Joachim “Jochen” Peiper (1915–1976) was a German Waffen-SS officer whose wartime career moved from Heinrich Himmler’s personal staff to command of armoured units. He joined the SS in 1933 and became Himmler’s adjutant in 1938. In that role, Peiper witnessed Nazi mass murder, including the killing of mentally ill patients and the persecution and murder of Jews in occupied Eastern Europe. After joining the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division, he fought in France and on the Eastern Front. His unit acquired the nickname “Blowtorch Battalion” amid reports of villages burned and inhabitants killed. Peiper later commanded Kampfgruppe Peiper during the 1944 Ardennes Offensive. At Malmedy, his men killed 84 captured American soldiers; other prisoners and Belgian civilians were also killed during the advance. The battle group was ultimately held responsible for the deaths of 362 POWs and 111 civilians. A US military tribunal convicted Peiper in 1946 and sentenced him to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and later to 35 years; he was paroled in 1956. Investigators also examined the 1943 Boves massacre in Italy, but could not establish that Peiper personally ordered the killings. After prison, he worked for Porsche and Volkswagen, remained connected to networks seeking the rehabilitation of former SS members, and later translated military history in France. In 1976, after his identity as a war criminal became public in his French village, his house was set ablaze and he died inside. Peiper’s postwar admirers, including neo-Nazis, portrayed him as a German war hero. That image clashed with the record of massacres and with historians’ accounts of a commander who encouraged or tolerated war crimes.