Devils Adjutant

The dramatic story of Nazi field commander Jochen Peiper’s military career, war crimes trial, and 1976 murder. Jochen Peiper would likely never have been heard of outside Germany if not for the infamous massacre of US Army POWs near Malmedy, Belgium, during World War II, with which his name has been forever associated. Shunned and despised in the years following Germany’s surrender, Peiper is nevertheless praised by many for his military acumen. This meticulously researched book explores Peiper’s youth, his career with the SS, the now famous trial of the officers and soldiers of the Leibstandarte, who were accused of war crimes, and Peiper’s murder in France over thirty years later. “One of WWII’s most interesting combat leaders . . . a fascinating story.” —Armor Includes maps and illustrations

The story of one of Himmler's former adjutants and the battle which brought this senior commander in Hitler's SS Bodyguard to the foreground of history.

Jochen Peiper of the SS Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler" spearheaded the German attack in the Battle of the Bulge. This detailed account disspells a number of myths that have grown up around the legendary commander.

Read presents a fresh perspective on the Third Reich: the deadly contests among Hitler's lieutenants, and their disastrous consequences."The Devil's Disciples" is the first major book for a general readership to examine those lieutenants, not only as individuals but also as a group.

Jochen Peiper was a Colonel in the Waffen SS. One of the wars more divisive men who was accused and convicted of more than 900 murders yet he walked free after only a few years in prison, why? This book covers his whole life, from his humble beginnings in Berlin to his rise to full Colonel in the SS, and his participation in numerous campaigns in Europe and the Eastern Front. The story leads to the war crimes trial held in Dachau in 1946, the results of that trial, and the use of coercion and dubious interrogation methods leading up to it. Many guilty men walked free and many innocent men remained in jail. Others who were clearly guilty and named were never prosecuted at all. Rules were dismissed and what was supposed to be a shining example of justice became an embarrassing mess. If Peiper and his men were guilty of the crimes convicted of, why were the sentences never carried out? Thoroughly researched using original archived documents and other material this book sheds new light on an old story.

When Herbert Hart left his home town of Carterton in 1914 to serve as a major with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, he could not have imagined that he would return as a much decorated brigadier-general. His rise to leadership was swift, as he commanded the Wellington Battalion during the closing stages of the Gallipoli campaign, then went on to serve as a battalion and brigade commander on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918. During the whole of this period he kept a diary, in which he recorded his experiences in the great battles on Gallipoli, the Somme and Passchendaele.Hart's diary is now widely regarded as one of the most important personal sources relating to the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. His service on the Western Front is the principal focus of the diary. Exceptionally well written, it includes gripping descriptions of both combat and life behind the front line and on leave in France and the United Kingdom. While Hart can appear remarkably detached at times, he is also a very human observer of the events around him, empathising with the plight of his men, finding humour in the most unlikely situations and noticing unexpected details at moments of high tension. This important book also has an introductory chapter on Hart's early life, and a concluding chapter about his diverse and distinguished career after the war, including his term as Administrator of Western Samoa from 1931 to 1935.

In the Texas Reconstruction Era (1865-1877), many returning Confederate veterans organized outlaw gangs and Ku Klux Klan groups to continue the war and to take the battle to Yankee occupiers, native white Unionists, and their allies, the free people. This study of Benjamin Bickerstaff and other Northeast Texans provides a microhistory of the larger whole. Bickerstaff founded Ku Klux Klan groups in at least two Northeast Texas counties and led a gang of raiders who, at times, numbered up to 500 men. He joined the ranks of guerrilla fighters like Cullen Baker and Bob Lee and, with their gangs often riding together, brought chaos and death to the “Devil’s Triangle,” the Northeast Texas region where they created one disaster after another. “This book provides a well-researched, exhaustive, and fascinating examination of the life of Benjamin Bickerstaff, a desperado who preyed on blacks, Unionists, and others in northeastern Texas during the Reconstruction era until armed citizens killed him in the town of Alvarado in 1869. The work adds to our knowledge of Reconstruction violence and graphically supports the idea that the Civil War in Texas did not really end in 1865 but continued long afterward.”—Carl Moneyhon, author of Texas after the Civil War: The Struggle of Reconstruction

The future is broken. Garth ‘Nickels’ N’Chalez doesn’t know how he knows the future is broken, but after being invited to enjoy a ten-year stint in Trinity’s officially-unofficial crew of roughnecks and madmen known Universe-wide as Special Services in lieu of paying for … accidental damages to a Tynedale/Fujihara mining facility, there’s no one better to make that assessment. And from his point of view, it couldn’t be more broken. But he’s gonna find out, even if it kills him, because it’s not just the future of the Universe that doesn’t make sense, it’s his whole damn life; being woken up from deep cryosleep –in a spaceship that technically shouldn’t exist- and being told that you and the other fourteen people you were found with napped away the last thirty thousand years of Human expansion across the Universe and then being interred for an entire year so you can be grilled non-stop by an increasingly angry Historical Adjutant who fell just shy of actual torture and then being politely told that since you were the only one to not be killed in a rather fantastic and wildly violent, destructive bid for freedom, you get to pay for the umpty-gazillion dollar facility can kind of make a guy feel like something’s wrong, dreadfully wrong, with everything, everywhere. The fact that he has highly specific amnesia about who he is, what he and the other fourteen were doing in the ship, why they were there, how the ship was constructed, well, that only hammers home the whole ‘everything is broken’ feeling. But Garth Nickels can sure as hell tell you anything you might ever want to know about the A-Team. Or Bugs Bunny. Or Rob Zombie. But nothing historically significant. Well, Garth did his bid in Special Services and made quite a name for himself. Granted, it’s a name he’d prefer stay lost to the darkness across The Cordon where he did horrible, awful things in the Trinity AI’s name, but it’s a name nonetheless. During that time, the thirty-thousand year old Specter discovered that he not only has the same kind of powers and abilities as those who got killed during their escape, his seem to grow in direct correlation to the threat. He has become a man of strength and speed, of violence and mayhem, and he does not like it. But he’s free now, from the haunting Specter he became, free to hunt for something that he suspects might only be a dream: somewhere out there, in the depths of Trinityspace, there is a ship the equal of the one he and his fourteen cryosleep buddies were discovered in. The dreams tell him there are answers within, and he’ll do anything at all to find the answers to who he is, and how the future is broken. Garth’s quest takes him to Latelyspace, the last of the Sovereign Systems, thinking the task ahead would be easy. How wrong can one man be? As it turns out, very. Garth's exploits on the Latelian home world of Hospitalis set in motion a chain of events that will have him labeled Foreign Devil before he's done. It'll take every ounce of self-control, patience and luck one Universe-weary ex-Specter can muster, but will it be enough?