On December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, more than eighty unarmed American soldiers were shot down after having surrendered to an SS tank column near the small crossroads town of Malmédy, Belgium.
The delightful Belgian town of Malmédy will forever be associated with the most infamous massacre of American troops in World War II. And yet, but for the presence of an Associated Press correspondent there in early January 1945, it is doubtful that this terrible incident would have ever achieved international notoriety. ‘Nazis Turned Machine Guns on GI POWs wrote Hal Boyle in his January 1945 Stars and Stripes article, and from that first graphic account sprung a plethora of books and articles about the so-called Malmédy Massacre. Few of these accounts are based on facts.
It is unlikely that we shall ever know the precise sequence of events at the Baugnez crossroads, near Malmédy, on December 17, 1944, or the reasons for them. The secret lies with the guilty and the dead. Nevertheless, many corroborated facts are known and a careful analysis of these facts can bring us closer to the truth of what happened.
In this film, Emmy Award winning director/producer Tim Gray introduces you to the last survivors of the massacre. Bringing you back to the actual scene, it tells the story as seen through their eyes, their memories of how they escaped execution by the 1st SS Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler.
A moving story, very well documented.
Broadcasted on PBS in the spring of 2018
