact portrait rather than a heroic one. Display him as part of the record: alongside his own division's vehicle at the Kaiserbaracke Crossroads, against the Americans whose stand broke his offensive in the snow, the paratroopers of Welcome to Bastogne, and within the SS command structure beside the Waffen SS Officer. A Battle of the Bulge diorama that includes Peiper should tell the whole story, Malmedy included.

W. Britain model 25074. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Single figure — Waffen-SS officer Joachim Peiper in black Panzer uniform. Boxed.