The Malmedy Massacre: Nazis Kill 84 American Prisoners of War

After visiting the Bastogne War Museum in Belgium, I drove northeast to the Baugnez crossroads, site of the Malmedy Massacre.  On December 17, 1944, a convoy of American troops in trucks was cut off and captured by a tank column of the 1st SS Panzer Division.

More than 100 American troops were herded from the trucks into a field near the crossroads. Nazi soldiers surrounded the Americans and opened fire with machine guns.  when all of the Americans were dead or wounded, the SS troops walked among the bodies firing a headshot into any soldier who was not dead.

At this point in the Battle of the Bulge, the massacred Americans were behind enemy lines until January. As the battle turned in favor of the Americans, advancing soldiers saw the frozen bodies of their comrades left in the snow. Eventually 43 soldiers were discovered in hiding who escaped the massacre, but 84 American soldiers were dead.

There is a memorial at the roundabout at the Baugnez crossroads.  The name of every American soldier killed is on the stone wall.