title: Kathy Ireland

text: Buoyed by the initial success, Ireland founded kathy ireland Worldwide, at the beginning a brand marketing firm, which she and her related trusts own in its entirety. The company concentrated on building its business in home products after 2003, when it cut its exclusive ties to Kmart.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: At the advice of Warren Buffett, Ireland's friend and mentor, kathy ireland Worldwide soon entered into the home furnishings business. "Fashion and apparel is consistently changing, but in home it's more consistent," Buffett said.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Already in 2004, Ireland's annual take was thought to be around $10 million. "Forbes" described Ireland as a "prototype for model-turned-mogul" in a 2006 article about the trend of "modelpreneurs". By 2004, kathy ireland Worldwide was marketing products from 16 manufacturers - including those of Nourison and Pacific Coast Lighting - selling them in over 34,000 retail locations in as many as 14 countries.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Between 2005 and 2012, products bearing Ireland's brand generated $2 billion in annual retail sales and the company became a leader in its industry. In a May 2012 "British Vogue" article, Ireland was called the world's richest model.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Afterwards Ireland started designing wedding dresses and social occasion gowns. She launched her line of wedding gowns by presenting a runway fashion show at the Festival of Brides held in Disneyland Resort in 2012. Sterling/Winters Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of kathy ireland Worldwide, which is the management company for Janet Jackson.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: American Legend launched a Kathy Ireland collection consisting of 30 styles, which was featured at Macy's beginning in Fall 2011. Ireland is chief designer for Royal Footwear & Accessories (The RFA Group). She has established a relationship with manufacturer Gorham designing dinnerware, glassware and flatware.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Ireland designed collections of jewelry inspired by Elizabeth Taylor. Ireland launched a collection of pet products called Loved Ones, which includes furniture, bowls, collars, toys and luxury bedding. She teamed up with Worldwise Inc., a pet products company based in San Rafael, California, to create the pet collection.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: In 2013, kathy ireland Worldwide entered into a licensing agreement with rug manufacturer Nourison, to create a new collection of affordable area rugs. Since that time, Kathy Ireland Home by Nourison has expanded to include more than 20 distinct rug collections.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: In 2015, "Forbes" named Ireland one of America's 50 most successful self-made women (as measured by their net worth) in its first ever list of the kind. Lending her name to several thousands of different products, her company was listed as the 26th biggest licensor in the world in 2019 by License Global. Media has compared Kathy favourably to Martha Stewart, Kathy responded that Stewart's "designs are perfect and ours are messy".


title: Kathy Ireland

text: In 2016, in association with Paul Raps New York, Yaron Turgeman from Taly Diamonds and Roland Krainz from Krainz Creations, Kathy Ireland launched "Diamonds by Kathy Ireland", a collection of sixty-five jewelry pieces: engagement rings, wedding bands, patent-pending earrings, bracelets and pendants. The collection premiered at the 2017 Luxury and JCK shows in Las Vegas.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Also in January 2017, American Family Insurance tapped Kathy Ireland for an ambassador role. To launch their relationship, Ireland was the keynote speaker for their Dream Fearlessly campaign. In July 2018, Fox Business reported that Ireland had ventured into the shipping container business, partnering with SG Blocks, a company which has been designing and constructing container-based buildings and structures in the United States.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: On May 8, 2019, singer and actress Vanessa Williams signed a management and partnership agreement with Kathy Ireland Worldwide.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: In late 2019, Padlist launched with Kathy Ireland as the Chief Editor & Brand Strategist alongside Co-Founders Blake Van Leer and Lindsay Van Leer. In 2020, Ireland's company entered into a partnership with Camping World to bring her collections of RV furniture to retail locations and online stores. Camping World does $4 plus billion worldwide and operates over 180 retail/service locations in 46 states.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: In April 2021, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. released a new album called "Blackbird Lennon-McCartney Icons" for the first time in 30 years under Ireland's record label EE1 in partnership with BMG. It was produced by Nic Mendoza. The album hit No 1 on its first day on the iTunes R&B Album chart. Kathy called the project a human rights and freedom, including religious freedom, recording project in 2021.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Since 1994, Ireland has published several fitness videos that led to her design of athletic apparel and launched her brand licensing of fitness equipment. Several of these were VSDA Award-winning, including "Total Fitness Workout", "Core Workout", "Absolutely Fit", "Advanced Sports Fitness", "Reach and Health" and "Body Specifics", which was awarded Fitness Video Of The Year.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Ireland has written numerous books, most of them for children. Her debut effort (with Laura Morton), "Powerful Inspirations: Eight Lessons that Will Change Your Life", was published in 2002. "Real Solutions for Busy Moms: Your Guide to Success and Sanity" and "Real Solutions: 52 God Inspired Messages from My Heart" were published in 2009. "Mona's Favorite Words", "What Do Mommies Do?" and "An Angel Called Hope", her first three children's books, were released in November 2005. Since 2013, she has published few more for Bendon: "Where Are the Bears", "Choo-Choo Colors", "Who Wears What", "P-O-T-T-Y", "Gracie & Delilah: A Tale of Two Precious Pups", and the three-book collection "A Big Kid Book Set", consisting of "Proud to Potty", "Brush Up" and "Tubbie Time". She has also written six more "blocky books", published by Bendon as well: "Cow", "Sheep", and "Pig", from the "Farm Friends Blocky Books" series and "Giraffe", "Lion", and "Zebra", from the "Safari Friends Blocky Books" series. In 2020, Ireland released her first novel "Fashion Jungle" with author Rachel Van Dyken. The novel is based on events from her career in the modeling industry.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Ireland spoke at the fourth Youth Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters on August 13, 2007, encouraging young people to engage in activities aimed at ending poverty. She delivered the keynote at Licensing International Expo 2012 in Las Vegas.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Ireland was a key speaker at the 2012 AIPAC policy conference in Washington, DC, where she expressed her support for the Israeli people and warned against the dangers posed by the lack of knowledge about the history of the land of Israel.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Kathy Ireland's charity work and philanthropic activities have included pro bono work for the non-profit organizations March of Dimes, PTA, Feed the Children and City of Hope.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: In addition, Ireland has lent her estates to charitable organizations such as the US Marine Corps' Toys for Tots to generate funds for charity. According to Major Bill Grein of the US Marine Corps, Ireland's company and her book business partner Bendon Publishing International donated $10 million to supplement the 2013 annual Toys for Tots gathering and distribution of Christmas gifts for millions of at-risk children and youths.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Elizabeth Taylor and Ireland had a close friendship and attended public events together. After Ireland received outspoken criticism for her uneven performance as an on-air host of ABC's 2010 pre-Oscar special, Taylor publicly defended Ireland; "I have never seen anyone epitomize glamour and grace and professionalism like she did." Ireland publicly credits Taylor as her mentor and for part of her success in life, business, design and philanthropy. Taylor bequeathed her Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Ireland, in addition to leaving her a diamond jewelry collection, which Ireland wore at the 2018 American Heart Association's "Go Red for Women" Dress Show.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Ireland is an ambassador for 9-1-1 For Kids, a non-profit organization that specializes in making educational materials to assist emergency dispatchers in teaching children the proper use of 9-1-1 and other general emergency preparedness tips. In an effort to encourage equality in women's athletics, Ireland has hosted several LPGA Golf Tournaments, including the Kathy Ireland Championship from 1999 to 2001 and the Kathy Ireland Greens.com LPGA Classic in 2000. On October 15, 2009, Ireland became an international ambassador for the Friends of Sheba Medical Center. The following year, she traveled to Israel to film a promotional documentary for the center; titled "Holy Land Heroes," the film aims to reveal the work done at Sheba with wounded soldiers and terror victims. In 2019, Ireland was added as the first woman to the board of NFL Players Association. Ireland also joined the Women's National Basketball Players Association's (WNBPA) Board of Advocates that same year. Kathy Ireland joined the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation in 2020 as International Youth Chair. In March 2022, Ireland launched the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation’s “Music Funds the Cure’ and joined NPCF's International Youth Chair. Ireland reported by USA today is now a board member at lets talk interactive and she later declared war on the opioid crisis.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: On June 23, 2011, Ireland was honored by the Anti-Defamation League with the American Heritage Award, presented by the National Home Furnishings Industry. In 2012, Ireland received the Messenger of Peace Award at the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Gala. The same year, Ireland was presented with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by the California State University, which stated that she "generously uses her power and influence to benefit others, supporting social causes including empowering women, supporting young girls through mentoring, and providing opportunities for girls and women at risk." Ireland has been nominated as one of 17 finalists for the first Global Business & Interfaith Peace Award given by the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation (a U.S.-based nonprofit), and the United Nations Global Compact Business for Peace initiative. On October 13, 2017, at the "Meet Kathy Ireland Event" hosted by Amini, Ireland was presented with the key to the city of High Point, North Carolina. On July 15, 2021 Kathy Ireland was awarded the inaugural Business IRF Champion Award at the IRF Summit in Washington DC.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Ireland married physician Greg Olsen in 1988, and they have three children: Erik, Lily and Chloe. She is a devout Christian and an anti-abortion advocate. She has also been outspoken in her support for Israel.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: Ireland's sister, Cynthia, has a child with Down syndrome. Ireland wrote an article about her niece and the need for an increase in research.


title: Kathy Ireland

text: In 2009, Ireland appeared on "Larry King Live" to discuss her weight gain and women's health issues. She had gained a pound a year for 25 years and the cumulative effect had become obvious to her in a candid photograph her son had taken.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Joachim Peiper (30 January 1915 – 14 July 1976) was a German "Schutzstaffel" (SS) officer and a Nazi war criminal convicted for the Malmedy massacre of U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs). During the Second World War in Europe, Peiper served as personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, and as a tank commander in the "Waffen-SS".


title: Joachim Peiper

text: As adjutant to Himmler, Peiper witnessed the SS implement the Holocaust with ethnic cleansing and genocide of Jews in Eastern Europe; facts that he obfuscated and denied in the post–War period. As a tank commander, Peiper served in the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) in the Eastern Front and in the Western Front, first as a battalion commander and then as a regimental commander. Peiper fought in the Third Battle of Kharkov and in the Battle of the Bulge, from which battles his eponymous battle group — "Kampfgruppe Peiper" — became notorious for committing war crimes against civilians and PoWs.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the Malmedy Massacre Trial, the U.S. military tribunal established Peiper's command responsibility for the Malmedy massacre (1944) and sentenced him to death, which later was commuted to life in prison, then 35 years. In Italy, Peiper was accused of having committed the Boves massacre (1943); that investigation ended for lack of war-crime evidence that Peiper ordered the summary killing of Italian civilians.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Upon release from prison, Peiper worked for the Porsche and Volkswagen automobile companies and later moved to France, where he worked as a freelance translator. Throughout his post-war life, Peiper was very active in the social network of ex–SS men centred upon the right-wing organisation HIAG (Mutual Aid Association of Former Members of the Waffen-SS). In 1976, Peiper was murdered in France when anti-Nazis set his house afire after the publication of his identity as a "Waffen-SS" war criminal.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Despite having been a minor combat leader, Peiper's idolization by aficionados of the Second World War who romanticise the Waffen-SS in popular culture developed a cult of personality that views Peiper as a war hero of Germany. The Peiper personified Nazi ideology as a purportedly ruthless glory-hound commander who was indifferent to the combat casualties of Battle Group Peiper, and who encouraged, expected, and tolerated war crimes by his "Waffen-SS" soldiers.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Joachim Peiper was born in Berlin, on 30 January 1915, and was the third son of a middle-class family from German Silesia. His father, Waldemar Peiper, had been an officer in the Imperial German Army who was wounded in the 1904 campaign in German East Africa. He contracted malaria, which demobilised him from active duty in German Africa. Later Waldemar resumed active duty in the Imperial Army during the First World War and was deployed to Ottoman Turkey, where he suffered chronic cardiac problems consequent to the previous malarial infection. Poor health then demobilised Waldemar from active duty in Asia Minor.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: During the European interwar period, Waldemar joined a company of mercenary soldiers within the paramilitary "Freikorps" and actively participated in suppressing the Polish Silesian Uprisings (August 1919–July 1921) meant to annex German Silesia to the Second Polish Republic. In the Weimar Germany of the 1920s, the antisemitic canards of Nazi ideology — the Stab-in-the-back myth, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", "The International Jew", et cetera — had much appeal to the political conservatives and to the political reactionaries such as the "Freikorps" mercenary soldier Waldemar Peiper who were angry that Imperial Germany had lost the Great War.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Two of Waldemar's sons, Horst and Joachim, followed the same life-path of nationalist ideology and military service to Germany. In 1926, the eleven-year-old Joachim followed his middle brother, fourteen-year-old Horst Peiper to become a boy scout; eventually, Joachim became interested in becoming a military officer.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Horst joined the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) and served in the "SS-Totenkopfverbände" as a guard in a Nazi concentration camp. Transferred to active duty as a "Waffen-SS" soldier, Horst fought in the Battle of France (1940) as part of the 3rd SS Panzer Division, and was killed in Poland in June 1941, in a never-fully-explained accident; rumour said that his fellow SS men drove Horst to commit suicide because of his homosexuality.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Peiper's eldest brother, Hans-Hasso (b. 1910) was mentally ill, and his suicide attempt resulted in cerebral damage that reduced him to a persistent vegetative state. Interned to a hospital in 1931, Hans died of tuberculosis in 1942.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Joachim Peiper was eighteen years old when he joined the Hitler Youth in the company of Horst, his middle brother. In October 1933, Peiper volunteered for the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) and joined the Cavalry SS, where his first superior officer was Gustav Lombard, a zealous Nazi, and later a regimental commander in the SS Cavalry Brigade, who were notoriously efficient at the mass murder of Jews in the lands of the occupied Soviet Union, notably in punitive operations such as the Pripyat Marshes massacres (July–August 1941) in Byelorussia.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 23 January 1934, he was promoted to SS-"Mann" (SS Identity Card Nr. 132.496), which made Peiper an “SS Man” before the "Schutzstaffel" was independent of the "Sturmabteilung" (SA) within the Nazi Party. Later that year, Peiper was promoted to SS-"Sturmmann" at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, where his reputation attracted the notice of "Reichsführer-SS" Heinrich Himmler, for whom Peiper personified Aryanism, the master-race concept promoted by the Nazism taught at the SS officer school. Despite not being as tall, blond, and muscular as the Nordic recruits to the SS, Peiper compensated by being a handsome, personable, and self-confident SS officer.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The SS formally employed Peiper in January 1935, and later sent him to a military leadership course at a school of the LSSAH tank division. As an SS leadership-student Peiper received favourable and approving reviews from the SS instructors, yet received only conditional approval from the military psychologists, who noted Peiper's egocentricity, negative attitude, and continual attempts to impress them with his personal connection to "Reichsführer-SS" Himmler. The military psychologists concluded that Peiper might become either a "difficult subordinate" or an "arrogant superior" in the course of his career in the SS.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the April 1935–March 1936 period, Peiper trained as a military officer in the SS-Junker School, from which institution the director, Paul Hausser, graduated politically correct Nazi leaders for the "Waffen-SS". Besides military fieldcraft, the SS-Junker School taught the National Socialist (Nazi) worldview that centred upon anti–Semitism. The paedagogic qualifications and competence of the instructors at the SS-Junker School was questionable.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The Nazi Party issued Peiper his NSDAP Identity Card Nr. 5.508.134 on 1 March 1938, two years after he became an SS man. In the post–War period Peiper continually denied having been a member of the Nazi Party, because that fact contradicted his self-promoted image of a common man who was "merely a soldier" in the Second World War.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In June 1938, Peiper became an adjutant to "Reichsführer-SS" Himmler, which tour of duty Himmler considered necessary administrative training for a promotable SS leader. In that time, the officers working within the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS were under the command of SS functionary Karl Wolff. As a staff officer, Peiper worked in the anteroom of the SS Main Office in Berlin and became a favourite adjutant of Himmler. Peiper returned the admiration and by 1939, Peiper always was the adjutant of the "Reichsführer-SS" at every official function.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In 1938, Peiper met and courted Sigurd Hinrichsen, a secretary who was a friend of Lina Heydrich (wife of Reinhard Heydrich) and a friend of Hedwig Potthast, secretary and mistress to Himmler. On 26 June 1939, Peiper married Sigurd in an SS ceremony; Himmler was the guest of honour. The Peipers lived in Berlin until its bombing in 1940; Sigurd Peiper then went to live in Rottach-Egern, Upper Bavaria, near Himmler's second residence. They had three children.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland launched the Second World War in Europe. Adjutant Peiper travelled in the personal train of "Reichsführer-SS" Himmler. Peiper occasionally was the liaison officer to Hitler, when the "Führer" travelled by train with Erwin Rommel, and when the "Führer" met with "Wehrmacht" and "Waffen-SS" generals near the front lines of the Eastern Front.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 20 September, in the northern Polish city of Bydgoszcz, Himmler and Peiper witnessed the public executions of twenty Polish social leaders who might lead partisan resistance to Nazi occupation. That demonstration of the mechanics of the Holocaust — of ethnic cleansing — was realised by the paramilitary "Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz" an ethnic-German, self-defence militia commanded by Ludolf von Alvensleben, the local SS and Police leader. In later conversation with the explorer Ernst Schäfer, Peiper rationalised the actions of the SS to hunt and kill the Polish intelligentsia by ascribing sole command responsibility to Hitler and his superior orders to Himmler.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: As a participant in the Nazi conquest of Poland for German "Lebensraum", Peiper witnessed the administrative refinement of SS policies for more effective methods of killing during ethnic cleansing, designed to depopulate Polish lands for German colonists. On 13 December 1939, in west central Poland, at the village of Owińska, near Poznań, Himmler and Peiper witnessed the "Aktion T4" poison-gas mass killing of mentally ill patients in a psychiatric hospital. In post-war interrogations by U.S. Army JAG and military intelligence interrogators, Peiper was factual and emotionally detached in describing his eye-witness experience of mass murder:


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The [gassing] action was done before a circle of invited guests. . . . The insane were led into a prepared casemate, the door of which had a Plexiglas window. After the door was closed, one could see how, in the beginning, the insane still laughed and talked to each other. But, soon they sat down on the straw, obviously under the influence of the gas. . . . Very soon, they no longer moved.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Throughout 1940, Himmler and Peiper made an inspection tour of the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, including the Neuengamme concentration camp in the north, and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the north-east of the country. In Occupied Poland, Himmler met with Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the Higher SS and Police Leader, and his subordinate, Odilo Globocnik, the SS bureaucrat responsible for deporting the Jews from the cities of Warsaw and Lublin and from the Polish territories already annexed as "Lebensraum" for Germany.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In April 1940, Himmler and Peiper continued their camp-inspection tour at the Buchenwald concentration camp and the Flossenbürg concentration camp. The SS and Police Leader Wilhelm Rediess and the SS official Otto Rasch strove to develop quicker methods for killing civilians in order to depopulate Poland for German colonisation. In May 1940, Globocnik demonstrated for Himmler and Peiper the efficacy of the "Aktion T4" programme for the involuntary euthanasia of disabled and crippled people and also discussed Globocnik's work in the Lublin Reservation programme for the control and confinement of the Jewish populations of the Greater Germanic Reich.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In May 1940, Himmler and Peiper followed the "Waffen-SS" throughout the Battle of France. On 18 May, Peiper became a platoon leader in a unit of the LSSAH motorised regiment. For audacious soldiering in his platoon's capture of a French artillery battery atop the hills of Wattenberg, south of Valenciennes, Peiper was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class, and promoted to SS-"Hauptsturmführer" (captain). On 19 June 1940, Peiper was awarded the Iron Cross 1st class for audacious soldiering. As further reward and remuneration, Peiper took back to Germany a French sports car for his personal use; Himmler ordered the car be included in the motor-pool inventory of his personal staff. On 21 June 1940, Peiper returned to his role of personal adjutant to Himmler.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 7 September 1940, Himmler thanked the commanders of the LSSAH tank division: "We had to have the toughness — this should be said and soon forgotten — to shoot thousands of leading Poles", and stressed the psychological problems suffered by "Waffen-SS" soldiers when they are "carrying out executions", "hauling away people", and "evicting crying and hysterical women" in order to clear the lands of Poland for German colonisation. After an official visit to Francoist Spain to meet Generalíssimo Francisco Franco in October 1940, Peiper was promoted to First Adjutant on 1 November 1940.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In February 1941, "Reichsführer-SS" Himmler informed adjutant Peiper about the upcoming Operation Barbarossa (22 June – 5 December 1941), for the invasion, conquest, and German colonisation of the U.S.S.R.; Peiper had four months to prepare the "Waffen-SS" soldiers of "Kampfgruppe Peiper" to battle the Red Army. Moreover, Himmler and his staff travelled to occupied Poland, occupied Norway, Nazi Austria, and occupied Greece to see the progress of the "Wehrmacht" and "Waffen-SS" operations there, including the depopulation of Poland for German colonisation.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: About his visit to the Łódź ghetto, Peiper wrote that “it was a macabre image: we saw how the Jewish Ghetto police, who wore hats without rims, and were armed with wooden clubs, inconsiderately made room for us.” The episode in the Łódź ghetto indicates Peiper's awareness of the criminality of the Nazi occupations, yet wrote anecdotes — about the Jewish Ghetto Police abusing the Jews — which were meant to lessen the degree of his complicity in the war crimes of the "Waffen-SS" and of the "Wehrmacht".


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the 11–15 June 1941 period, adjutant Peiper participated in the SS conference wherein Himmler presented plans for killing of 30 million Slavs in eastern Europe, especially Russia; present were Kurt Wolff; Kurt Daluege (head of the Order Police), Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (SS and Police Leader in Byelorussia); and Reinhard Heydrich (head of the Reich Security Main Office). When Nazi Germany invaded the U.S.S.R., on 22 June 1941, Himmler used a headquarters-train to tour the conquered Russian lands; Himmler and Peiper inspected the work of the "Einsatzkommando" units who were depopulating the conquered lands. In Augustów, Poland, the "Einsatzkommando Tilsit" killed approximately 200 people; and in Grodno, Byelorussia, before Himmler and Peiper, Heydrich berated the leader of the local death squad for having shot only 96 Jews in a day.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In July 1941, Himmler and Peiper were in Białystok to witness the progress of the depopulation of that city and of Poland by the Order Police battalions, and met with Bach-Zalewski to discuss the deployment of units of the "Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS" (“Command Staff Reichsführer-SS”), which comprised 25,000 "Waffen-SS" soldiers tasked to execute racial and ideological war against the peoples of Russia. The "Kommandostab" units were under authority of the local Higher SS and Police Leaders, who identified the local populations of Jews and “undesirables” to be killed.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: As the first and second adjutants, Peiper and Werner Grothmann were aware of and handled all of Himmler's orders and communications. Peiper delivered the "Kommandostab"’s daily body-count reports to Himmler. The 30 July 1941 report from Gustav Lombard's SS cavalry indicated that they had shot 800 Jews; the 11 August 1941 report from Lombard indicated that they had shot 6,526 "looters" (Jews). Peiper likewise delivered to Himmler the daily "Einsatzgruppen" murder statistics that compared the numbers of people killed against the pre-war projections of the timetable for depopulating the U.S.S.R.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Peiper's adjutancy to Himmler ended in summer of 1941, and Peiper was reassigned to the LSSAH tank division in October 1941. Peiper rejoined the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) whilst they fought in the Eastern Front, in the vicinity of the Black Sea. As the replacement for an injured company commander, Peiper assumed command of the 11th Company and fought the Red Army at Mariupol and Rostov-on-Don. Noted for his fighting spirit and aggressive leadership in battle, tank commander Peiper's victories came at the cost of many German tanks and casualties among "Waffen-SS" infantry.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The division was followed by "Einsatzgruppe D", who were responsible for killing the local Jews, other civilians, Commissars, Red Army soldiers, and partisans. To facilitate the depopulation of the lands of Russia, SS-General Sepp Dietrich, commander of the LSSAH, volunteered his "Waffen-SS" infantry to assist the "Einsatzgruppe" in the massacre of 1,800 people at the Gully of Petrushino. In May 1942, the LSSAH was sent to Vichy France for rest, recuperation, and refitting, and were subsequently reorganized into a "Panzergrenadier" division. Peiper was promoted to commander of the 3rd Battalion.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Peiper's battalion left France in January 1943 for the Eastern Front, where the Nazi invaders had begun to lose the initiative, especially in the Battle of Stalingrad. During the Third Battle of Kharkov, the battalion became known for an audacious rescue of the encircled 320th Infantry Division. In a letter home, Peiper described hand-to-hand fighting with a Soviet ski battalion in an effort to lead the division, including its sick and wounded, to safety.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The rescue culminated with a fierce battle with the Soviet forces at the village of Krasnaya Polyana. Upon entering the village, Peiper's troops made a terrible discovery. All the men in his small rearguard medical detachment who had been left there had been killed and then mutilated. An SS sergeant in Peiper's ration supply company later stated that Peiper responded in kind: "In the village, the two petrol trucks were burnt and 25 Germans killed by partisans and Soviet soldiers. As a revenge, Peiper ordered the burning down of the whole village and the shooting of its inhabitants". (The testimony was obtained in November 1944 by the Western Allies.)


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 6 May 1943, Peiper was awarded the German Cross in Gold for his achievements in February 1943 around Kharkov, where his unit gained the nickname the "Blowtorch Battalion". Reportedly, the nickname derived from the torching and slaughter of two Soviet villages where their inhabitants were either shot or burned.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Ukrainian sources, including surviving witness Ivan Kiselev, who was 14 at the time of the massacre, described the killings at the villages of Yefremovka and Semyonovka on 17 February 1943. On 12 February troops of the LSSAH occupied the two villages, where retreating Soviet forces had wounded two SS officers. In retaliation, five days later, LSSAH troops killed 872 men, women and children. Some 240 of these were burned alive in the church of Yefremovka.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In August 1944, when an SS commander, formerly of LSSAH, was captured south of Falaise in France and interrogated by the Allies, he stated that Peiper was "particularly eager to execute the order to burn villages". Peiper wrote to Potthast in March 1943: "Our reputation precedes us as a wave of terror and is one of our best weapons. Even old Genghis Khan would gladly have hired us as assistants."


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 9 March 1943, Peiper was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the most prestigious military decoration of the Third Reich, for which "Reichsführer-SS" Himmler congratulated him in a live radio broadcast: "Heartfelt congratulations for the Knight’s Cross, my dear Jochen! I am proud of you!" In that stage of the Second World War, Nazi propaganda portrayed tank commander Peiper as an exemplary military leader. The official SS newspaper, "Das Schwarze Korps" (The Black Corps) reported that Peiper's actions in Kharkov demonstrated that he is a "Waffen-SS" tank commander who always is "the master of the situation, in all its phases", that Peiper's "quick decision-making" assured victory in the field through his "bold and unorthodox orders" and that he is "a born leader, one filled with the highest sense of responsibility for the life of every one of his men, but who [was] also able to be hard, if necessary" to complete the mission.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the post–War period, such hyperbolic descriptions of the tactical prowess of the tank commander Peiper glamourised the "Waffen-SS" man into a war hero of Germany. In the SS hierarchy, Peiper was an SS man and military officer who received, obeyed, and executed orders with minimal discussion, and expected that his soldiers receive, obey, and execute his orders without question.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In July 1943, the LSSAH tank division participated in Operation Citadel in the area of Kursk, in which "Kampfgruppe Peiper" fought well against the Red Army. After Operation Citadel failed, the LSSAH tank division was redeployed from the Eastern Front in Russia to the north of Fascist Italy.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In August 1943, "Kampfgruppe Peiper" was stationed at the city of Cuneo, six kilometres north of the village of Boves, in the commune of Boves. Fascist Italy ceased being a belligerent power of the Rome–Berlin Axis on 3 September 1943 with the signing of the Armistice of Cassibile between the Kingdom of Italy and the Allied Powers. Consequently, Nazi Germany responded on 8 September with Operation Achse, wherein "Wehrmacht" forces, including the LSSAH, invaded and occupied the north of Italy, in order to forcibly disarm the Italian army "in situ".


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 19 September 1943, in a firefight with the "Waffen-SS" occupiers, partisan guerrillas of the Italian Resistance Movement killed one soldier and captured two others in the vicinity of Boves, in the Piedmont region of north-west Italy. In a later firefight with the partisans, a "Waffen-SS" infantry company failed to rescue their comrades from the partisans. After this, the armoured units of "Kampfgruppe Peiper" assumed strategic control of the streets and the roads into and out of the village of Boves, and Peiper then threatened to destroy the village if the partisans did not release their "Waffen-SS" prisoners.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In effort to avoid the Nazis’ destruction of the Boves village, the local spokesmen of the Boves commune, the parish priest Giuseppe Bernardi and the businessman Alessandro Vasallo, successfully negotiated the partisans’ release of their "Waffen-SS" prisoners and of the body of the SS soldier killed earlier. Despite the successfully negotiated release of the body and prisoners, Peiper ordered the soldiers of "Kampfgruppe Peiper" to summarily kill 24 men of the Boves village in retaliation for the resistance of the villagers. They also killed a woman when they looted and burned her house.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the after action report to the LSSAH headquarters, "Kampfgruppe Peiper" described the Boves massacre as Peiper's heroic defence against anti-German attacks by Communist partisans in which "Waffen-SS" soldiers battled, defeated, and killed 17 bandits and partisans, and that “during the fights [with partisans] the villages of Boves and Costellar were burned down. [That] in nearly all [the] burning houses [stores of] ammunition exploded. Some bandits were shot.”


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In November 1943, the LSSAH fought in battles at Zhytomyr, in Ukraine. In the course of battle, although he lacked experience in leading tanks Peiper replaced the regiment's dead commander and so assumed command of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment. In early December, Peiper was nominated for a medal for the successes of the 1st Regiment: the destruction of some Red Army artillery batteries and a division headquarters, having killed 2,280 Red Army soldiers, and delivering three Red Army Prisoners of War (PoWs) to military intelligence. The recommendation for awarding the medal to Peiper described the scorched-earth attacks of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment, wherein tank commander Peiper "attacked with all weapons and flame-throwers from his SPW" armoured fighting vehicle to defeat the Red Army defenders, and then "completely destroyed" the village of Pekartchina.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Peiper's over-aggressive style of leadership caused him to disregard tactical common sense in deploying the tanks and infantry forces of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment in battle against the Red Army. Peiper's battlefield victories cost more "Waffen-SS" casualties (soldiers killed and soldiers wounded) than would have been lost with textbook tactics to achieve the same victory. Attacking without the benefit of prior reconnaissance by scout units, Peiper's tank-and-infantry frontal assaults against entrenched Red Army units killed too many infantry and cost too much lost matériel for an essentially Pyrrhic victory; thus, after a month of Peiper's command, the 1st SS Panzer Regiment had only twelve working tanks.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In December 1943, because of his destructive leadership of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment in Russia, the division command of the LSSAH relieved Peiper of combat duty and transferred him to staff-officer duty at the division headquarters. Despite his uneven battlefield performance in Russia, his political value for Nazi propaganda was greater than his shortcomings as a military officer; thus, on 20 January 1944, Hitler presented the Oak Leaves heraldic device to Peiper for his medal of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In March 1944, the LSSAH was withdrawn from the Eastern Front and sent to be reformed in Nazi-occupied Belgium. New and replacement soldiers were integrated to their ranks; most were adolescent boys, unlike the Nazi ideologue, fanatical soldiers from the 1930s. The difficult training and the brutal hazing-and-initiation rituals to which the new soldiers were subjected resulted in five soldiers being executed for not meeting the standards of "Kampfgruppe Peiper"; "SS-Obersturmbannführer" Peiper then ordered the new soldiers to look at the corpses of the failed soldiers. In 1956, the judicial authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany opened a war-crime case to investigate the accusation that Peiper deliberately killed some of his own "Waffen-SS" soldiers as a point of unit discipline. In 1966, Peiper claimed he knew nothing of it, and the lack of contradictory evidence and witnesses closed the case.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: As the Allied invasion (Operation Overlord, 6 June 1944) began, the LSSAH were deployed to the coast of the English Channel to confront the expected Allied invasion at Pas de Calais in northern France; transport to the frontlines was limited, and the Allied air forces controlled the skies. From 18 July 1944, the "Kampfgruppe Peiper" regiment saw action, but Peiper rarely was at the frontlines, because of the uneven terrain and the requisite radio silence. As with the other "Waffen-SS" and "Wehrmacht" units in the area, "Kampfgruppe Peiper" fought defensively until Operation Cobra (25–31 July 1944) collapsed the German front when the U.S. Army destroyed every tank of the LSSAH and killed 25 percent of their force of 19,618 soldiers.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: After suffering a nervous breakdown, Peiper was relieved of command on 2 August 1944; and in the September–October period of 1944, Peiper was in hospital to treat his nervous collapse. Therefore Peiper was not in command of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment during Operation Luttich (7–13 August 1944), the series of failed counter-attacks at Avranches.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In autumn of 1944, the "Wehrmacht" continually repelled Allied assaults to breach, penetrate, and cross the Siegfried Line, whilst Hitler sought opportunity to seize the initiative on the Western Front. The result was Nazi Germany’s Ardennes Offensive, a desperate, strategic gambit whereby the German armies were intended to break through the U.S. lines in the Ardennes forest, cross the River Meuse, and then seize the city of Antwerp in order to break and divide the Allied front.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The 6th Panzer Army was to penetrate the American lines between Aachen and the Schnee Eifel, in order to seize the bridges over the Meuse, on both sides of the city of Liège. The 6th Panzer Army designated the LSSAH as the mobile-strike force, under the command of SS-"Oberführer" Wilhelm Mohnke. Four combined-arms battle groups composed the 6th Panzer Division; Peiper commanded "Kampfgruppe Peiper", the best-equipped battle group, which included the 501st Heavy Panzer Battalion equipped with seventy-ton Tiger II tanks. "Kampfgruppe Peiper" was to seize the bridges on the Meuse river between the cities of Liège and Huy. To address the shortage of fuel, headquarters provided Peiper with a map indicating the locations of U.S. Army fuel depots, where he was intended to seize the fuel stores from the few U.S. Army soldiers manning those fuel dumps.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The 6th Panzer Army assigned "Kampfgruppe Peiper" to routes that included narrow and single-lane roads, which compelled the infantry, armoured vehicles, and tanks to travel as a convoy approximately long. Peiper complained that the roads assigned were suitable for bicycles, but not for tanks; yet the chief of staff Fritz Krämer told Peiper: “I don’t care how and what you do. Just make it to the Meuse. Even if you've only one tank left when you get there.”


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Peiper's vehicles reached the point of departure at midnight, which delayed the attack by "Kampfgruppe Peiper" by almost twenty-four hours. The plan was to advance through Losheimergraben, but the two infantry divisions tasked to open the route for "Kampfgruppe Peiper" had failed to do so on the first day of battle. In the morning of 17 December, "Kampfgruppe Peiper" captured Honsfeld and the U.S. Army's stores of fuel. Peiper continued west until the road became impassable, a short distance from the town of Ligneuville; that detour compelled Peiper's units towards the Baugnez crossroads, near the city of Malmedy, Belgium.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: During Peiper's advance on 17 December 1944, his armoured units and half-tracks confronted a lightly armed convoy of about thirty American vehicles at the Baugnez crossroads near Malmedy. The troops, mainly elements of the American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, were quickly overcome and captured. Along with other American prisoners of war captured earlier, they were ordered to stand in a meadow before the Germans opened fire on them with machine guns, killing 84 soldiers, and leaving their bodies in the snow. The survivors were able to reach American lines later that day, and their story spread rapidly throughout the American front lines.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In Honsfeld, Peiper's men murdered several other American prisoners. Other murders of POWs and civilians were reported in Büllingen, Ligneuville and Stavelot, Cheneux, La Gleize, and Stoumont on 17, 18, 19 and 20 December. On 19 December, in the area between Stavelot and Trois-Ponts, while the Germans were trying to regain control of the bridge over the Amblève River (crucial for allowing reinforcements and supplies to reach them), men from "Kampfgruppe Peiper" killed a number of Belgian civilians. The battle group was eventually declared responsible for the deaths of 362 prisoners of war and 111 civilians.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Peiper crossed Ligneuville and reached the heights of Stavelot on the left bank of the Amblève River at nightfall of the second day of the operation. The battle group paused for the night, allowing the Americans to reorganize. After heavy fighting, Peiper's armour crossed the bridge on the Amblève. The spearhead continued on, without having fully secured Stavelot. By then, the surprise factor had been lost. The U.S. forces regrouped and blew up several bridges ahead of Peiper's advance, trapping the battle group in the deep valley of the Amblève, downstream from Trois-Ponts. The weather also improved, permitting the Allied air forces to operate. Airstrikes destroyed or heavily damaged numerous German vehicles. Peiper's command was in disarray: some units had lost their way among difficult terrain or in the dark, while company commanders preferred to stay with Peiper at the head of the column and thus were unable to provide guidance to their own units.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Peiper attacked Stoumont on 19 December and took the town amid heavy fighting. He was unable to protect his rear, which enabled American troops to cut him off from the only possible supply road for ammunition and fuel at Stavelot. Without supplies, and with no contact with other German units behind him, Peiper could advance no further. American attacks on Stoumont forced the remnants of the battle group to retreat to La Gleize. On 24 December, Peiper abandoned his vehicles and retreated with the remaining men. German wounded and American prisoners were also left behind. According to Peiper, 717 men returned to the German lines out of 3,000 at the beginning of the operation.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Despite the failure of Peiper's battle group and the loss of all tanks, Mohnke recommended Peiper for a further award. The events at the Baugnez crossroads were described in glowing terms: "Without regard for threats from the flanks and only inspired by the thought of a deep breakthrough, the Kampfgruppe proceeded ... to Ligneuville and destroyed at Baugnez an enemy supply column and after annihilation of the units blocking their advance, succeeded in causing the staff of the 49th Anti-Aircraft Brigade to flee." Rather than a stain on Peiper's honour, the killing of POWs was celebrated in official records. In January 1945, the Swords were added to his Knight's Cross. The great fame of Peiper as a Waffen-SS commander during the Battle of the Bulge was born.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In early 1945, in Hungary, "Kampfgruppe Peiper" fought in Operation Southwind (17–24 February 1945) and in Operation Spring Awakening (6–15 March 1945) in the battles of which, despite killing many enemy soldiers, Peiper's aggressive style of command cost many more wounded and dead "Waffen-SS" soldiers than were necessary to win the battle. On 1 May 1945, as the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler was forced into Austria, Peiper's men learned of the death of the "Führer" the previous day. On 8 May, the German high command ordered the units of the Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler to surrender to the U.S. Army that was across the River Enns. Flouting the high command's order to surrender, Col. Peiper trekked home to Germany, but American forces captured him on 22 May 1945.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In late June 1945, U.S. Army war-crime investigators began the forensic investigation of the Malmedy massacre that the "Waffen-SS" committed on 17 December 1944. The war crimes committed during the Battle of the Bulge were attributed to Battle Group Peiper, so the U.S. Army searched PoW camps for the "Waffen-SS" soldiers assigned to Peiper's command. Moreover, as the battle-group commander, Peiper headed the list of war criminals sought by the U.S. Army from among four million prisoners of war. On 21 August 1945, "Waffen-SS" Standartenführer Peiper was found and identified as the suspected author of the war-crime massacre of 84 U.S. soldiers in a farmer's field near the city of Malmédy, Belgium.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In July 1945, during his interrogations by JAG and military intelligence officers, Peiper revealed his commitment to Nazism; when the Army interrogators asked his opinion about the plight of the Poles and the Jews, Peiper agitatedly replied that: "All Jews are bad and all Poles are bad. We have just cleansed our society and moved "these people" into camps, and you let them loose!" Moreover, as a "Waffen-SS" officer, Peiper also lamented to the Army interrogators that the U.S. government was wrong in having refused to incorporate the "Waffen-SS" into the U.S. Army to "prepare to fight the Russians" in defence of Western civilisation.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In Upper Bavaria, at the U.S. military jail in Freising, the judicial and military intelligence interrogators soon learned that, although Peiper and his "Waffen-SS" troops were hardened soldiers, they had not been trained to withstand interrogation as prisoners of war. Being psychologically unsophisticated men, some SS PoWs readily answered the questions asked of them by the interrogators; other SS PoWs claimed they only spoke to interrogators after having endured threats, beatings, and mock trials.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the course of his interrogations, Peiper assumed command responsibility for the actions of his soldiers. In December 1945, the Army transferred him to the prison at Schwäbisch Hall, and there integrated Peiper to a group of approximately 1,000 "Waffen-SS" soldiers and officers of the LSSAH who also awaited judicial processing for their war crimes. On 16 April 1946, the prison transferred 300 "Wehrmacht" and "Waffen-SS" POWs to the Dachau Concentration Camp, where a military tribunal would hear their war-crime cases.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the 16 May–16 July 1946 period, at the Dachau Concentration Camp, a military tribunal heard the Malmedy Massacre Trial of 74 defendants, which featured "Waffen-SS" Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper (Cmdr. 1st SS Panzer Regiment) who committed the war crimes; Sepp Dietrich (Cmdr. 6th SS Panzer Army); Fritz Krämer (Dietrich's chief of staff); and Hermann Prieß (Cmdr. I SS Panzer Corps). The U.S. Army's war-crime bill of charges was based upon the facts reported in the sworn statements given by the Party, "Wehrmacht", and "Waffen-SS" PoWs in the Schwäbisch Hall prison.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: To counter the evidence in the sworn statements of the Nazi defendants and the prosecution witnesses, the lead defence attorney, Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett, tried to show that the sworn statements had been obtained by inappropriate interrogation. Defence counsel Everett then called Lt. Col. Hal D. McCown, commander 2nd Battalion, 119th Infantry Regiment, to give testimony about his captivity — as a prisoner of war — of the "Waffen-SS" who captured him and his unit on 21 December 1944, in the vicinity of La Gleize, Belgium. In his trial testimony, Lt. Col. McCown said that he had not witnessed Col. Peiper's "Waffen-SS" soldiers mistreating their American prisoners of war.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The prosecutor countered that, by the time Lt. Col. McCown and his soldiers had been captured on 21 December, battle group commander Peiper already was aware that the tactical situation of being out-numbered, out-gunned, and out-manoeuvred placed "Kampfgruppe Peiper" in danger of imminent capture by the U.S. Army. While on 17 December 1944, the units of the Battle Group Peiper at Malmédy, Belgium were advancing to their objectives, by 21 December 1944, continual firefights with the U.S. Army had divided and dispersed scattered Battle Group Peiper, and thus almost trapped Peiper's unit, and Peiper, at La Gleize. By that point Peiper's vehicles had little fuel and his soldiers had suffered 80 percent casualty rates.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Defence counsel Everett called only Peiper to testify. In his testimony, Peiper communicated only calculation about the usefulness of his American prisoners of war, testifying that when the Peiper Battle Group fled afoot from the town of La Gleize, Col. Peiper made hostages of Lt. Col. McCown and some of his soldiers in order to protect his "Waffen-SS" soldiers from capture by the U.S. Army.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Despite the damning and incriminating facts that Peiper testified to the military tribunal, the other defendant SS-men, supported by their German lawyers, unwisely asked for the opportunity to testify. The prosecutor's cross-examinations compelled the SS men to behave like "a bunch of drowning rats . . . turning on each other" to survive; thus did the Nazi PoW testimonies — of soldiers and officers — about the Malmedy war crimes provide the military tribunal with reasons to condemn to death several of the "Waffen-SS" defendants.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The military tribunal were unconvinced by Peiper's testimony that, as the commanding officer of the Battle Group Peiper, he, Col. Peiper, had no command responsibility for the summary execution of American PoWs by his "Waffen-SS" soldiers. When asked about having ordered his soldiers to summarily murder Belgian civilians, Peiper said that the dead people were partisan guerrillas — not civilians.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Two witnesses testified to having heard Peiper on two occasions order the summary execution of U.S. PoWs; yet, when the prosecutor asked whether or not he gave the orders for the summary executions, Peiper denied the veracity of the eyewitness testimony, claiming that the testimony had been coerced from men under mental duress and physical torture.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 16 July 1946, the military tribunal for the Malmedy Massacre Trial convicted "Obersturmbannführer" Joachim Peiper of the war crimes of which he was accused, and sentenced him to be hanged. In the judicial system of the U.S. Army, a sentence of death is automatically reviewed by the U.S. Army Review Board, and, in October 1947, death-sentence reviewers commuted some verdicts into long imprisonment for Nazi war criminals. In March 1948, Gen. Lucius D. Clay, the U.S. military governor of Occupied Germany, reviewed 43 death sentences, and confirmed the legality of only 12 death sentences, including the death sentence of "Waffen-SS" Col. Peiper.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In 1951, about politicking for the political rehabilitation of "Waffen-SS" Colonel Joachim Peiper, ex-general Heinz Guderian said to a correspondent:


title: Joachim Peiper

text: At the moment, I'm negotiating with General Handy [in Heidelberg], because [he] wants to hang the unfortunate Peiper. McCloy is powerless, because the Malmedy trial is being handled by Eucom, and is not subordinate to McCloy. As a result, I have decided to cable President Truman and ask him if he is familiar with this idiocy.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In 1948, the judicial reviewers of the trial verdicts of the military tribunal commuted the war-crime death sentences of some "Waffen-SS" defendants in the Malmedy massacre trial to life imprisonment. By 1954, Peiper's death sentence first was commuted to 35 years of imprisonment. He was released on parole on 22 December 1956. When Peiper was told he was being released by two U.S. soldiers, he was so shocked that he stared at them silently. The political lobbying of the network of SS men arranged and realised Peiper's early release from prison and his finding employment; the Mutual Aid Community of Former Members of the Waffen SS (HIAG) already had found employment for Frau Peiper near the Landsberg Prison wherein her husband resided. Thanks to the political influence of Albert Prinzing, an ex-functionary in the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) security service, Peiper was employed at the Porsche automobile company.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On release from Landsberg Prison, Joachim Peiper acted discreetly and did not associate with known Nazis in public, especially with ex-"Waffen-SS" soldiers and the Mutual Aid Association of Former Waffen-SS Members (HIAG); privately, Peiper remained a true-believer Nazi and member of the secret community of "Waffen-SS" in the Federal Republic of Germany.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In 1959, Peiper attended the national meeting of the Association of Knight's Cross Recipients. He travelled with Walter Harzer, the HIAG historian, and reunited with Sepp Dietrich and Heinz Lammerding, who had also been formally identified as Nazi war criminals. His active social life in the "Waffen-SS" community included Peiper's public participation in the funerals of dead Nazis, such as those of Kurt Meyer, Paul Hausser, and Dietrich. Collaborating with the HIAG, Peiper secretly worked for the political rehabilitation of "Waffen-SS" soldiers and officers, by suppressing their war-crime records and misrepresenting them as war veterans of the "Wehrmacht". Nevertheless, self-awareness of his legalistic chicanery allowed Peiper to tell a friend: “I, personally, think that every attempt at rehabilitation during our lifetime is unrealistic, but one can still collect material.”


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 17 January 1957, the Porsche automobile company employed Peiper in Stuttgart. In the course of his employment, Italian trade union workers formally complained that Peiper was unacceptable as a co-worker because he remained a Nazi and because of the wartime Boves massacre committed by his command, the "Kampfgruppe Peiper", in Italy. An owner of the car company, Ferry Porsche, personally intervened to promote Peiper into a management job, but the trade unions legally refused to work with Peiper; despite the friendship with Porsche, and because of lost sales of cars in the U.S. — for employing a Nazi war criminal — the Porsche automobile company dismissed Peiper from his employment.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 30 December 1960, Peiper filed a lawsuit against the Porsche car company, wherein the attorney claimed that Joachim Peiper was not a Nazi war criminal, because the Allies had used the Malmedy massacre trial (1946) as propaganda to defame the German people; likewise the Nuremberg trials (20 November 1945 – 1 October 1946) and the Malmedy massacre trial were anti-German propaganda. Peiper's attorney cited documents by Freda Utley, a Holocaust denier academic, which said that the U.S. Army had tortured the "Waffen-SS" defendants in the Malmedy massacre trial.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The court ordered that Mr. Porsche void the employment contract and indemnify Peiper for the dismissal. Morever, that lost job allowed "Der Freiwillige", the official newspaper of the HIAG, to misrepresent Peiper as having been "unfairly sentenced" for war crimes committed by other Nazis. The HIAG then found Peiper employment as a trainer of car salesmen at the Volkswagen automobile company.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the early 1960s, Cold War geopolitics in western Europe required transforming Germany from enemy (Nazi Germany) to ally (Federal Republic of Germany) for consequent integration into NATO. Consequent to the relative de-Nazification of German society, the economy of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) disallowed ex-Nazis to hide among the educated staff of a business company in post–War Germany; a Nazi diploma was unacceptable for employment. The Adolf Eichmann trial (1961) and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials (1963–1965) informed the world of the true, racist nature of Nazi Germany and their white supremacy politics of official Anti–Semitism and the Final Solution in order to realise the Holocaust — the purpose of National Socialism.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: Unlike in the aftermath of the Second World War (1939–1945) in Europe, when the Allies prosecuted war crimes under a limited remit (1945–1947), the Federal Republic of Germany continually extended the statute of limitations for the prosecution of war crimes in order to successfully hunt, capture, and prosecute the war criminals of the Nazi party, the 'Wehrmacht", the "Waffen-SS", and the "Gestapo". In their testimonies at the war-crime trials in the FRG, the Nazi war criminals repeatedly named "SS-Obersturmbannführer" Joachim Peiper as an active participant in the massacres of civilians and PoWs at the Eastern front and at the Western front of the War; among the fellow Nazis who betrayed Peiper in court were Karl Wolff (senior adjutant to Himmler) and Werner Grothmann (Peiper's successor as adjutant to Himmler). At trial, the court heard Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski ("Bandenbekämpfung" chief for occupied Europe) speak of Himmler's plans to "rid Russia of thirty million Slavic people" and Himmler's pronouncements, at Minsk, that he was "determined to eliminate the Jews".


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In 1964, the village of Boves, Italy erected a monument commemorating the victims of the Boves Massacre committed by the "Kampfgruppe Peiper" on 13 September 1943. Offended by that explicit, public identification as a war criminal, Peiper asked the Mutual Aid Association of Former Members of the Waffen-SS (HIAG) to legally defend him against that war-criminal label. Peiper's defence attorney said that Italian Communists had fabricated evidence to substantiate false Nazi war-crime accusations; Peiper again repeated that Battle Group Peiper had to destroy the village of Boves in the course of the "Waffen-SS" defence against Communist partisans.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On 23 June 1964, the Central Office of the State Justice Administration for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes formally accused Peiper of perpetrating the Boves Massacre in 1943. The formal accusation was based upon statements of two ex-partisans who recognized SS Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper from two published photographs in a picture-book about the Battle of the Bulge and from a photograph of "SS-Obersturmbannführer" Peiper observing the incineration of the village of Boves. In 1968, the German District Court in Stuttgart determined that Battle Group Peiper had set houses afire and that "a portion of the victims killed was from rioting that was committed by [the "Waffen-SS" soldiers]". Nevertheless, despite the battle group's collective culpability for the war-crime at Boves, there was no evidence of the individual command responsibility that "SS-Obersturmbannführer" Joachim Peiper, himself, had directly ordered the massacre of villagers at Boves, Italy.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the United States, "Obersturmbannführer" Joachim Peiper is an idol of right-wing Americans who romanticise the "Waffen-SS" as German war heroes, rather than as Nazi war criminals. In the post–War period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the cultural context — xenophobic Russo-American Cold War and reactionary McCarthyism — allowed historical, factual, and personal misrepresentations of Peiper to coalesce into the cult of personality practised by right-wing organisations, such as the HIAG (Mutual Aid Association of Former Members of the Waffen-SS) who sought his early release from war-crime imprisonment in West Germany. In American popular culture, Lt. Col. Peiper's military bearing, good looks, commanding presence, and chestful of Nazi medals earned him many right-wing admirers in civilian society and in military society.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In the U.S. military, the idolatry of "Obersturmbannführer" Peiper penetrated the official publications of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). In 2019, the DoD Facebook account included a colourised military photograph of Peiper in "Waffen-SS" uniform into an audiovisual commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the U.S. Army fighting "Wehrmacht" and "Waffen-SS" soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge — which included the Malmedy Massacre (1944) committed by "Kampfgruppe Peiper". Peiper's "Waffen-SS" photograph provoked "widespread backlash on social media" because the DoD publication appeared to celebrate a Nazi war criminal as a German war hero; the DoD apologised and deleted the photograph. Despite that political mis-step, the Pentagon used Peiper's "Waffen-SS" photograph to represent the German enemy fighting the U.S. Army airborne corps in the Battle of the Bulge. Moreover, the Facebook page of the Army's 10th Mountain Division also featured Peiper's colourised "Waffen-SS" military photograph to represent the German enemy they fought in the Second World War.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times" newspapers quoted Facebook commentators who said that the DoD's positive military biography of the war criminal Joachim Peiper was a "vile and disturbing" exercise in historical negationism, which had the tone of “a ‘fanboy-flavoured’ piece” of right-wing propaganda. Moreover, the researchers of "The Washington Post" traced the source of Peiper's colourised photograph to the Twitter account of a pro–Nazi artist who publishes photographs of Nazis, with captions of supportive praise for Nazism and Hitler, and concluded that:


title: Joachim Peiper

text: It remains unclear how Pentagon and Army officials cleared an image, apparently created by an artist who celebrates Nazi propaganda online, to be published alongside a tribute to the American soldiers who fought and died to defeat a fascist regime 75 years ago. But the mis-step is just the latest in a month of embarrassing incidents for the U.S. Army, which has been recently slammed with multiple allegations of white supremacist activity.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In 1972, Joachim and Sigurd Peiper moved to Traves, Haute-Saône, in eastern France, where he owned a house. Under the pseudonym “Rainer Buschmann”, Peiper worked as a self-employed English-to-German translator for the German publisher Stuttgarter MotorBuch Verlag, translating books of military history. Despite his biography and working pseudonymously, they lived under his true, German name, “Joachim Peiper”, and soon attracted the notice of anti-fascists.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: In 1974, a member of the French Resistance recognised Peiper and reported his presence in metropolitan France to the French Communist Party. In 1976, the historian of the French Communist Party searched the "Gestapo" files for the personnel file of "SS-Oberststurmbannführer" Joachim Peiper to determine his whereabouts. On 21 June 1976, anti-Nazi political activists distributed informational flyers to the Traves community informing them that Peiper was a Nazi war criminal residing among them. On 22 June 1976, an article in the "L'Humanité" newspaper confirmed that Peiper was living in the village.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: The confirmation of Peiper's Nazi identity and presence in France attracted journalists to whom Peiper readily gave interviews, wherein he claimed that he was a victim of Communist harassment due to his role in the war. In an interview ("J’ai payé" "I Already Have Paid"), Peiper said he was an innocent man who had paid for his war crimes (referring to the Malmedy massacre) with twelve years of prison. He said he was innocent of the earlier Boves massacre war crime in Italy. It was reported that he and his wife left France and moved to the German Federal Republic due to ongoing death threats.


title: Joachim Peiper

text: On Bastille Day 14 July 1976, French anti-Nazis attacked and torched Peiper's house in Traves. When the fire was extinguished, firefighters found the charred remains of a man holding a pistol and a .22 calibre rifle, as if defending himself. The arson investigators determined that person had died from smoke inhalation. The anti-Nazi political group The Avengers claimed responsibility for the arson that killed Peiper; nonetheless, because of the destruction caused by the arson, the French police authorities remained unconvinced that Joachim Peiper was the person found.


title: Duncan Trussell

text: Charles Duncan Trussell (born April 20, 1974) is an American actor and stand-up comic, known for his podcast "The Duncan Trussell Family Hour". He appears on the Netflix series "The Midnight Gospel", and starred alongside Joe Rogan in the SYFY series "Joe Rogan Questions Everything".


title: Duncan Trussell

text: Duncan Trussell is a stand-up comedian, podcaster, writer, and actor. He has written and appeared in sketches for two seasons of Fuel TV's "Stupidface", Showtime's "La La Land", Comedy Central's "Nick Swardson's Pretend Time", and both seasons of HBO's "Funny or Die Presents".


title: Duncan Trussell

text: He regularly tours the country as a stand-up comedian and has performed at Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and the Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin.


title: Duncan Trussell

text: His television credits include "MADtv" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm". He hosted "Thunderbrain", a comedy science pilot for Comedy Central. In addition, Trussell has appeared on Cartoon Network’s "Adventure Time", four episodes of the Funny or Die web series "Drunk History", as well as appearing on Comedy Central’s "This is Not Happening". He has also written and served as a consultant for Jason Sudeikis's hosting duties at the 2011 MTV Movie Awards. He co-hosted "The Lavender Hour" podcast with Natasha Leggero through January 2012.


title: Duncan Trussell

text: Trussell hosts his own podcast, "The Duncan Trussell Family Hour (DTFH)". The DTFH is an ongoing project where Trussell invites eclectic guests to open conversation for about an hour per episode. Beyond his commercial image as an actor and comedian, Trussell is also a burgeoning spiritual teacher in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He frequently invokes applicable uses of Dharma teachings in his podcast, for both daily life and exceptionally difficult or rare circumstances. He denies the label of "Buddhist Comedian," but his podcast's humor frequently draws on high-concept Vajrayana metaphysics, and he commonly references the professional work of spiritual leaders such as Ram Dass and Chögyam Trungpa during conversations with guests. Trussell also hosts a weekly meditation session and discussion of mindfulness practice for fans that subscribe to his work through Patreon.


title: Duncan Trussell

text: Among the guests that have been featured are Andrew Yang, Joe Rogan, Ram Dass, Amishi Jha, Dan Harmon, Joey Diaz, Tim Ferriss, Lou Barlow, Bert Kreischer, Alex Grey, Rick Doblin, Natasha Leggero, Graham Hancock, Abby Martin, Dr. Drew, Daniele Bolelli, Christopher Ryan and comedian, podcaster Jessa Reed. As of January 2022, there have been almost 500 episodes of the DTFH.


title: Duncan Trussell

text: Select episodes of the show were adapted into the Netflix animated series "The Midnight Gospel", directed by Pendleton Ward. The show is a high-concept postmodern sci-fi sitcom with Trussell's podcast interviews inspiring story dialogue and animation added afterward. Trussell introduced audiences to his professional meditation teacher, David Nichtern (a former student of Trungpa's) through the show.


title: Duncan Trussell

text: Trussell also guest-starred as the character Dave, the moth that experiments with neon for the first time on an episode of the HBO animated show "Animals".


title: Duncan Trussell

text: On December 14, 2012, Trussell announced that he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. The cancer was successfully treated.


title: Duncan Trussell

text: Trussell has dated fellow comedians Mary Lynn Rajskub and Natasha Leggero, as well as model Cora Keegan.


title: Duncan Trussell

text: On June 27, 2018, Trussell announced on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that he was going to be a father. He has since had two sons.


title: La Bamba (song)

text: "La Bamba" () is a Mexican folk song, originally from the state of Veracruz, also known as "La Bomba". The song is best known from a 1958 adaptation by Ritchie Valens, a Top 40 hit in the U.S. charts. Valens's version is ranked number 345 on "Rolling Stone magazine"′s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.


title: La Bamba (song)

text: "La Bamba" has been covered by numerous artists, notably by Los Lobos whose version was the title track of the 1987 film "La Bamba", a bio-pic about Valens; their version reached No. 1 in many charts in the same year.


title: La Bamba (song)

text: "La Bamba" is a classic example of the "son jarocho" musical style, which originated in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and combines Spanish, indigenous, and African musical elements. The song is typically played on one or two arpa jarochas (harps) along with guitar relatives the jarana jarocha and the requinto jarocho. Lyrics to the song vary greatly, as performers often improvise verses while performing. However, versions such as those by musical groups Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan and Los Pregoneros del Puerto have survived because of the artists' popularity. The traditional aspect of "La Bamba" lies in the tune, which remains almost the same through most versions. The name of the dance referenced within the song, which has no direct English translation, is presumably connected with the Spanish verb "bambolear", meaning "to sway", "to shake" or "to wobble". In one traditional version of this dance performed at weddings and "ballet folklórico" shows, couples utilize intricate footwork to create a bow signifying their union.


title: La Bamba (song)

text: "La Bamba" has its origin in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. The oldest recorded version known is that of Alvaro Hernández Ortiz, who recorded the song with the name of "El Jarocho". His recording was released by Victor Records in Mexico in 1938 or 1939, and was reissued on a 1997 compilation by Yazoo Records, "The Secret Museum of Mankind Vol. 4".


title: La Bamba (song)

text: According to a 1945 article in "Life", the song and associated dance were brought "out of the jungle" at Veracruz by American bandleader Everett Hoagland, who introduced it at Ciro's nightclub in Mexico City. It became popular, and the song was adopted by Mexican presidential candidate Miguel Alemán Valdés who used it in his successful campaign. Later in 1945, the music and dance were introduced at the Stork Club in New York City by Arthur Murray. A popular version by Andrés Huesca (1917–1957) and his brother Victor, billed as Hermanos Huesca, was issued on Peerless Records in Mexico around 1945–46. Huesca re-recorded the song for RCA Victor in 1947, and the same year the song featured as a production number in the MGM musical film "Fiesta", performed by a group called Los Bocheros. The song was featured in the 1946 Mexican movie "Rayando el Sol" starring Pedro Armendáriz.


title: La Bamba (song)

text: The Swedish-American folk singer William Clauson recorded the song in several languages in the early and mid-1950s. He claimed to have heard the song in Veracruz, and in performance slowed down the tempo to encourage audience participation. Another version, "somewhat bowdlerized", was recorded by Cynthia Gooding on her 1953 Elektra album, "Mexican Folk Songs".


title: La Bamba (song)

text: Ritchie Valens learned the song in his youth, from his cousin Dickie Cota. In 1958 he recorded a rock and roll flavored version of "La Bamba", together with session musicians Buddy Clark (string bass); Ernie Freeman (piano); Carol Kaye (acoustic rhythm guitar); René Hall (Danelectro six-string baritone guitar); and Earl Palmer (drums and claves). It was originally released as the B-side of "Donna", on the Del-Fi label.


title: La Bamba (song)

text: The song features a simple verse-chorus form. Valens, who was proud of his Mexican heritage, was hesitant at first to merge "La Bamba" with rock and roll, but then agreed. The song ranked No. 98 in VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of Rock and Roll" in 1999, and No. 59 in VH1's "100 Greatest Dance Songs" in 2000. Furthermore, Valens' recording of the song was inducted into the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame.


title: La Bamba (song)

text: The song was listed at number 354 in the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by "Rolling Stone" magazine, being the only non-English language song included in the list. It was also included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings published in "" (1981). Valens was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2019, Valens' version was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is also included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of 500 songs that were influential in shaping rock and roll.


title: La Bamba (song)

text: The music video directed by Sherman Halsey won the 1988 MTV Video Music Award for Best Video from a Film, also the music video had the participation of Lou Diamond Phillips, the actor who played Valens in the 1987 film namesake. The song was also the fourth wholly non-English language song to top the "Billboard" Hot 100. The song was later featured in the game "Guitar Hero World Tour".


title: Oral administration

text: Oral administration is a route of administration where a substance is taken through the mouth. Per os abbreviated to P.O. is sometimes used as a direction for medication to be taken orally. Many medications are taken orally because they are intended to have a systemic effect, reaching different parts of the body via the bloodstream, for example.


title: Oral administration

text: Oral administration can be easier and less painful than other routes, such as injection. However, the onset of action is relatively low, and the effectiveness is reduced if it is not absorbed properly in the digestive system, or if it is broken down by digestive enzymes before it can reach the bloodstream. Some medications may cause gastrointestinal side effects, such as nausea or vomiting, when taken orally. Oral administration can also only be applied to conscious patients, and patients willing and able to swallow.


title: Oral administration

text: "Per os" (; "P.O.") is an adverbial phrase meaning literally from Latin "through the mouth" or "by mouth". The expression is used in medicine to describe a treatment that is taken orally (but not used "in" the mouth such as, for example, caries prophylaxis). The abbreviation "P.O." is often used on medical prescriptions.


title: Oral administration

text: Concomitant ingestion of water facilitates in swallowing tablets and capsules. If the substance has disagreeable taste, addition of a flavor may facilitate ingestion. Substances that are harmful to the teeth are preferably given through a straw.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The House of Orange-Nassau (Dutch: "Huis van Oranje-Nassau", ) is the current reigning house of the Netherlands. A branch of the European House of Nassau, the house has played a central role in the politics and government of the Netherlands and Europe especially since William the Silent organised the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule, which after the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) led to an independent Dutch state.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: Several members of the house served during this war and after as stadtholder ("governor"; Dutch: "stadhouder") during the Dutch Republic. However, in 1815, after a long period as a republic, the Netherlands became a monarchy under the House of Orange-Nassau.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The dynasty was established as a result of the marriage of Henry III of Nassau-Breda from Germany and Claudia of Châlon-Orange from French Burgundy in 1515. Their son René of Chalon inherited in 1530 the independent and sovereign Principality of Orange from his mother's brother, Philibert of Châlon. As the first Nassau to be the Prince of Orange, René could have used "Orange-Nassau" as his new family name. However, his uncle, in his will, had stipulated that René should continue the use of the name Châlon-Orange. After René's death in 1544, his cousin William of Nassau-Dillenburg inherited all of his lands. This "William I of Orange", in English better known as William the Silent, became the founder of the House of Orange-Nassau.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: Nassau Castle was founded around 1100 by Dudo, Count of Laurenburg, the founder of the House of Nassau. In 1120, Dudo's sons and successors, Counts Rupert I and Arnold I, established themselves at Nassau Castle, taking for themselves the title "Count of Nassau". In 1255 the Nassau possessions were split between Walram and Otto, the sons of Count Henry II. The descendants of Walram were known as the Walram Line, and they became Dukes of Nassau and, in 1890, Grand Dukes of Luxembourg. This line also included Adolph of Nassau, who was elected King of the Romans in 1292. The descendants of Otto became known as the Ottonian Line, and they inherited parts of the County of Nassau, as well as properties in France and the Netherlands.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The House of Orange-Nassau stems from the younger Ottonian Line. The first of this line to establish himself in the Netherlands was John I, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg, who married Margareta of the Marck. The real founder of the Nassau fortunes in the Netherlands was John's son, Engelbert I. He became counsellor to the Burgundian Dukes of Brabant, first to Anton of Burgundy, and later to his son Jan IV of Brabant. He also would later serve Philip the Good. In 1403, he married the Dutch noblewoman Johanna van Polanen and so inherited lands in the Netherlands, with the Barony of Breda as the core of the Dutch possessions and the family fortune.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: A nobleman's power was often based on his ownership of vast tracts of land and lucrative offices. It also helped that much of the lands that the House of Orange-Nassau controlled sat under one of the commercial and mercantile centres of the world (see below under Lands and Titles). The importance of the family grew throughout the 15th and 16th centuries as they became councilors, generals and stadholders of the Habsburgs (see and List of Knights of the Golden Fleece). Engelbert II of Nassau served Charles the Bold and Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, who had married Charles's daughter Mary of Burgundy. In 1496, he was appointed stadtholder of Flanders and by 1498 he had been named President of the Grand Conseil. In 1501, Maximilian named him Lieutenant-General of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands. From that point forward (until his death in 1504), Engelbert was the principal representative of the Habsburg Empire to the region. Hendrik III of Nassau-Breda was appointed stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland by Charles of Ghent in the beginning of the 16th century. Hendrik was succeeded by his son René of Chalon in 1538, who had inherited the title of Prince of Orange and the principality of that name from his maternal uncle Philibert of Chalon. In 1544, René died in battle aged 25. His possessions, including the principality and title, passed by his will as sovereign prince to his paternal cousin, William I of Orange. From then on, the family members called themselves "Orange-Nassau."


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: Although Charles V pretended to resist the Protestant Reformation, he ruled the Dutch territories wisely with moderation and regard for local customs, and he did not persecute his Protestant subjects on a large scale. His son Philip II inherited his antipathy for the Protestants but not his moderation. Under the reign of Philip, a true persecution of Protestants was initiated and taxes were raised to an outrageous level. Discontent arose and William of Orange (with his vague Lutheran childhood) stood up for the Protestant (mainly Calvinist) inhabitants of the Netherlands. Things went badly after the Eighty Years' War started in 1568, but luck turned to his advantage when Protestant rebels attacking from the North Sea captured Brielle, a coastal town in present-day South Holland in 1572. Many cities in Holland began to support William. During the 1570s he had to defend his core territories in Holland several times, but in the 1580s the inland cities in Holland were secure. William of Orange was considered a threat to Spanish rule in the area and was assassinated in 1584 by a hired killer sent by Philip.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: William was succeeded by his second son Maurits, a Protestant who proved an excellent military commander. His abilities as a commander and the lack of strong leadership in Spain after the death of Philip II (1598) gave Maurits excellent opportunities to conquer large parts of the present-day Dutch territory. In 1585 Maurits was elected stadtholder of the Provinces of Holland and Zealand as his father's successor and as a counterpose to Elizabeth's delegate, the Earl of Leicester. In 1587 he was appointed captain-general (military commander-in-chief) of the armies of the Dutch Republic. In the early years of the 17th century there arose quarrels between stadtholder and oligarchist regents—a group of powerful merchants led by Johan van Oldebarnevelt—because Maurits wanted more powers in the Republic. Maurits won this power struggle by arranging the judicial murder of Oldebarnevelt.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: Maurice died unmarried in 1625 and left no legitimate children. He was succeeded by his half-brother Frederick Henry (Dutch: "Frederik Hendrik"), youngest son of William I. Maurits urged his successor on his deathbed to marry as soon as possible. A few weeks after Maurits's death, he married Amalia van Solms-Braunfels.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: Frederick Henry and Amalia were the parents of a son and several daughters. These daughters were married to important noble houses such as the house of Hohenzollern, but also to the Frisian Nassaus, who were stadtholders in Friesland. His only son, William, married Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange, the eldest daughter of Charles I of Scotland and England. These dynastic moves were the work of Amalia.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: Frederick Henry died in 1647 and his son succeeded him. As the Treaty of Munster was about to be signed, thereby ending the Eighty Years' War, William tried to maintain the powers he had in wartime as military commander. These would necessarily be diminished in peacetime as the army would be reduced, along with his income. This met with great opposition from the regents. When Andries Bicker and Cornelis de Graeff, the great regents of the city of Amsterdam refused some mayors he appointed, he besieged Amsterdam. The siege provoked the wrath of the regents. William died of smallpox on November 6, 1650, leaving only a posthumous son, William III (*November 14, 1650). Since the Prince of Orange upon the death of William II, William III, was an infant, the regents used this opportunity to leave the stadtholdership vacant. This inaugurated the era in Dutch history that is known as the First Stadtholderless Period. A quarrel about the education of the young prince arose between his mother and his grandmother Amalia (who outlived her husband by 28 years). Amalia wanted an education which was pointed at the resurgence of the House of Orange to power, but Mary wanted a pure English education. The Estates of Holland, under Jan de Witt and Cornelis de Graeff, meddled in the education and made William a "child of state" to be educated by the state. The doctrine used in this education was keeping William from the throne. William became indeed very docile to the wishes of the regents and the Estates.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The Dutch Republic was attacked by France and England in 1672. The military function of stadtholder was no longer superfluous, and with the support of the Orangists, William was restored, and he became the stadtholder. William successfully repelled the invasion and seized royal power. He became more powerful than his predecessors from the Eighty Years' War. In 1677, William married his cousin Mary Stuart, the daughter of the future king James II of England. In 1688, William embarked on a mission to depose his Catholic father-in-law from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. He and his wife were crowned the King and Queen of England on April 11, 1689. With the accession to the thrones of the three kingdoms, he became one of the most powerful sovereigns in Europe, and the only one to defeat Louis XIV of France. William III died childless after a riding accident on March 8, 1702, leaving the main male line of the House of Orange extinct, and leaving Scotland, England and Ireland to his sister-in-law Queen Anne.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The house of Orange-Nassau was relatively unlucky in establishing a hereditary dynasty in an age that favoured hereditary rule. The Stuarts and the Bourbons came to power at the same time as the Oranges, the Vasas and Oldenburgs were able to establish a hereditary kingship in Sweden and Denmark, and the Hohenzollerns were able to set themselves on a course to the rule of Germany. The House of Orange was no less gifted than those houses, in fact, some might argue more so, as their ranks included some the foremost statesmen and captains of the time. Although the institutions of the United Provinces became more republican and entrenched as time went on, William the Silent had been offered the countship of Holland and Zealand, and only his assassination prevented his accession to those offices. This fact did not go unforgotten by his successors.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The Prince of Orange was also not just another noble among equals in the Netherlands. First, he was the traditional leader of the nation in war and in rebellion against Spain. He was uniquely able to transcend the local issues of the cities, towns and provinces. He was also a sovereign ruler in his own right (see Prince of Orange article). This gave him a great deal of prestige, even in a republic. He was the center of a real court like the Stuarts and Bourbons, French speaking, and extravagant to a scale. It was natural for foreign ambassadors and dignitaries to present themselves to him and consult with him as well as to the States General to which they were officially credited. The marriage policy of the princes, allying themselves twice with the Royal Stuarts, also gave them acceptance into the royal caste of rulers.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: Besides showing the relationships among the family, the family tree below also points out an extraordinary run of bad luck. In the 211 years from the death of William the Silent to the conquest by France, there was only one time that a son directly succeeded his father as Prince of Orange, Stadholder and Captain-General without a minority (William II). When the Oranges were in power, they also tended to settle for the actualities of power, rather than the appearances, which increasingly tended to upset the ruling regents of the towns and cities. On being offered the dukedom of Gelderland by the States of that province, William III let the offer lapse as liable to raise too much opposition in the other provinces.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The regents found that they had suffered under the powerful leadership of King William III and left the stadtholderate vacant for the second time. As William III died childless in 1702 the principality became a matter of dispute between Prince John William Friso of Nassau-Dietz of the Frisian Nassaus and King Frederick I of Prussia, who both claimed the title Prince of Orange. Both descended from Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. The King of Prussia was his grandson through his mother, Countess Luise Henriette of Nassau. Frederick Henry in his will had appointed this line as successor in the case the main House of Orange-Nassau would die out. John William Friso was a great-grandson of Frederick Henry (through Countess Albertine Agnes of Nassau, another daughter) and was appointed heir in William III's will. The principality was captured by the forces of King Louis XIV of France under François Adhémar de Monteil, Count of Grignan, in the Franco-Dutch War in 1672, and again in August 1682. With the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the wars of Louis XIV, the territory was formally ceded to France by Frederick I in 1713. John William Friso drowned in 1711 in the Hollands Diep near Moerdijk, and he left his posthumously born son William IV, Prince of Orange. That son succeeded at that time his father as stadtholder in Friesland (as the stadtholderate had been hereditary in that province since 1664), and Groningen. William IV was proclaimed the stadtholder of Guelders, Overijssel, and Utrecht in 1722. When the French invaded Holland in 1747, William IV was appointed stadtholder in Holland and Zeeland as well. The stadtholderate was made hereditary in both the male and the female lines in all provinces at the same time.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: After the Nassau-Dietz branch took over, the House of Orange-Nassau had acquired the following territories by the end of the 18th century in the Holy Roman Empire, located in present-day Germany:


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: Around 1742, William IV of Orange established the Hochdeutsche Hofdepartement, an administrative centre located in The Hague inside the Dutch Republic, which looked after the family's possessions in Germany.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: William IV died in 1751, leaving his three-year-old son, William V, as the stadtholder. Since William V was still a minor, the regents reigned for him. He grew up to be an indecisive person, a character defect which would come to haunt William V his whole life.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: His marriage to Wilhelmina of Prussia relieved this defect to some degree. In 1787, Willem V survived an attempt to depose him by the Patriots (anti-Orangist revolutionaries) after the Kingdom of Prussia intervened. When the French invaded Holland in 1795, William V was forced into exile, and he was never to return alive to Holland.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: After 1795, the House of Orange-Nassau faced a difficult period, surviving in exile at other European courts, especially those of Prussia and England. Following the recognition of the Batavian Republic by the 1801 Oranienstein Letters, William V's son William VI renounced the stadtholdership in 1802. In return, he received a few territories like the Free Imperial City of Dortmund, Corvey Abbey and Diocese of Fulda from First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte of the French Republic (Treaty of Amiens), which was established as the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda. William V died in 1806.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: After a repressed Dutch rebel action, Prussian and Cossack troops drove out the French in 1813, with the support of the Patriots of 1785. A provisional government was formed, most of whose members had helped drive out William V 18 years earlier. However, they were realistic enough to realize that any new government would have to be headed by William V's son, William Frederick (William VI). All agreed that it would be better in the long term for the Dutch to restore William themselves rather than have him imposed by the allies.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: At the invitation of the provisional government, William Frederick returned to the Netherlands on November 30. This move was strongly supported by the United Kingdom, which sought ways to strengthen the Netherlands and deny future French aggressors easy access to the Low Countries' Channel ports. The provisional government offered William the crown. He refused, believing that a stadholdership would give him more power. Thus, on December 6, William proclaimed himself hereditary sovereign prince of the Netherlands—something between a kingship and a stadholdership. In 1814, he was awarded sovereignty over the Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège as well. On March 15, 1815 with the support of the powers gathered at the Congress of Vienna, William proclaimed himself King William I. He was also made grand duke of Luxembourg, and (to assuage French sensitivity by distancing the title from the now-defunct principality) the title 'Prince of Orange' was changed to 'Prince of Oranje'.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The two countries remained separate, though they shared a common monarch via a personal union. William had thus fulfilled the House of Orange's three-century quest to unite the Low Countries.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The institution of the monarch in the Netherlands is considered an office under the Constitution of the Netherlands. There are none of the religious connotations to the office as in some other monarchies. A Dutch sovereign is inaugurated rather than crowned in a coronation ceremony. It was initially more of a crowned/hereditary presidency, and a continuation of the status quo ante of the pre-1795 hereditary stadholderate in the Republic. In practice, the current monarch has considerably less power than the stadtholder.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: As king of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, William tried to establish one common culture. This provoked resistance in the southern parts of the country, which had been culturally separate from the north since 1581. He was considered an enlightened despot.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: The Prince of Orange held rights to Nassau lands (Dillenburg, Dietz, Beilstein, Hadamar, Siegen) in central Germany. On the other hand, the King of Prussia, Frederick William III—brother-in-law and first cousin of William I, had beginning from 1813 managed to establish his rule in Luxembourg, which he regarded as his inheritance from Anne, Duchess of Luxembourg who had died over three centuries earlier. At the Congress of Vienna, the two brothers-in-law agreed to a trade—Frederick William received William I's ancestral lands while William I received Luxembourg. Both got what was geographically nearer to their center of power.


title: House of Orange-Nassau

text: In 1830, most of the southern portion of William's realm—the former Austrian Netherlands and Prince-Bishopric—declared independence as Belgium. William fought a disastrous war until 1839 when he was forced to settle for peace. With his realm halved, he decided to abdicate in 1840 in favour of his son, William II. Although William II shared his father's conservative inclinations, in 1848 he accepted an amended constitution that significantly curbed his own authority and transferred the real power to the States General. He took this step to prevent the Revolutions of 1848 from spreading to his country.