Joachim "Jochen" Peiper (30 January 1915 - 14 July 1976) was a senior Waffen-SS officer in World War II and a convicted war criminal. By the end of his military career in 1945, Peiper was the youngest regimental colonel in the Waffen-SS, holding the rank of SS-Standartenführer. He also served as personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, in the period April 1938 to August 1941. He fought on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. During the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944, men under Peiper's command massacred 84 American POWs near Malmedy, Belgium. Peiper and several others were tried and convicted in 1946 for the Malmedy massacre. He was initially sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life in prison after a number of appeals and independent investigations, includ